Download acting together against corruption

ACTING TOGETHER AGAINST CORRUPTION
Tales From History
- a Transparency International Australia Perspective
Peter Willis Barrister Director, Transparency International Australia*
As you know, just over 2 centuries ago, modern Australia was founded as a jail for
the criminals which the United Kingdom could not accommodate in its own prisons.
The government of Australia's colonial power, at an earlier time, was once described
as:
a government of extravagance, waste, corruption and vice ... Unprecedented sums of
money were squandered ... Titles and government offices were bought and sold.
Through monopolies, tax-farming and the appropriation of public land for private
purposes the entire national economy was fleeced by parasitic rulers and their
cronies.
In its first days Australia was run by a military oligarchy which ran the country in its
own interests. In due course Australia developed a civilian form of politics and
inherited its system of government from the country in which such corruption once
existed.
Notwithstanding such promising beginnings, Australia is now perceived as being one
of the least corrupt countries in the world (see Transparency International's
Corruption Perception Index). How, then, has Australia achieved this position, and
what systems have been created to guard against corruption in government?
This paper rests on a study of Australian history to draw conclusions about how
Australia has sought to build clean government.
There are at least six attributes of Australia's system: the honest elections of honest
politicians; the presence of honest, neutral, and qualified public servants; auditing
and accountability of public receipts and expenditure; independent investigation and
adjudication of complaints against government; free access to information; and
finally, the independent prosecution of crimes and the presence of independent,
unbiased, and honest judges.
These are not the only elements underpinning clean government. The Rule of Law
(respect for the independent and impartial application of the law) and a vigorous and
free press are also vital, as is the capacity of citizens to organise and meet freely in
vigilant, active and questioning social organizations.
Oooooo00000oooooO
TI has found that corruption, and its forms and mannerisms, is not unique to any one
country. The lesson from Australia is that laws and good intentions are not enough;
structural and moral reforms must also be part of the solution. Let us turn to some of
the areas in which we in Australia have learnt that lesson.
HONEST ELECTIONS OF HONEST POLITICIANS
'A Member of Parliament is the watch-dog of the public; and Cerberus must not be
seduced from vigilance by a sop1'
An elected national parliament lies at the heart of any integrity system, based on
democratic accountability. Its task is simply stated: to express the sovereign will of
the people through their chosen representatives, who, on their behalf, hold the
Executive Government accountable on a day-to-day basis.
Watchdog, regulator and representative, the modern parliament is at the centre of the
struggle to attain and sustain good governance and to fight corruption. To be fully
effective in these roles, parliament must be comprised of individuals of integrity. If the
national assembly is seen as a collection of rogues who have bought, bribed, cajoled
and rigged themselves into positions of power, a parliament forfeits whatever respect
it might otherwise have enjoyed, and effectively disables itself from promoting good
governance and minimizing corruption--even if it wants to do so.
Clean elections and clean Parliamentarians do not guarantee honest and clean
government, nor do they eliminate all corruption. They can only reduce its extent,
significance and pervasiveness.
Eighty years ago, in a case on a corrupt politician accused of selling access to
Ministers, an Australian High Court judge wrote:
'Comment has been made on the peculiar fact that there are so very few cases
bearing directly on the bribery of members of Parliament. Unfortunately, it can not be
said that this is testimony to the virtue of members; for according to [history
textbooks], bribery of members was often exercised, and especially by King William
III, out of secret service funds.' Put most simply, bribery of members of the United
Kingdom Parliament was not the aberration of single reign. Out and out corruption
was the main means of securing election to Parliament and of forming Government
and of keeping in Government for over a hundred years [from 1660 - 1790 CE]. For
fifty years longer, election to Parliament remained a haphazard and gerrymandered
affair, culminating in a great battle to create full democratic elections and the Reform
Act of 1832.
The battles to clean up elections and systemic bribery in the United Kingdom underlie
much of Australia's Constitution in which there are special provisions on
misbehaviour and illegality and conflicts of interest by Members of Parliament.
