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The Australian soldiers who murdered 39 Afghans in cold blood.
The politicians and senior bureaucrats who misled cabinet on the legality of robodebt, a scheme that would immiserate tens of thousands and lead to the suicides of at least three people, according to a subsequent royal commission.
The politicians responsible for 40% of women working in Parliament House reporting sexual harassment or sexual assault.
The political staffer who raped a woman in a minister’s office and the politicians and staff who tried to cover it up.
The tax consultants who breached confidence to plan tax dodging.
The bureaucrats who bought a parcel of land from a political donor for ten times its value.
The ministers who rorted grants programs to hand out money to targeted seats and the senior bureaucrats who tried to cover it up or waved it through.
The bureaucrat who solicited gifts from a Defence contractor, then took a job with the same firm.
What do these soldiers, politicians, public servants, political staffers and contractors all have in common? They all got away with it.
Murder. Driving people to suicide. Rape and sexual predation. Rorting taxpayers. Misconduct. With no-one punished, or bureaucratic investigations that have taken so long the chances of successful prosecution are zero, or a supposed anti-corruption body waving the matter away.
Australia has a serious problem of people in federal public office — which includes public servants, the ADF, and people engaged by governments as consultants, political staffers and politicians — abusing that office and taking advantage of the power that such office affords them to benefit themselves, or their party, or mates. From rorting taxpayer money all the way up to murder and war crimes, no-one is ever being held to account.
So far only one soldier has been prosecuted for war crimes perpetrated by Australian soldiers. The body charged with prosecuting war crimes has moved at a snail’s pace and admits time is running out.
The failure to convict rapist Bruce Lehrmann is well known.
The PwC partner at the centre of that firm’s shocking abuse of confidential tax information to plan tax avoidance schemes, Peter John Collins, received nothing more than an ASIC ban on providing financial services — for eight years (he wasn’t even investigated by his own industry body).
The alleged National Anti-Corruption Commission, remarkably, refused to investigate the case of a Defence official who solicited a gift from Thales (before going to join the company) while working a contract with the firm, instead leaving it to the Defence Department to “investigate” — predictably, it found no problem.
Then there’s robodebt, described by royal commissioner Catherine Holmes as an example of “venality, incompetence and cowardice”, in which Scott Morrison was found to have allowed cabinet to be misled (as well as trying to mislead the commission), senior bureaucrat Kathryn Campbell was found to have done nothing despite knowing the scheme was illegal, and Alan Tudge was found to have abused his office by using social security recipients’ personal information in the media. Holmes concluded that “elements of the tort of misfeasance in public office appear to exist”, contradicting the earlier conclusion of the judge that originally found the scheme was illegal, and setting the stage for robodebt victims to sue for damages.
Despite that, to this point no-one has been prosecuted over robodebt. The National Anti-Corruption Commission refused to investigate robodebt despite the scandal clearly being within its remit. The efforts of the Australian Public Service Commission to investigate those bureaucrats complicit in the scandal who are still in the APS occurred in near-total secrecy; the rest have faced no sanction — yet — for their misconduct. The status of any prosecutions is lost in the black box that is the Australian Federal Police-Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions (CDPP) process.
Nor is this failure to charge a recent development. In response to what appeared to have been an open-and-shut case of the doctoring of documents by someone within the office of then-federal minister Angus Taylor, the Australian Federal Police conducted a brief, ham-fisted non-investigation before announcing there was nothing to the matter.
In relation to an even more blatant case of a political staffer in then-minister Michaelia Cash’s office leaking confidential information, the AFP actually conducted an investigation — one with which the AFP said Cash refused to cooperate — only for the CDPP to decide not to charge anyone (curiously, the CDPP had no problem pursuing politically motivated charges against Bernard Collaery and Witness K instigated by the Liberal Party when in government).
The repeated examples of public officials, from ministers down to junior public servants and ADF personnel, abusing their power and position without consequence sends a strong signal to those politicians, bureaucrats and soldiers who come after them: it is almost impossible to suffer consequences, beyond perhaps some mild embarrassment if such abuse comes to public attention, for even the most egregious and appalling misconduct. If murder, rape, sexual predation and driving innocent people to suicide won’t be pursued, what are the chances more everyday offences like rorting taxpayer funding and leaking will be?
It also sends a signal to the electorate: the system of public administration does not operate in favour of the public, but in favour of whoever can exploit their position most effectively. Genuine accountability is a lie commonly agreed upon by all in power.
Tomorrow: Abuse of office, the crime that dares not speak its name.
Did we miss anything? What’s the most egregious abuse of Australian public office you can recall? Let us know your thoughts by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.