'Rather ten devils to check one another than one mandarin with absolute power.' (The Tiananmen declaration, 2 June 1989)
Ah, but how to tame those devils? Public life is a struggle for power, profile and privilege, yet like Diogenes we seek the honest man who will end all corruption. Today we are given government-begotten institutions vested with 'standing royal commission' powers. That they can't keep the executive, even the police, in check, and that power is toxic to some working in them, should by now be evident.
These commissions put on highly satisfactory shows. WA's Corruption and Crime Commission did a beautiful job on non-public servant/now lobbyist Brian Burke and his business partner in public hearings in 2007, and on the head of that state's Health Department earlier this year.
Victoria's Office of Police Integrity has been holding public inquiries in which some police, who denied making suspect phone calls (or calls to suspects) on the one day, were exposed making such calls in covert telephone taps on the next. Squirming is such sweet satisfaction.
Yet the displays do not necessarily end well. WA's ex-health chief Neal Fong — who supposedly misled his powerful Minister by denying he had had contact with Mr Burke, when in fact he had illegally told Burke about a CCC enquiry affecting him — is not to be prosecuted. This is, according to WA Director of Public Prosecutions Robert Cock, because Fong has suffered enough in being forced to resign his $600,000 position.
Other public servants condemned by the CCC were later cleared of wrongdoing by tribunals or the CCC's Parliamentary Inspector, who was scathing about the quality, bias and adequacy of the CCC investigation. McCusker QC was then scourged by the CCC for 'exceeding' his powers in reinvestigating its investigation — in other words, for making it accountable.
In NSW, a highly public Royal Commission exposed corruption, bribery and extortion over more than two years. It led to an increased role for a Police Integrity Commission as well as the Independent Commission Against Corruption. Yet Senior Inspector Mark Standen (pictured) of the NSW Crime Commission, an organised crime detection agency independent of the police, moulders in strict security charged with massive complicity in a conspiracy to import illegal drugs.
For all those Victorian OPI hearings, there yet remains a dark underbelly of police officers with personal connections with organised crime and shady mates; making