'Ministers and magnates imposed some sort of pattern by 'influencing' the elections
... A member toed the line because of one, or a combination of devices' - the
conferral on the member or a friend or relation (or, at least, the promise of) a range of
perks, contracts, pensions and paid inducements which would make our head spin.
Not only were governments bought, but elections too: Thus Lord North, Prime
Minister could write to King George III accounting for the election of 1782: 'the whole
expense is £103,765/ 15s/ 9d, ... a sum larger, but not very considerably larger than
has been paid on other such occasions of similar nature...'
This was an enormous sum-not spent on official Electoral Commission machinery,
but in paying candidates and the controllers of the seats.
The great saving of the English Parliament throughout the century was that the
managers controlled less than half the votes and despite the corruption, there was a
culture of intellectual independence, a tolerance of dissent and acceptance of the rise
and fall of Parties. The paradox, as expressed by one law reformer, was that buying
a seat in Parliament out of your own resources was 'almost the only mode by which
Parliament was accessible with honour to those who had no family connection' or
local patron. There were thus clean bribes and tainted bribes (with strings attached)!
HOW CHANGE CAME ABOUT
Periodically over a century [from 1729 to 1832], titanic battles were fought, little by
little to overcome these deeply embedded features.
Persistently, the reforms were piecemeal, inconsistent, full of loopholes and fiercely
resisted. They came in bursts after long lulls, not in a continuous stream.
Naturally resistance came from those whose interests were threatened; but it also
arose from those who were concerned at the by-products of the proposed reforms
and from fear of the unknown and from reaction to the flaws and tactics of the
reformers. Further, the pattern often required some overwhelming scandal or crisis to
galvanize opinion or provide the impetus for the final battle, bringing the doubters and
the 'middle' across to the side of the reformers.
The first great wave of systematic reforming legislation [in 1782 to 1785], was
catalyzed by a famous denunciation of patronage by the Executive power and
corruption in the public service and government. This debate was led by two famous
parliamentarians of great ability and bravery. The leading speech was privately
published in pamphlet form and was immediately and widely distributed (there was
no official public record of proceedings in those days), building widespread support
among voters and the non-voting general public alike.
This provided an impetus to break down the century-long procedures and habits. Yet
the battle for 'Economical Reform' took several generations to work its way through
the English political system. Accompanying the campaign was a high profile
prosecution for corruption of a public official by the House of Commons. This was the
impeachment of the Governor-General of Bengal (Warren Hastings), excruciatingly
drawn-out in the Upper Chamber of Parliament between 1788 and 1795. Although
ending in exhausted acquittal, this impeachment too played its part in warning those
who were corrupt that there had been a the change in sentiment and standards.
Irony abounds and reminds us that there is no inexorable law of progress, however
much it all appears a neat process in hindsight: the initial period of reform was
interspersed by an election at which the Prime Minister was assured by the King's
parliamentary agent that a favourable majority would be obtained through bribery of
the voters.
LIFE AFTER REFORM - THE AUSTRALIAN INHERITANCE
Australia inherited these developments when the British Colonies in Australia
achieved self-rule or 'representative government' (elected law-making parliaments
and elected Ministries) from 1851 onwards.
Notwithstanding these great changes, late Colonial and the early twentieth century
provincial politics seemed filled with corruption and dubious transactions. Equally
from contemporary times, there are enough examples of corruption of members of
Parliament and Ministers (nearly always at the provincial level only), to remind us of
the temptations and occasions of power, and the need for vigilance to prevent
corruption. The earliest recorded conviction of an Australian politician for bribery that
I have found after the grant of responsible government in 1851 is in 1875: it involved
an attempt to bribe a NSW MP to vote in favour of a compensation claim for land
damaged by goldminers and cattle. The bribe was £20.
Thereafter, late Colonial and the early post-Federation state politics seems filled with
corruption and dubious transactions.
