This is the eighth and final day of The Dirty Country: Corruption in Australia. Read the full series here.
Australians, and especially our governing class, have normalised soft corruption. They literally no longer see a great deal of it because it has been accepted as a standard part of Australian political life.
If voters dislike pork-barrelling and understand the danger of property developers buying favourable planning decisions, they look past political donations and readily tolerate former politicians and public servants working for the industries they once regulated and funded.
Politicians are much worse: they collaborate to preserve secrecy and embrace in government the soft corruption they decried in opposition. Only last September, the Coalition and Labor combined to pass laws that would prevent state political donation requirements — which provide for greater transparency and prevent property developer donations — from affecting federal donation rules, ensuring state laws can be circumvented.
Soft corruption is the cosmic background radiation to public life in Australia, ever present but never seen, the persistent static in a system skewed toward vested interests.
Understanding corruption in Australia, then, requires relearning to see it.
If a politician can no more see it than a fish can see water, those further from the process — the media, voters — have the capacity to refocus on the extent to which what is political business as usual here in fact is not business as usual at all in comparable countries; that the day-to-day processes and institutions of government have been perverted to operate in the interests of influential, well-connected parties at the expense of the public and the public interest.
But the inability, or unwillingness, of political decision-makers to see pervasive corruption has implications for how it is regulated. The utility of greater transparency — long held to be the key mechanism by which corruption can be fought — is limited if politicians, bureaucrats and regulators regard the perversion of processes and institutions as not something that should be hidden from sight, but a normal, healthy functioning of the system.
Influence-wielding is mere “consultation”. Buying access is “the cost of supporting the democratic process”. Pork-barrelling is just “legitimate investment in the regions”. The revolving door is simply men and women using the skills they’ve acquired to help others navigate the democratic process.
Moreover, politicians have little incentive to address pervasive corruption. The lesson of former NSW premier Nick Greiner, one of Australia’s great state leaders, brought down by the ICAC he established, is one that every major party politician will have observed and learnt.
The fact that the Rudd government’s commitment to greater transparency only gave a hostile media more ammunition to fire at it also signals that there is no upside to voluntarily embracing transparency and integrity. That’s why it took the federal Labor Party until 2018 to commit to a federal ICAC — something the federal Coalition still refuses to contemplate even now, offering instead a risible body that would help the corrupt protect themselves.
It is no coincidence that the state that has had the longest-running anti-corruption body is also the state that has moved to undertake the most significant curbs on corruption — even if it is still rife at the political level.
Anti-corruption measures must therefore go beyond transparency and anti-corruption bodies like ICAC to address the structural incentives for corruption. Academic Cameron Murray argues for approaching incentives from both ends — replacing political decision-makers with independent experts and removing the “honey pot” that encourages private interests to seek to influence decisions, as much as possible. As Murray notes, this is easier said than done in some policy areas like tax law, where competition for lucrative exemptions and concessions encourages fierce lobbying and donating.
It also raises questions about the nature of democracy itself: politicians insist, with some justification, that as elected officials they should be the ones making decisions about the distribution of resources and the way governments affect societies. Replacing them with independent experts (cue derogatory phrases like “technocrats”) is anti-democratic.
But it is politicians themselves who have crueled this argument: the concept that direct regulation should be in the hands of independent bodies rather than politically controlled departments is central to regulation across the Australian economy. Competition policy is based on the idea that politically motivated governments agencies can’t be trusted to compete fairly with the private sector.
The Reserve Bank was made formally independent in the 1990s. It was the NSW government that replaced local councils with expert local planning panels to decide on development applications. It’s not a trend that is going away: the aged care royal commission report is adamant that key parts of the administration of aged care — or perhaps all of it — needs to be removed from the control of politicians.
Regulation. Competition. Monetary policy. Planning decisions. Maybe aged care — all things that politicians accept are too important for them to be allowed to control.
Why not the administration of government grants, to minimise pork-barrelling? Either shifted to bureaucrats, with politicians confined to legislating the purpose of a program, or entire programs, such as infrastructure funding, transferred to Infrastructure Australia — another independent body — to allocate funds on the basis of the business case for each project.
