The National Anti-Corruption Commission has recently issued its first substantial, if highly redacted report clearing a former Department of Home Affairs officer of any suspicion of corruption over a million dollars or more of payments from her son, himself a former home affairs officer who had obtained, without an open tender a contract to provide garrison services on Manus Island worth about $600 million. Nothing sus, says the NACC. The payments, the NACC has found, were to help her, and her boyfriend, another senior Home Affairs officer, with the purchase of a small flat and later a big one.

Most of the relevant investigation took place before the NACC was formally established. Before then potentially corrupt conduct by public servants in home affairs was investigated by the Commission for Law Enforcement Integrity. The NACC took over its role and functions, with a much-enhanced jurisdiction in the middle of last year. The NACC did some further process work and submitted the report under Commissioner Paul Breretons name. The report itself may not be a FAQ sample of the NACC style. Except that we otherwise have, so far, little insight into what that style is, what investigative methods it uses, and what confidence should be reposed in its findings.

We know now that the NACC has the same liking for secrecy as the PSC.

What we do see gives very little room for optimism about the commissions work. Or about how Brereton and his fellow commissioners see their obligation to transparency and the public interest. Or whether we should persist with the secrecy model the government adopted (and which the NACC seems to have embraced with relish).

This builds on the doubts about the commissions comprehensive mismanagement of its first important reference, in refusing to investigate matters referred to it by the royal commissioner into the Robodebt fiasco. It did not even seem that the commission even read the reference properly, since it seemed to think that the royal commissioner had simply sent over a copy of already published findings, which the NACC saw no need to duplicate. In fact, as even a cursory look would have revealed she had forwarded a secret chapter containing extra material (some out of her remit) which suggested potential corruption by a score or more of named people, including a minister. None of that material had been in her published report.

The Robodebt royal commissioner, Justice Catherine Holmes was implicitly suggesting criminal charges, not secretive and entirely unaccountable disciplinary proceedings by the Public Service Commission under commissioner Gordon de Brouwer.

To prove its complete independence from anything or anyone, especially the royal commission, the PSCs own secret and unaccountable investigations exonerated some of those accused of corruption offences. But without public reasons or explanations, or reference to which individuals were involved. We do not know who, how, why, or with what fresh evidence showed Justice Holmes to be wrong. No doubt the Star Chamber contained decent women and men of integrity. But justice of the sort required can be done only in the open.

We do not know how new evidence came to be preferred to material on the royal commission record. Commissioner Holmes, that is to say, is another condemned without trial, like the hundreds of thousands of Robodebt victims. No one could be confident that the PSC judges were disinterested as witnessed by the strenuous efforts to put a shroud over everything. The commissioners explanations for compulsive secrecy already tell us enough about his judgment and priorities.

Commissions more obsessed with secrecy than accountability

The PSC Star Chamber named and verbally condemned two departmental secretaries, each now out of the PSC jurisdiction, and thus going without penalty of any sort. It found a very few slightly more junior senior officers guilty of breaches of the code of conduct. Others had now exited the public service and again escape scot-free. None, still in or out of the service were named, lest they be disadvantaged in their new jobs, if any. De Brouwer, moreover, feared that naming them might prevent their perfect rehabilitation into decent society. And he had a touching concern for their privacy that the accused had not shown to the victims of their illegal and cruel Robodebt scheme.

Effectively no public servant, or minister, has been punished for anything she or he did. The PSC has swept it all under the carpet, arguing unconvincingly that it is all behind us now, and couldnt happen again.

The PSC has form in putting the interests and reputation of the public service ahead of transparency, accountability and the public interest. Despite the pretences of the PSC, there is no legislative restriction at all on publishing the information if, in the opinion of the commissioner, it is in the publics interest to know. The decision that it was not in the public interest was a value choice by de Brouwer, in which he preferred the miscreants interests to the right of the public to know how the law had been twisted, billions in taxpayer funds were wasted and people were hurt and in some cases driven to suicide by an illegal scheme. If what has been described as the worst scandal of public malfeasance and misgovernment since 1901 does not invoke any public right to know, nothing ever will, at least while the present public service commissioner is in charge. There is a public interest in having a good public service, but this is not an outcome likely to be achieved when it is free from accountability.

It is not the first time de Brouwer has put the privacy of public servants ahead of ordinary accountability. He has refused to publish anything in the way of detail of the alleged misconduct of Mike Pezzullo, erstwhile secretary of Home Affairs, until he was sacked. There is some very scant detail of his alleged misbehaviour, such as of using his power to secure an advantage for himself, failing to maintain confidentiality with sensitive government information and failing to disclose a conflict of interest.

Pezzullo strives for resurrection. And vindication?

But most of what the public knows comes not from any information disclosed by the prime minister or the PSC but from disclosures made by investigative journalists from the old Fairfax newspapers, including details of hundreds of emails by which Pezzullo was trying to develop backdoor access to the prime minister.

Words used in their reports emphasised that the emails had been gathered lawfully (which is to say, presumably by a warrant issued by a judge) before being handed over to the journalists.

In recent times, Pezzullo has been interested in some further career as an expert consultant on catastrophic but unlikely defence scenarios, advancing US interests, and columnising for The Australian. Questioned about his interest in again seeking the public stage, he has dismissed any suggestion that his misconduct was serious. Or important. The Murdoch papers are interested in promoting him in part because this former Labor staffer can now be relied upon to damn the sincerity of Labors commitment to the American alliance, and understanding of the seriousness of the threat from China, refugees, bogeymen etc. No one contradicts his self-serving dismissal of the seriousness of his sins. Certainly not the PSC or the head of public service, Dr Glyn Davis of PM&C. Meanwhile the defence department, in line with its self-appointed task of finding refuge for disgraced public servants, signs the expense chits of public servants who attend his lectures.

When, recently, Pezzullo was stripped of his Order of Australia over his alleged misconduct, he was allowed to pretend that it did not matter a hill of beans to him. This was compared with what was on offer to the public if only he was allowed to continue preaching doom, gloom and the need to prepare for imminent war. Perhaps he is regarded as already rehabilitated or released from the sin bin. The public is not to be allowed to know whether he has suffered enough, let alone what he is suffering for and whether his brief exile is enough. My bet is that anyone whos followed the matter will not think so at all.

Of course, we cannot be sure that justice will be done or done in the open anyway. Or that any outcome is imminent. The public may not be allowed to know. The NACC (and Breretons war crimes investigation) seem devoted to leisurely investigation.

Is it time to scrap the NACC and start again?

Im beginning to think that we would be better off scrapping the current NACC and starting again.

I wouldnt be asking the Attorney-General or his department to be selecting new commissioners either. Neither seem dedicated to getting the best possible outcomes. Nor the quickest, or most defensible.

But then again, I wouldnt be looking for advice from the public service commissioner or the head of PM&C either.

For more on this topic, P&I recommends:

https://publish.pearlsandirritations.com/the-bell-has-tolled-for-pezzullos-gong/