In Victoria, none was more controversial or brazen than the market gardener's son
turned land-speculator and railway promoter, MP (Speaker and eventually Premier)
Sir Thomas Bent. Although looked upon askance by the respectable opinion of the
day and criticized strongly in the press at the time, he remained generally
untouchable and led a charmed life, blustering and bullying his way out of tight spots
for over 40 years.
In New South Wales, rural rather than metropolitan land and commodities dealings
by and through MPs, influence peddling and bribing Ministers led to a series of Royal
Commissions throughout the first 20 years of the twentieth century. The Minister for
Lands at the turn of the century was found to have accepted half of amounts paid to
land agents by clients for leases which he admitted breached the relevant Land Acts.
The Royal Commission found the Minister had received £27,600 in cash during his 3
years in office; another MP who was a land agent had £20,300 unexplained .The
Minster, the MP and a private agent were all charged with bribery. The jury could not
agree and the Government dropped the charges and allowed the Minister to 'retire'
from Parliament voluntarily. He was disbarred from legal practice and died in
disgrace. The whole affair only came to light when an unhappy client sued in the
Courts for the return of his payments.
Notwithstanding this example, another NSW Parliamentarian was charged, with 2
others (and their clients, unknown), with agreeing to accept and offer 'large sums of
money' to the MP for him to influence the Minister for Lands to inspect and purchase
land. Further scandals erupted in NSW within a few more years, leading to an
independent judicial investigation (Royal Commission) into construction contracts
and other operations of the state Wheat Board. This left a cloud over the Minister for
Agriculture, a personal friend of some of the tenderers under investigation. (There
was then an election-eve attempt to bribe a member of the Opposition, with an offer
of £500 for him to vote to close the Wheat Board enquiry down.)
The recent experience of a leading businessman and media owner in Tasmania,
convicted for attempting to bribe an Opposition MP, so as to allow the retiring
Government to remain in power after the 1989 State election produced a Parliament
potentially controlled by minorities, is a recent and more overtly 'political', but
nonetheless classic, example of the perversion of democracy which bribery of MPs
threatens.
Other convictions of recent times include the NSW Minister for Corrections who took
bribes for the early release of prisoners and the property developer and the
Queensland Minister for Local Government who respectively paid and received 2
bribes of $50,000 each for influencing a local council to facilitate a large building
development.
It is not my desire to provide a catalogue of single instances of when corruption
survived or broke out of its containment. But the list shows that the temptation of
corruption is everpresent.
Accordingly, in the 1980s, 2 Australian provinces (states - New South Wales and
Queensland) have created standing, Independent Commissions Against Corruption.
Modelled on those in Hong Kong and Singapore, these institutions have been very
active in education and enforcement by investigation. They have police and judicial
powers, to force witnesses to testify and are fiercely and operationally independent of
Government. They investigate the highest and the lowest in Government whenever
there is a suggestion of wrong-doing.
Indeed the test of the effectiveness of a corruption eradication commission is whether
it is free to treat the government and opposition alike. No one has a monopoly on
virtue and all must be equal before the law and subject to the reach of such a
Commission.
The Australian Commissions have been very successful.
Honest, neutral and qualified public servants 'The corruption of public servants is a
great evil, capable over time of undermining community values and stability'2
INTRODUCTION
Parliaments and Ministers make laws, but they do not administer them. So
'Government' naturally and essentially encompasses those who administer the laws:
the Public Service. The origins of the mechanisms which in Australia are designed to
ensure a corruption-free Public Service are as tortured as those which aim to ensure
corruption-free Parliamentarians.
As we have already seen, eighteenth century English Government was based on an
elaborate web of what the polite call 'patronage', but which we can call corruption.
At that time, the Secretaries and Under-secretaries of State, the senior government
servants of the day like so many other characters in constitutional history, were at
some stage in the metamorphosis from personal servant to state official. It was only
the gradual removal of the Crown from daily political battle which led in equal
measure to the removal of the body of the public service from partisan politics. Thus
a step towards the 'neutrality' of the public service which we take as a bulwark of our
version of democracy.
