| Anti-corruption a booming business in NSW |
They can go where no other court or investigators can go, their powers are virtually unfettered and no-one, it seems, is beyond their reach.
The anti-corruption industry has become a booming business in NSW.
Together, the Independent Commission Against Corruption, the Police Integrity Commission, the NSW Ombudsman and the NSW Crime Commission cost at least $97.2 million a year. The salaries of their head officials top the $2 million mark with ICAC commissioner Megan Latham the most expensive at $644.496. A year.
All of them have the powers of standing royal commissions and they are all obsessed with secrecy. Those unlucky enough to be called before them in a private hearing can’t even reveal they have been interviewed.
Then there are the public hearings at ICAC and PIC. Lawyers’ picnics, all of them. The solicitors, barristers and senior counsel all line up, some of their astronomical fees also paid from the public purse.
They have proved time and again that they can turn on the showmanship, their public examinations are often the best free seat in town. So long as you are not on the receiving end, that is, when your chances of hitting back are limited at best.
Once again this week has come the discussion of whether we need all of them to guard us against corruption. Do we get our money’s worth?
The Ombudsman is the granddaddy of the “oversight” bodies, with the office created in April 1975.
Then comes ICAC. Set up in 1989, ICAC initially had responsibility for investigating both public service and police corruption until the PIC was established in 1996 as a result of the NSW police royal commission.
The Crime Commission began as the State Drug Crime Commission in 1985 and morphed into its present role over the years, to smash organised crime and seize the assets of crime. None of them, however, has escaped criticism.
The NSWCC’s former assistant director Mark Standen is serving 22 years for conspiring to import and supply 300kg of pseudoephedrine, a precursor chemical that could produce $60 million worth of “ice”.
Three years ago former premier Barry O’Farrell toyed with the idea of disbanding PIC and merging it with ICAC, after scathing reports into the police watchdog’s investigations. Nothing came of it.
Earlier this year, O’Farrell himself became a victim of ICAC over a forgotten $3000 bottle of Grange.
Each of the corruption-fighting bodies is by now firmly entrenched and politicians would need to grow a backbone to do away with any of them.
Megan Latham told a parliamentary committee earlier this year that nothing would be gained by merging ICAC and PIC because all it would do would double the size of the organisation, not save any money.
Before O’Farrell, the biggest scalp any of them had been able to claim was that of former premier Nick Greiner, who set up ICAC only to be brought down by it. He successfully appealed against ICAC’s adverse finding as the Supreme Court found the commission did not have power to investigate government ministers. That oversight was soon corrected.
As the DPP announced this week that charges would be laid against former government ministers Eddie Obeid and Ian Macdonald in the wake of an ICAC inquiry, the commission was defending in the Court of Appeal why it should be allowed to hold a public inquiry into claims that highly respected deputy state crown prosecutor Margaret Cunneen advised her son’s girlfriend to fake chest pains after a car crash to avoid a breath test.
The court has reserved its judgment and it remains to be seen if the reach of these behemoth bodies can be blunted. Or if no-one really is beyond their grasp.
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