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She was a socialite, a friend of ministers and politicians, of people at the big end of town, and was on all of the free lists, seen everywhere. She was a travel agent, with many government contracts, including ones arranging transport for remote patients for medical treatment. She was the mistress of the police commissioner and, at some recent time or another, an "intimate friend" of another one. At police invitation, she was the local chairwoman of Crimestoppers. And she was a crook who was rorting the system. Who gave thousands of dollars to the chief minder of a minister to get the travel business of that minister's office and her department. Who has massively overcharged agencies for travel which did happen and, it seems, claimed for travel which did not. When the music stopped, the official in charge of investigating such disclosures had to recuse herself because the travel agent was a good friend. A professional investigator from another jurisdiction was required. The report found that some of her intimate friends in the police force had tried to frustrate the fraud investigation. The commissioner resigned, the other officer was demoted. After a report by another police force, the police commissioner was charged with trying to pervert the course of justice. He is entitled to a presumption of innocence. But we can assume the travel agent's guilt, because she is now serving time in jail on multiple counts of fraud and corruption. We are not allowed to see the independent investigator's report, because the jurisdiction has a quaint rule of keeping such reports "private" if recommendations are followed. A report from the ombudsman, putting nothing on the record that was not already known, says the government did follow the recommendations. It was a not untypical case of maladministration in the Northern Territory. Its government will probably change this weekend, not least over matters like this. It shows a Darwin in which all of the big shots, whether in politics, bureaucracy, police, the law, or big and small business know each other very well. Personally, professionally and socially. In a world flush with other people's cash, most of it coming via Canberra from taxpayers all over Australia. An environment where the disposition of that cash, particularly for services to indigenous communities, is mediated with minimal accountability through hundreds of small white businesses. A world in which governments can dispense licences, appointments, membership of boards and statutory authorities, and offer, if another set of allegations are any guide, politicians "a blank chequebook" if they will "get on-board" with the action. The Country Liberal Party government, whether under the leadership of Terry Mills or Adam Giles, who ambushed Mills while he was abroad, has been in office for only a term. But it is badly on the nose, even by the NT's low standards. The alternative, a Labor team under Michael Gunner, has, at this stage, a great appetite for cleaning the whole mess up. The NT being what it is, many of the people saluting the incoming administration as mates on Monday will have scarcely washed the clothes in which they sat down this last week with their CLP friends. The NT is like that. Minor philosophical and ideological differences between the two major parties are but minor compared with an overweening pragmatism, cynicism, and a common enterprise of plundering both taxpayers, and indigenous territorians, of the rivers of gold coming from Canberra. Enormous sums notionally spent in remote settlements never leave Darwin or Alice Springs. It is likewise with the direct Commonwealth spend. The problem of NT government is not primarily one of how to deliver effective solutions for disadvantaged Aboriginal communities. The NT may have black problems, but the dysfunction of NT government (and arguably of Commonwealth government inside the NT) is primarily a white problem. It won't change much this weekend. The former NT chief justice, Brian Martin, presided over an important murder trial in Western Australia, when the incestuous nature of its legal establishment made local jurisprudence seem undesirable. As an outsider, he also conducted the inquiry that recommended the quashing of David Eastman's murder conviction in Canberra. But on NT affairs, he, too, has been an insider. He was, for a few days, the would-be royal commissioner into allegations of abuse in the juvenile corrections system in the NT. But then he bowed to objections (with which he disagreed) that his past role in the territory's justice system made him unsuitable. Few noted that, only just before this, he had handed down a report on the form a NT anti-corruption commission might take. The NT Assembly had done one of its periodic revolts against the minority CLP government to decide in principle that there ought to be such a body; he was advising how to do it. John Lawrence, SC, a former Crown prosecutor now at the NT bar, said that "in my opinion the need for an anti-corruption commission is obvious and urgent". "I bear witness to an NT legal system which, when I joined, was smaller and effectively self-controlled. Over the last 20 years, I have witnessed in many, if not all aspects of the legal profession a decline in standards and quality as to the service provided to the public by the legal profession as well as the quality of the entire legal system. This stretches from the quality of law graduates entering the profession to the standard of jurisprudence being produced by the judiciary. This decline in standards is not unique to the legal system and has occurred in other government departments and institutions, including the NT Police Force. "In more recent times, standards of public life have descended to mediocrity, all of which is relevant and causative