Two barriers to the creation of our modern public service remained. They are telling.
First, in the eighteenth century, 'it was well accepted that an office constituted a form
of property, particularly the longer and more secure the tenure and the more
pronounced the rights and pecuniary benefits attached to it.
Moreover, the recruitment of the public service remained locked in the patronage
system. In summary, said the prime designer of the modern meritocratic public
service in the UK, the public service was staffed with 'sickly youths whose parents
and friends ... endeavour to obtain for them employment in the service of the
Government ... where they may obtain an honourable livelihood [that is, a good
salary] with little labour and no risk ...'
With the support of one leading reforming Minister, a group of officials, zealots at the
heart of Whitehall, waged a 15-year campaign to change the whole Civil Service.
Eventually Parliament commissioned a Report, which established the prime features
of the 'Westminster' model of the public service or civil service: entrance based on
merit (competitive examinations) rather than patronage and connection, and a series
of rules and expectations, to create and govern a body of advisers with 'sufficient
independence, character, ability and experience to be able to advise, assist, and to
some extent influence, those who are from time to time set over them'.
As the foremost modern Whitehall-watcher puts it: 'Once achieved, the principle of
the great reform - that recruitment to the Civil Service should be determined by merit
and not by connection - acquired the status of a self-evident truth. Yet it did not
appear that way to substantial sections of Victorian society, from the Queen down,
and it was long in the making, careful in the planning and hard-fought in the
implementation'.
If there were any lesson for us to bear in mind as we struggle to put in place anticorruption reforms and institutions, this passage, and the 15 years of work it
summarises, contains the most important.
It reminds us that what is commonplace and unquestioned for us today has been
controversial and a close-run thing in times past. Some reform campaigns fail ever to
get off the ground, while others attract leaders and writers of genius; others fail at
later stages, for lack of follow - through.
I urge all friends of reform to have courage - even if reform is long in the making, if
you are careful in the planning and fight hard in the implementation you will triumph.
THE CRIMINAL LAW
As well cultural institutions, there is also the criminal law. In Australia, legal historians
can trace the origins in English law of the offence of misconduct in public office back
800 years. However, this makes laws against official corruption sound stronger and
more developed than it was.
The systematic application of the offence of misconduct in public office and its
development were cemented in a period stretching from the early years of the 1700s
and through to the middle of last century. They can be traced back to early medieval
times, with little real impact on public morality as a whole. This is because,
historically, the laws against bribery and corruption in large part were designed to
prevent and punish individual misbehaviour - embezzlement in the personal interest
of the embezzler, dereliction of duty of a kind out of the ordinary for the standards of
the day (recognizing that those standards were not those of today at all). No lasting
attempt was made to reform institutional behaviour or social standards.
And of course, even with the best laws, individual cases of corruption remain, with
terrible results. In 1994 a civil servant at Britain's Ministry of Defence, was imprisoned
for four years for taking at least US$2.25 million in bribes. But in an analysis carried
out for TI-UK, he is said to have caused up to US$200 million in financial damage.
This included the cost of job losses at the factory in Britain which failed to gain the
orders (they went abroad), loss of profit s leading to lower values for privatisation
exercises, the loss of highly-developed skills, the higher pr ice paid than was
necessary, and the purchase in at least one instance of a fuse which was useless as
it was 'ineffective in practice and battle conditions'3.
More generically and systematically, recall that Transparency International has found
that corruption is most commonly found in the following areas of the civil service:
•
•
•
•
•
public procurement;
revenue collection;
government appointments;
rezoning of land; and
local government.
In the view of Transparency International, the responsibility for maintaining standards
and minimizing corruption within the public service falls fairly and squarely on the
public administrator.
Against all of this, the criminal law is a necessary weapon. But it can be blunted very
easily. The President of the Court of Appeal in New South Wales has argued the
criminal is attended with difficulties of proof and the political difficulty of forcing an
institution (be it government or police force or whatever) to act against itself if
something more than isolated malefaction is involved4.
