The greatest threat to our security is not SARS or terrorism, but distrust of government. This goes far deeper than our disdain for leadership squabbles.
We never have liked politicians. Australian police have been repeatedly exposed as corruptible. Governments in three states — New South Wales, Queensland and Western Australia — have had to set up anti-corruption bodies to protect the integrity of public decision-making from erosion by officials' private interests. Governments increasingly form partnerships and develop relationships with business and the non-profit sector to achieve their public policy goals. The likelihood of conflicts of interest has never been greater.
At the same time, slippery values and an incapacity to identify, eliminate or manage conflicts of interest are obvious. This may be the outright, 'children overboard' variety, or the rambling incoherence of Rodney Adler when asked to tell the Royal Commission how he distinguished between his own and his company's interests.
When a major management consultancy firm is offering consulting and auditing services to the same client, and can't foresee and prevent an inherent conflict of interest, the public should be concerned. The failures of government and the private sector — whether that be the financial-planning industry, AMP, HIH, Enron or the tobacco industry and its advisers — wound not only the wallet, but our willingness to work together.
Having a conflict of interest is not, in itself, wrong. It is the potential for wrongdoing and corruption that must be avoided. We are not very good at this in Australia, but we need to be. There is much opportunity for discretionary and casual misuse of power in our relative isolation, interlocking loops of power elites, the increasing mobility of employment between the public and private sectors, the rising numbers of joint projects and temporary public offices, and the relatively small number of individuals making and influencing public decisions.
In Australia, the narrow range of relationships is perhaps the most fertile ground for conflicts of interest. In a small town there is nothing like six degrees of separation between business, government and social cliques.
It takes distance to recognise conflicts of interest and their potential risk. Dealing with them demands clarity and transparency. It's a problem not only in the small-town cultures of most of Australia, but also in complex cities and in more densely populated regions such as Europe because economic unions will only cohere if their members trust each other.
That is one of the