Australia’s greenhouse emissions targets established by an independent body, as proposed by independent Zali Steggall, but with the power to determine the most effective way of achieving them, and shaping energy policy accordingly.
Media policy determined by an independent expert body, rather than politicians keen for favours from media companies.
When the NSW government implemented local planning panels, it declared it would “free up councils to focus on long-term strategic planning”. The same statement could be made in relation to most policy areas — politicians and governments, deprived of the opportunity to engage in the pervasive soft corruption that characterises contemporary politics, could focus on “long-term strategic planning”.
If a political system in which politicians only establish the strategy and “experts” do the rest is improbable, and perhaps not even desirable in a democracy, the logic behind regarding key areas as too important to be left to politicians can go much, much further than it currently does.
Taking a more structural approach to the problem of soft corruption would extend to removing the incentive for political parties to raise funds by capping campaign spending and limiting donations (for example, to $5000), as well as banning access-based fundraisers, and subjecting non-party political groups to similar restrictions to prevent third-party election campaigning.
The logic applied by the High Court to donations from property developers holds true for all donations: “the reality of the risk of corruption and the loss of public confidence which accompanies the exposure of acts of corruption” flows automatically from them, especially under current rules.
Compelling action from the political class to undertake such reforms will be a struggle. But the first step toward it will be seeing the corruption that pervades Australian public life, understanding the systems that enable it, and calling it out.
What steps should Australia take to fight soft corruption? Let us know your thoughts by writing to [email protected]. Please include your full name to be considered for publication in Crikey’s Your Say section.
Follow the team that follows the money
Nobody digs into corruption in this country better than Crikey does.
Now we’re digging even deeper with our new multi-part series, The Dirty Country: Corruption in Australia, where our team lifts the lid on corruption, telling us how it’s done, who wins and what it costs.
Get involved. Follow the team that follows the money. Save 50% on a year of Crikey — that’s just $99 for an annual membership — when you subscribe today with the promo code CORRUPTION.
Peter Fray
Editor-in-chief of Crikey
Leave a comment
Yes Bernard, most key areas of government should not be left to the pollies. Direct democracy is one way that people can contribute and I think that we have an obligation to each other to do so. I also do not think that the party systems can be reformed – they are too entrenched.
Direct democracy is not a panacea.
California is a good example – constantly broke because people vote for all sorts of things they’d like to happen but resolutely refuse to agree to increase in taxes to pay for the services they want.
I guess it depends on the mentality and the overall attitude of the electorate. Australians are notoriously opposed to paying (more) taxes viewing it as some sort of imposition. Also, many don’t seem to value the common good that much preferring to just look after themselves and often not recognising how what’s good for the community at large would benefit them too.
I’m not sure direct democracy would work under these circumstances.
Can I suggest Crikey follows up this series of articles with a few more articles that look at the alternative approaches in other times and other places. The respected Australian academic Roger Wettenhall devoted a lifetime to this. See his beautiful snapshot of the issues here: https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Senate/Powers_practice_n_procedures/pops/~/link.aspx?_id=4AF8FFE2FA464CF28D170AC0D2128673
Wettenhall has related that Australia became the world champion in the use of statutory authorities, starting with the Victorian Railways Commission in the 1890s to stamp out rampant Ministerial nepotism and corruption following a series of fatal train accidents in Melbourne due to corruptly procured brake systems. Statutory corporations became the standard model in public rail, roads, sewerage and water supply, electricity and gas, airlines, forestry and broacasting. But their insularity from outside influence became problematic during the 1960s and 70s with the push for public participation in decisions, eg on heritage, outer urban and coastal development, pollution and logging. The Wran Government also diagnosed that the authorities were sitting on mountains of internal cash in ‘hollow log’ trust accounts, which could be mobilised to fund Labor’s reform programs. Then the Thatcher-Reagan privatisation movement kicked in and many were dissolved and assets sold off.