Moreover, TI suggests the criminal law is too blunt an instrument to be the only way
to deal with corruption in the public service for three further reasons - because:
•
•
•
it is concerned only with minimum standards;
it emphasizes enforcement rather than prevention; and,
the burden of proof is on the government (in corruption cases usually only the
officials involved know the facts).
If properly conceived, regulations governing corruption in the public service must
focus on conflicts of interest and be directed towards erecting a system designed to
protect the public decision-making process. Rather than detecting and punishing the
wrongdoer after the fact, such a system reduces the risk of corruption occurring in
the first place. For the system to be effective, responsibility for avoiding corruption
should not be a centralized task within one only area of the public administration, but
a task which is an overall management function at all levels and in all departments
within the public service.
ENSURING FINANCIAL AND DECISION-MAKING ACCOUNTABILITY
The public scrutiny and accountability of public officials is also vitally important.
Institutionalized checks and balances and other meaningful accountability
mechanisms reduce secrecy, monopoly and discretion.
Public officials must be held accountable to the public and to the legislature for their
performance and stewardship of public funds and assets.
The currency of financial accountability is information, but Ministers and officials are
unlikely to always agree with members of the legislature or interested citizens as to
the quantity and quality of information that should be provided. As such, the Office of
the Auditor-General stands at the pinnacle of the financial accountability pyramid.
Money being the root of all evil, the Auditor-General is a fundamental part of the
protection of the public purse.
Equally critical are Freedom of Information, the office of the Ombudsman,
Whistleblowers protection and independent prosecutions before honest, impartial and
qualified Courts.
All of these are worthless unless the press and media are free to report such matters
and citizens are free to meet, to discuss, to organise and to campaign for an honest,
just and corruption-free society.
SOME CONCLUSIONS
From this survey, I propose some interim conclusions about Australia:
•
•
•
•
•
•
that while we have come a long way, it took a long time for our system of
government and parliament to become relatively free and clean;
while we now claim to have removed endemic corruption - corruption which is
built in to the very system or culture of public life - corruption has not gone
away;
the presence of corruption in our own polity is an everpresent threat; vigilance
and persistence are required to combat it;
that it can take a long time for suspected or rumoured corruption to be officially
investigated;
it can be even harder to prove corruption to the standard of the criminal law.
The President of the New South Wales Court of Appeal has argued that the
elements of the general criminal law protections against misuse of official
power are too difficult to prove;
Enormous damage can be done in the meantime and cultures can be
corrupted, so that the ritualistic cleansing, by a high profile prosecution to
remove a single 'bad apple', is not enough.
The would-be reformer of corruption can be at a loss as to where to begin. History is
littered with postures at reform--with grandiose promises and the conspicuous
inability to deliver. In some cases, the intentions are genuine: newly-elected leaders
arrive determined to clean out the stables, but are quickly overwhelmed by the size of
the problem facing them. Others simply posture, making speeches, signing laws--all
in the absence of any expectation that meaningful change will follow. Time and
again, optimistic electorates have returned governments pledged to confront
corruption firmly and effectively. Governments have fallen over their inability to
counter the phenomenon; others have been elected in the hope that they can do
better. Yet, very few can point to enduring progress.
Reform must also face a host of vested interests: those who have been bending the
rules - whether to supplement meagre incomes or to pad well-filled foreign bank
accounts - are potentially at risk in this process. Many are in positions in which they
can derail reforms; some are so powerful, or so determined, that they may resort to
violence. The potential dangers to reformers in such countries are real. The changes
inherent in a comprehensive and effective overhaul of a country's integrity system
may be considerable, and call for special political and managerial skills.