for the need now for the establishment of an anti-corruption commission. In my opinion, mateship and mediocrity are the bedfellows of corruption. The NT has become a fertile place for corrupt conduct assisted by these two features." We must all be thankful, no doubt, that no one, at least no one with things to hope or fear from any of the arms of ACT government, would dare say this of organs of the ACT. But I am happy to. Of course, most in a position to make comparison are, by definition, over the age of 40 – people not on the wave Chief Minister Andrew Barr is surfing. Many in the Darwin maelstrom, particularly in politics, government, the law and big business, were not enthusiastic about such an anti-corruption body. Barr, who thinks that such a commission would be entirely unnecessary here in the ACT, because it would have no work to do, would be familiar with all the arguments. It would be expensive. It would be otiose, because the ACT is a model of transparency, of efficiency, of accountability, effectiveness, of good stewardship and of rigid adherence to the public interest. It would also be an irritant, an extra unnecessary cog in the system. It could cause baseless allegations to be made that damage the reputations of the actually great and good. And, anyway, the ACT is already replete with watchdogs, minders of the public interest, people to whom one can complain and appeal, or busybodies and narks ready to make a fuss if they disagree with anything. Oddly, the Labor man who is likely to be the NT's chief minister next week, disagrees with such propositions, at least for the NT. Gunner has committed NT Labor to an ICAC. Of course one might expect this from a person coming straight from opposition. After all, a major part of his crusade for government has come from a rich catalogue of CLP misfeasance, maladministration and apparent outright corruption. Perhaps, like Nick Greiner in NSW, he will come to feel differently after it has bitten him. (The ACT Liberals are far more sensible, willing to repeat any innuendo of risk to the public interest, but as ready as Labor to deny it is even possible.) Submissions to the Martin inquiry serve as a useful (and privileged) refresher on some of the regular scandals over all parts of NT administration (though we are mostly spared the all-too-frequent accounts of sexual misdemeanours and indiscretions). Many harp on the problems of a society in which everyone knows everyone else, where conflict of interest is common, and where people with whom one is dealing, or socialising, are at one moment neighbours, then political party colleagues, next moment lobbyists for themselves or others, next moment holders of statutory appointments and a part of the administration. Or judicial officers who have forgotten to resign their party positions. It's the humidity, I think. Hardly anyone thinks that this incestuous nature must be accepted as simply unavoidable. If you do, you are saying that the people of the NT (or the ACT) deserve lower standards of probity, integrity and accountability than citizens elsewhere in Australia. There was a want of enthusiasm for a new body, let alone a paramount one, from existing watchdog agencies. It could be that they are too much part of the system they are supposed to police. It could not have been because any was doing a good job. It could be that here in Canberra, the brisk dry air banishes any tendency to venality or greed. Though a supposed expert on public administration was insisting this week that appetite for money was the only, or best, incentive for good performance by public servants. But one can be sure that what is currently protecting us from shonks, crooks and shysters is not the fear of getting caught. The Australian Federal Police, in particular, does not even have a unit focused on serious corruption, local or federal. It has failed to develop the structures, the expertise or the professional relationships to mount investigations of a sophistication common in Britain or the United States. Political risk-aversion at senior levels has seen the AFP fail to deliver on matters such as the wheat-for-oil scandal, and to manifest excessive zeal on investigations it believes will win it brownie points with government. The AFP shows signs of a want of professional detachment from politicians on both sides. It does no proactive work against government corruption, as bodies such as the FBI do. All of the states have an ICAC-style body, if only to frighten those who might be tempted. The fear of getting caught is the great deterrence for white-collar crime. From next week, the ACT may be the odd man out. The expense of such a prophylactic is whatever one wants. Queensland's has 337 staff and costs $55 million a year. NSW's, by contrast, has 122 staff and costs $22 million. South Australia's costs $8 million, and Martin has recommended it could take on NT work to provide some distance from the mates, the incest, the humidity and the beer. Tasmania, with a bigger population than the ACT, has one costing $2.5 million a year. That's about a third of the money the ACT government seems to have given, accidentally, to a developer instead of the Brumbies. Less than the sum an ACT agency, supposedly of its own motion, is accused of overpaying the same developer for a block of land near the casino. We must hope Canberrans are to have a complete accounting of both before the election. But a welter of Supreme Court suppression orders on one matter and the reflexive secrecy and limited terms of reference of the McPhee inquiry give little grounds for confidence in Barr's willingness to be called to account. As ever, it seems, we must take Labor, or the Liberals, on a faith and trust they have not earned. Jack Waterford is a former editor of The Canberra Times.

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