How people respond to ethical dilemmas is determined more by organisational culture than by policy and protocol … Leaders must foster in our institutions, from the top down and at every level, a culture in which decisions are made and advice is given honestly, impartially and in the public interest; in which matters are reported honestly, without embellishment or omission; and in which responsibility is accepted, including for the inevitable mistakes.
National Anti-Corruption Commissioner Paul Brereton, November 15, 2024
There’s a political adage that when a media adviser becomes a media story, it’s time to quit. That goes doubly for leaders of integrity institutions. There is no healthy world in which the head of an integrity institution is a media story: either they are cultivating a profile, or they have screwed up.
The head of what is increasingly regarded as the National Corruption Cover-up Commission, Paul Brereton, has screwed up — several times. Most recently, it was during a speech to the National Public Sector Governance Forum, large chunks of which were devoted to Brereton trying to explain away his failings.
Part of Brereton’s speech was about expectations management. It’s not so much about finding individuals corrupt, he explained: after all, “individual accountability alone cannot bring about systemic change. For this reason, the commission is prioritising corruption prevention and education alongside its investigations.”
Putting aside that there’s nothing as educational to public officials as seeing one of their own locked up for corruption, Brereton’s idea of education is, well, educational: “First, we seek to provide those who might be exposed to potentially corrupting individuals and influences — essentially, decision-makers — with the wherewithal to recognise and resist them. This informs work we are doing to develop and provide guidance on ethical decision-making for public officials.”
So, the NACC is devoting resources to giving ethics lessons to decision-makers, when it is painfully clear corruption problems within the federal government stem not from ignorance of the vast array of ethical advice available from institutions like the Australian Public Service Commission or the Department of Finance, but from politicians’ wilfully self-interested political decisions and public servants’ blatant violations of the Commonwealth procurement rules.
Brereton also persists with what appears to be an extraordinarily narrow view of what the NACC should be investigating. For him, the greater worry than having an overly narrow interpretation of the NACC’s remit appears to be “stigmatising someone as corrupt”. Moreover, corruption is not merely “doing something that the public may dislike or disapprove” — by implication, the view he attributes to his critics.
He also has a tightly defined view of accountability. He singles out the resignation of Kelly Bayer Rosmarin as CEO of Optus in the wake of its massive outage. Repeating remarks he has made previously, he says, “Who is going to benefit from the resignation of Optus’ chief executive? I don’t see that Optus is going to benefit in any operational sense. Reputationally, there’s been a sacrifice to the gods if you like, but that’s about all there is to it.”
So much for fostering a culture in which responsibility is accepted — apparently leaders actually delivering on the idea of taking responsibility is merely a “sacrifice to the gods” — another indication that Brereton sees himself as elevated above the primitives howling for his resignation in the wake of his robodebt failings.
Brereton devotes more than 1,200 words to explaining away his decision to help block an investigation into robodebt despite having what he downplays as a “past professional relationship” with one of the chief perpetrators — a misjudgment that the inspector of the NACC found amounted to officer misconduct by Brereton. Brereton wants to minimise that assessment and imply it was unrealistic given the circumstances.
“I accept that my judgment in this respect has been found to be mistaken through the prism of the law relating to apprehended bias,” he graciously allows. “But the legal lens is not the only one. There was a balance to be struck between my responsibility as a leader for managing the affairs of the commission and issues that would have lasting implications for it on the one hand, and avoiding the perception that my prior professional relationship with one of the referred persons might influence the decision on the other.”
In other words, maybe — maybe — he made a mistake, but he was trying to do the right thing. For a set of decisions described by the inspector as “an error of judgment rather than a matter of mere procedure”, it’s an extraordinary response from the man supposedly setting the culture of one of the crucial “guardrail institutions” of Australian democracy.
Further allegations that have since come to light about Brereton inviting the beneficiaries of the NACC’s decision not to investigate robodebt to help edit the accompanying media statement, if true, demonstrate that Brereton’s lack of judgment is much worse than merely failing to get the balance right.
If Brereton believes leaders should foster cultures where responsibility is taken, he’d have resigned already. The fact one of his few public appearances was partially devoted to trying — unsuccessfully — to downplay and explain away findings against him should tell him that he has failed as a leader of an integrity institution.
Brereton whinged about Quentin Dempster — a bloke who’s done more for public integrity in his life than Brereton can ever hope to achieve — who suggested it was “revolver in the library” time for Brereton. To put it in a way that won’t offend Brereton’s apparently highly refined sensibility, the gods won’t be appeased until he sacrifices himself. Nor will the NACC’s reputation recover.