To attempt a wholesale purge of the past is often to invite obstruction at best. It is
important to define the most promising areas for reform, and focus on them. A
second rule is that the emphasis should be as consumer-friendly as the
circumstances allow to make the process less threatening. There will be those who,
realizing that the rules have changed, will go along with reforms that prevent future
corruption. Creating the Foundation: An Environment of Integrity in Public Life An
independent judicial investigation (Royal Commission) into questionable dealings
between the provincial government and business in Western Australia in 1992
compellingly described as "architectural principles" for Australian government5 a set
of principles for leaders and civil servants (see also the Nolan Commission (U.K.
19956)). The two principles are popular participation in and popular election of
government and the trust principle - the idea that all institutions, officials and
agencies of government exist for the public, to serve the interests of the public.
All government must be constructed with three goals in mind:
•
•
•
Government must be conducted openly
Public officials and agencies must be accountable for their actions
There must be integrity both in the processes of government and in the
conduct expected of officials.
The establishment and maintenance of integrity in public life and public service
requires a number of elements, including: legislation, regulations and codes of
conduct; a society whose religious, political and social values expect honesty from
politicians and officials; professionalism among officials; a sense of elitism among
senior civil servants; and, a political leadership which takes both public and private
morality seriously.
Together, these elements establish and foster a tradition of ethical public life and an
ethical environment in which politicians and officials are generally assumed to be
honest. Within such an environment it is also assumed that the laws and means of
detection and investigation are sufficient to make it risky and costly to break the
rules, accept bribes and become involved in fraud.
GUARDING THE GUARDIANS--PERPETUAL VIGILANCE AND AN ANTICORRUPTION COMMISSION
The example set by leaders and high-ranking public officials is crucial to the
achievement and maintenance of an effective national integrity system. But who will
guard the guardians? One element is a properly funded, independent corruption
eradication commission with effective powers. Such a commission offers hope and
encouragement to honest parliamentarians, Ministers and officials, so that those
persons can grow stronger in support of honest government for the benefit of the
nation and the people. In this way a self-sustaining circle of integrity can be built.
However, a self-sustaining circle can be constructed based on integrity or on deceit.
Every post-holder is potentially at risk - be it the head of government, a judge, an
auditor or a junior official - although some are obviously more vulnerable than others,
based on the value of the decisions they make and the processes they control. The
challenge is to construct a transparent and accountable system, which has two
primary objectives: the first is to prevent fraud from taking place, and the second to
make the principal players believe that there is a realistic chance of fraud being
detected.
Monitoring corruption cannot be left only to public prosecutors and to the forces of
law and order. Action cannot depend solely on detection and criminal prosecution.
Rather, action must include a combination of interlocking arrangements. In part, this
approach includes improving the transparency of relationships, and to the extent
possible, preventing the development relationships which can lead to corruption. It
includes transparency in the financial affairs of key players and the prospect of
reviews being conducted by independent institutions which are likely to be outside
any particular corruption network.
Although corruption can never be completely monitored, it can be controlled through
a combination of ethical codes, decisive legal prosecutions against offenders,
organizational change, and institutional reform.
INVOLVING CIVIL SOCIETY
There is one last element. Where genuine attempts to combat corruption have been
unsuccessful, there has generally been one missing ingredient--the involvement of
civil society. The Times of India has observed that: 'People's acceptance of
corruption as a fact of life and their general despondency need to be tackled first.'7
Many people in civil society have a fundamental interest in an effective integrity
system, including the private sector, religious leaders, the press, the professions and,
above all, the ordinary citizen who bears the brunt of corruption on a daily basis.
That civil society is crucial in any successful anti-corruption strategy is clear. Some of
the solutions lie within civil society itself--for example, the need to reverse public
apathy or tolerance of corruption. But civil society is also part of the problem. The
notion that state activities can take place in a vacuum simply does not stand up. It is
often the general public that is paying the bribes. The point of interface between the
private and the public sectors is also often the point at which grand corruption
flourishes and the largest bribes are paid.
Thus, any attempt to develop an anti-corruption strategy that fails to involve civil
society is neglecting one of the most potentially useful and powerful tools available.
