Crikey: The Crown fix is in

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Via Bernard Keane:

Crown is always good for a decent chunk of change for the Victorian and WA branches on both sides. So instead of a parliamentary inquiry, Labor and the government were content with Attorney-General Christian Porter referring the whole thing to the Australian Commission for Law Enforcement Integrity (ACLEI).

This means the matter will go precisely nowhere. The ACLEI is the reason why so many people outside the major political parties — until 2018, when Bill Shorten committed Labor to a federal anti-corruption body — think we need a federal ICAC: it’s hopelessly inadequate.

The tiny law enforcement anti-corruption body has long been the subject of the criticism that it is so too small. It has to second staff from the agencies it is meant to investigate in order to carry out investigations — which it has to pick and choose from because it is too small to investigate everything that is referred to it. Since then the funding of the ACLEI has been increased marginally, but it continues to operate with an appropriation of around $11.5 million annually and a staff of just 54.

A highly critical ANAO report into the efficiency of the ACLEI last year concluded “the ANAO has not been able to conclude whether ACLEI has been operating efficiently” because “ACLEI has not measured, benchmarked or reported on its efficiency in detecting, investigating and preventing corrupt conduct”, nor did it “assess its operational efficiency against its own past performance or other organisations. The ANAO’s analysis indicates that the efficiency of ACLEI’s investigation activities requires particular improvement, including to address growth in the number of investigations commenced compared to the number of investigations completed.”

Worse: the ACLEI’s remit is highly limited. It can only examine criminal conduct by law enforcement officials — not ordinary public servants, and particularly not ministers and staffers. It is unable to examine corrupt conduct — that is, conduct that doesn’t meet the test of criminality but which involves adversely affecting the honest and impartial exercise of official functions by officials, a breach of the public trust or misuse of information for someone’s benefit. State anti-corruption bodies like ICAC all have the power to investigate corrupt conduct but no federal body does.

The benefit of referral of the Crown allegations to the ACLEI is that, if true, it would almost certainly involve corrupt conduct, not criminality, and the ACLEI — even if it had the resources to properly investigate — would wash its hands of the matter. And in any event, no politician or staffer can be investigated anyway. It’s the ideal investigation for political parties worried about their extensive links to a powerful company — completely unthreatening.

Go Straya.

About the author
David Llewellyn-Smith is Chief Strategist at the MB Fund and MB Super. David is the founding publisher and editor of MacroBusiness and was the founding publisher and global economy editor of The Diplomat, the Asia Pacific’s leading geo-politics and economics portal. He is also a former gold trader and economic commentator at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the ABC and Business Spectator. He is the co-author of The Great Crash of 2008 with Ross Garnaut and was the editor of the second Garnaut Climate Change Review.