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Search Results: ICAC

  • AUSTRALIA

    The tweets of Murdoch's self-destruction

    • Michael Mullins
    • 02 February 2015
    9 Comments

    Rupert Murdoch’s tweets about the Prince Philip knighthood were as bizarre as the knighthood itself. It’s clear that the Prime Minister will not comply with Murdoch’s wishes because they were expressed so publicly and in such a self-discrediting manner. But if his directions had been issued behind closed doors, they might have been taken seriously and acted upon. 

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The PM's taste for old blood

    • John Warhurst
    • 30 January 2015
    5 Comments

    Tony Abbott's preoccupation with knights and dames, together with his unilateral award of a knighthood to the Duke of Edinburgh, is evidence of his attraction to the past more than the future. Likewise his December Cabinet reshuffle was not a serious effort at renewal. He shuffled the existing deck of cards but didn't introduce many new ones at the senior level.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Corruption and atonement in NSW

    • John Warhurst
    • 26 August 2014
    5 Comments

    Both sides of NSW politics claim to have turned over a new leaf and support tough new lobbying regulations, separating paid lobbyists from party office-holding, and increased transparency surrounding all dealings with ministers. But at the heart of the shambles are not commercial lobbyists but personal and institutional ethical failure, often driven by the lure of self-interest and advantage whether it is in getting elected or in feathering their own nest.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Abuse and corruption the Australian way

    • John Warhurst
    • 30 June 2014
    16 Comments

    We should open our eyes and take in what multiple government inquiries, among them the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, are telling us about Australian society. It is not enough to focus on just one; we should consider the revelations cumulatively. It is little exaggeration to say that almost no major institution in our society, public or private, has been left untouched. We should join the dots and cry.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Probing the political culture of corruption in NSW

    • John Warhurst
    • 09 May 2014
    9 Comments

    The Independent Commission against Corruption in New South Wales continues to provide stunning insights into the compromised relationship between the major political parties and government in that state. It has moved on from Labor to the Liberal party and from political lobbying to political donations. But the essence of the story remains the same. Casual self-interest reigns, and the culture of political life at the top-end is corrupted.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Move over Lance Armstrong, the Budget is coming

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 08 May 2014
    13 Comments

    Heightened competitiveness does not foster interest in the common good but creates a narrow focus on the interests of the individual. The use of drugs in cycling illustrates the point. Doing what it takes meant taking competition out of the game by excluding competitors from the possibility of winning. In Australian politics the cult of competitiveness has led to a rigged competition in which the national interest will not be served.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Sympathy for Barry O'Farrell

    • Moira Rayner
    • 22 April 2014
    15 Comments

    Occupants of public office are expected to act in accordance with their oaths. An anti-corruption commissioner, for example, should be someone whose own conduct is not just seen to be, but is demonstrably, judicious, ethical and proper. Even a minor failure in that was the reason that, several years ago, I resigned as an acting corruption and crime commissioner in another state. In my case, it didn't end there. But in O'Farrell's it should.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Eddie Obeid's need for legal aid

    • Michael Mullins
    • 11 November 2013
    4 Comments

    Corrupt former NSW Labor minister Eddie Obeid has sought public funds to cover his legal fees. It is true that the system provides assistance to a wide range of claimants, and he is entitled to make his case. But many of those who are genuinely disadvantaged really do need legal assistance but they fail to seek it because — unlike Obeid — they are not skilled and practised at helping themselves.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    So much for Labor values

    • Brian Toohey
    • 14 October 2013
    9 Comments

    Amid all the post-election talk about Labor values, no one within the party has explained how the appalling behaviour exposed by the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption could have occurred if senior figures took any notice of these supposedly cherished values. It is not credible that most NSW state and federal Labor MPs, and key officials, had no inkling of Obeid's behaviour while a backbencher or minister.

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  • RELIGION

    When mines and football clubs betray the common good

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 08 August 2013
    3 Comments

    The common good can seem a very milky-tea concept — too bloodless for the real world. But it is an important idea, one which we need if we are to make sense of phenomena as disparate as the findings on corruption in the awarding of mining licenses in NSW, the initial report of the NSW chief scientist on coal seam gas mining, and the daily excursions in the drugs and footballers epic.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Greece's brush with linguicide

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 17 April 2013
    8 Comments

    The label 'crazy script' really infuriated me. The article suggested the Irish were all the better for having parted with their own 'crazy' Gaelic script in the 20th century. But an attack on a culture's language is an efficacious way of destroying the culture itself, and scrapping an alphabet seemed to me to be the thin edge of the wedge.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    NSW Labor's diseased ethics

    • Tony Smith
    • 06 February 2013
    11 Comments

    The Labor Party's ethical problems are deep seated. Once it adopted pragmatism as its first principle, policy debates lost meaning. The ideological vacuum was filled by enslavement to poll driven politics and media images. The Left struggled to retain its influence and Labor's heart vanished. We should expect much more from our politicians.

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