Of course, in many countries where corruption is rife, civil society is weak, apathetic
or only in the early stages of mobilization and organization. These are not reasons to
neglect its role, however, as the very involvement of an emerging civil society can, of
itself, provide strength and stimulus for further development of an anti-corruption
strategy.
0oooooooo000oooooooo0
The task of achieving sustainable anti-corruption reforms will be a long and arduous
one. That the stakes are high is beyond dispute. Yet just how much time we have to
make a significant impact on the phenomenon is uncertain.
On the one hand, it could be that the people in the most corrupt countries lose heart,
lose faith in democratic practices and turn to authoritarianism, seemingly as a logical
reaction to democracy's failure. There is, of course, no reason to suppose that a
further round of autocracy will be any less disastrous than it has been in the past. On
the other hand, too, the international community may start to dilute their commitment
to the cause. Other issues may attract their attention and may seem to offer more
immediate responses to their interventions.
But one thing is clear. If we all--governments, civil society, the private sector and
international organizations--do not grasp the opportunities we now have to confront
corruption effectively, then the chances will pass. Corruption will steadily and
inexorably undermine the new democracies and will continue to impact negatively on
human rights, the environment and all aspects of globalisation.
We are gathered here today to mark an important new institution in one country's
battle against an evil which afflicts all countries, mine as much as anyone's. Our
concern is with the insidious and deleterious affects of corruption, which distract,
destroy and divert economic, social and moral development, not only in the society of
the receivers, but in the society of the payers.
The stakes, surely, could not be higher than they now are.
We wish the Corruption Eradication Commission of Indonesia great success.
© Peter Willis, 2001.
Endnotes
* Transparency International Australia is the affiliated National Chapter of
Transparency International. Statements attributed to Transparency International as
being its views in this paper are drawn from TI Source Book 2000 - Confronting
Corruption: the Elements of a National Integrity System , Pope, J. (ed) 4th ed 2000,
Berlin, Transparency International, available at www.transparency.org. Otherwise,
the views expressed are those of the author.
1 High Court of Australia [Justice Higgins] in The King v Boston (1923) 33 CLR 386,
410.
2 Federal Court of Australia [Justices Gallop, Wilcox and Burchett] in Dau v
Emanuele (1995) 60 FCR 270 at 288.
3 'MoD arms chief's greed cost £130 m,' The Observer (UK), 16 October 1994.
4 Justice Mahoney. 1996, 'The Criminal Liability of Public Officers for the Exercise of
Public Power', The Judicial Review, vol. 3, p. 25.
5 Royal Commission into Commercial Activities of Government and Other Matters
Part II 1992, para 1.2.5 - 8.
6 The Nolan Commission (U.K. 1995) suggested that there are seven relevant
principles applying to all aspects of public life: 1.Selflessness: Holders of public office
should take decisions solely in terms of the public interest. They should not do so in
order to gain financial or other material benefits for themselves, their family, or their
friends; 2. Integrity: Holders of public office should not place themselves under any
financial or other obligation to outside individuals or organizations that might
influence them in the performance of their official duties; 3. Objectivity: In carrying out
public business, including making public appointments, awarding contracts, or
recommending individuals for rewards and benefits, holders of public office should
make choices on merit; 4. Accountability: Holders of public office are accountable for
their decisions and actions to the public and must submit themselves to whatever
scrutiny is appropriate to their office; 5. Openness: Holders of public office should be
as open as possible about all the decisions and actions that they take. They should
give reasons for their decisions and restrict information only when the wider public
interest clearly demands; 6. Honesty: Holders of public office have a duty to declare
any private interests relating to their public duties and to take steps to resolve any
conflicts arising in a way that protects the public interest; 7. Leadership: Holders of
public office should promote and support these principles by leadership and example.
7 Editorial of 10 May 1964, p.6, quoted in Bayley D., ' The Effects of Corruption in a
Developing Nation,' The Western Political Quarterly p. 723.