If Australia with its well-established civil society and strong social capital struggles with this problem, then greater transparency might not be the solution.

Transparent, open-tender processes might also not mean a solution, since any system is just as good, as the people who operate it - some official will always have to set requirements,and somebody must decide a winner.

As the example of India shows, if the goverment or the group in power has interests in the given field, that reach further than rewarding one of their own, and if they are strong enough, they might enforce cleaner processes. Perhaps an answer might lie in the kind of vision a goverment has about the future regarding the resource in question. A vision that can also be fostered by civilian organisations, and one that also considers local interests.