SYDNEY -- An Australian corruption commission on Monday launched an inquiry into Gladys Berejiklian, the popular former premier of New South Wales who resigned on Oct. 1, regarding a case that is electrifying public debate over murky government dealings at the state and federal level.
Experts say corruption in Australia is largely political rather than criminal -- designed to advance political interests versus steal funds. Although this phenomenon is hardly unique to Australia, there is real concern about slipping standards, a worry supported by the country's recent fall in international "cleanliness" rankings.
Australia has lost eight points in Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index, from its strongest score of 85 out of 100 in 2012 to 77 in the latest edition. While its score and 11th-place ranking would still be the envy of much of the world, it lags behind regional peers New Zealand, with a leading 88 points, and Singapore, with 85. Australia's slide coincides with the Liberal-National coalition governments in power from 2013 to the present.
Although Berejiklian strongly denies any wrongdoing, the inquiry that made her position untenable will look into her actions during a secret romantic relationship with former Liberal MP Daryl Maguire when she was state treasurer.
Maguire was questioned by the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) in a four-week probe last year into whether he had taken advantage of his position in parliament to promote private interests. He "agreed" that he had used his position for personal gain and breached public trust.
The inquiry starting this week will investigate the allocation of over 35 million Australian dollars ($26 million) in state government grants to Maguire's electorate during his relationship with Berejiklian. The handouts included AU$5.5 million granted to the Australian Clay Target Association, a gun club, in 2016-2017 and an AU$30 million handout in 2018 to the Conservatorium of Music in Wagga Wagga, an inland city of 56,000 people.
Berejiklian quit her premiership and her safe Liberal state parliamentary seat in affluent Northern Sydney after she was named as a person of interest. Her role in extensive alleged pork-barreling, which she has dismissed as not being illegal, is also to be investigated.
Other outlays in recent years have raised eyebrows as well.
A prominent example is how a fund worth up to AU$660 million, meant to alleviate traffic congestion, was allocated primarily to Liberal-National target seats to build car parks near railway stations.
Critics condemned the measure as a "rort" -- Australian slang for fraud -- after the auditor-general found 77% of approved projects were in coalition districts. The auditor-general also reported that before the 2019 election, Prime Minister Scott Morrison's government compiled a list of the 20 most marginal electorates to be targeted by the program. It has subsequently delivered just two of the proposed 47 suburban railway car parks.
Some of the facilities were pledged to areas in the state of Victoria where senior Liberals such as Treasurer Josh Frydenberg and Assistant Treasurer Michael Sukkar faced hard-fought races. Frydenberg earlier this year defended the program, telling local media, "We were responding to the need where there is congestion on our roads because people are taking the driving option as opposed to using the public transport."
When the Australian Senate's Finance and Public Administration Committees held an inquiry into the affair in September, Transparency International Australia made a submission arguing the handling of the car park program was "not appropriate or transparent" and stressing that "the use of public money for political gain is not acceptable and is a recognized form of corruption."
Former Victorian Supreme Court judge David Harper, QC, concurred. "The commuter car parks program certainly appears to be an instance of taxpayers' money being spent not after an assessment of greatest need but rather with a view to advancing the interests of the government," he told local media. "On any appropriate definition of corruption, this is an instance of it; and it should be called out as such."
The Morrison-led coalition won the last election just under three years ago promising, among many things, that it would create a Commonwealth Integrity Commission to root out corruption at the federal level.
But critics say the draft CIC legislation shields MPs, ministers and bureaucrats from investigation and appears to be focused on corruption in law enforcement. "It would hide corruption, not expose it," said Stephen Charles, QC, a former judge of the Victorian Court of Appeal and a director of the Centre for Public Integrity, a think tank. "It falls short of its state counterparts on almost every level. It is a breed of its own and does not deserve to be called a watchdog," he told local media.
Meanwhile, experts see falling public trust in democratic institutions, driven by what appears to be a sense of impunity among politicians.
Simon Longstaff, executive director of The Ethics Centre, Sydney, contrasted what he sees as strict accountability applied to ordinary citizens around compliance with Australia's stringent COVID-19 rules, versus an almost complete lack of accountability for politicians, and particularly senior ones, when it comes to matters of probity.
"Politicians today in Australia are in many senses like the aristocracy of the past," he told Nikkei Asia. "If you're a member of the aristocracy, typically you thought yourself to be above and beyond the normal kind of moral standards that applied to the hoi polloi, and you can very much cast modern politicians in the same way. They behave as if they stand above the concerns and considerations of ordinary people."
While he had harsh words for the political class, he said it was difficult to explain the mindset and the worsening of Australia's "clean" image.
"It's very hard to know exactly why there's been such a precipitous decline in standards, but it has nonetheless occurred, and it's damaging, in general, to the quality of a democracy."