Australia’s anti-corruption commissions have gone too far

Western Australia's Corruption and Crime Commission was once found to be suffering from "systematic, cultural, behavioural and managerial failings", with evidence of theft, false record keeping, bullying and discrimination.

Who needs an anti-corruption commission to investigate scandals when they can create their own?

While these problems have since been addressed, it highlights that it is not easy operationalising these bodies in Westminster systems.

The South Australian ICAC had its powers so reduced in 2021 that its commissioner resigned in protest in 2024, leaving it to be our weakest anti-corruption body and of questionable value.

Some argue anti-corruption commissions serve a useful role and should be strengthened; others believe it has all gone too far and their collective cost and undermining of civil liberties are too great. Instead of strengthening trust in government, their reports and errant behaviour have undermined it. They are a "solution" that too often has become the problem. Nor can these bodies prevent poor politically driven policy decisions, as some naively expected, which are necessarily affected in a democracy by compromise, negotiation and govern­ments necessarily seeking votes.

Australia is the only Westminster democracy with anti-corruption commissions. Perhaps after observing how they have operated in this country, Britain, Canada and New Zealand have wisely eschewed their adoption.