These changes could still have been implemented without increasing corruption. But Blair’s spin doctor Alistair Campbell has written that with the rise of the digital 24 hour news cycle politicians realised that they had to cut off embarassing stories at the source by controlling all communications from the public sector – in departments and in stat authorities. The best way to do that was to progressively appoint tame or even supine people to the senior roles, or to introduce laws that muzzle opinions on a wide range of subjects under the guise of security or cabinet/commercial confidentiality. Where you have silence, you will eventually have corruption.
It is axiomatic that “taxes buy civilisation” – evidence abounds, here & abroad, of what can happen when this does not happen.
Especially when such taxes as are gouged are not well spent.
Whilst “corruption” is reported on if it is uncovered, there’s little to make it tangible for voters. Sports rorts reporting did have a bit of it (ie this needy sports club didn’t get this whilst the other got something that wasn’t needed).
What don’t we get because of all those billions being spent on mates, electoral bribing, subsidies to companies that don’t need them? When is a budget going to be reported which states XX billion to mining subsidies, but XX billion less to public schooling.
Corruption is rarely put in a way as to what it costs us directly. XX billion dollars is just a statistic, not meaningful.
Even if it’s “small” amounts, a few million, if it contrasts to ‘this money could have gone to this service for the public good, but it’s actually been cut”, perhaps the average voter would connect with it better and are less apathetic about it.
The answer to corruption in politics is obvious we have a security service turn them loose on all politicians.This will produce rich pickings.Delight the voters and make great news, it is a no brainer.But alas who will watch the watchers.
It seems often forgotten – though more likely never known by the majority of those using the phrase – what Juvenal was referring to with his question “quis custodiet ipsos custodes?”.
It was NOT the common good of society.
Just can’t get good help these days…
God used to watch the watchers and for some still does.
Fast forward 2000 years, give or take, and now we are all watching the watchers.
And thank heavens for that.
I’m not sure how one can not see sharks going on. Are Australians so accustomed to dishonesty, sleaze, unethical behaviour and corruption? After 2 decades here I’m still shocked every day about what’s going on in this country and the nation’s apparent acceptance of the status quo.
I agree. It’s 35 years since I moved to Australia from the UK (not exactly a bastion of transparency and honesty in politics and governance) and it still shocks me. It’s not just that it happens, or even that there is so little shame – there almost seems to be an element of pride in putting one over on the gullible who persist in believing that honesty and decency pays.
Both of you would find the same thing happening in your former domicile. This isn’t restricted to Australia by any means.
I suggest that the political corruption that is rampant today has many of its roots in the politicisation of the upper echelon of the public service started by the Hawke government. I doubt Hawke saw the dangers. But that politicisation take up with alacrity by the Liberal Party has made the public service an army in the service of political ambition not in the service of society.
M.O. of public sector or agency corruption direct from the ‘owned’ US GOP, the tactic has been described in ‘The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Rule’ by Thomas Frank
‘…..rather than cutting down the big government they claim to hate, conservatives have simply sold it off, deregulating some industries, defunding others, but always turning public policy into a private-sector bidding war……It is no coincidence, Frank argues, that the same politicians who guffaw at the idea of effective government have installed a regime in which incompetence is the rule‘
There is very little we observe round the LNP etc. that has not already occurred in the US; too many of our media prefer to be informed by West Wing etc.?
I agree BA, but can’t attribute it to the Hawke government. It was Howard that sacked 1/3rd of the permanent heads on being elected. All I can remember of Hawke was getting rid of the hopelessly partisan, and hopeless fellow who headed up Treasury ( I think, was it Stone)
Got any examples?
DB. I do not attribute malice to Hawke. And I agree that his government executed a much-needed clean out. Goss did the same thing, but much more overtly in Queensland to root out corruption set up by Bjelke Petersen.
But both necessary purges legitimised the practice at every change of government since and the LNP turned it into convention. The muppets have gone a step further completely blurring the lines between the faceless and corrosive ‘advice’ within ministerial offices and the public service destroying the independence of the public service. And that is where corruption has become the norm.
Neo-liberal ideology helped promote the corrupting of the idea of ‘public’, ‘the public’, in profiteering favor of ‘the private’, the ‘privatized’..And the fruits of the last few decades has proven it to have been quite successful at it..