November 17, 2024 • 14 mins
In deciding not to probe robodebt, the National Anti-Corruption Commission seemingly failed its first big test.
But the NACC has been given a second chance to reconsider an investigation into the unlawful scheme and six people referred for possible corruption by a royal commission.
Former solicitor-general Justin Gleeson was approached to review the decision, but the offer was withdrawn over concerns it might offend a former Coalition minister who is among the people referred.
Today, senior reporter for The Saturday Paper Rick Morton on the dumping of the proposed robodebt investigation and what it means for the future of the NACC.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
From Schwartz Media.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
I'm Ruby Jones.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
This is seven AM. In deciding not to probe ROBODEBT,
Australia's anti corruption body seemingly failed its first big test.
But the NAC has been given a second chance to
reconsider an investigation into the scheme and the six people
(00:25):
referred to the body by a royal commission. But now
it's been revealed the person had picked to make that
decision has had the offer withdrawn over concerns his appointment
might offend one of the very people referred for investigation. Today,
senior reporter for the Saturday paper, Rick Morton on the
dumping of the proposed Robodett investigator and what it means
(00:48):
for the future of the knack. It's Monday, November eighteen.
So the National Anti Coruption Commission, the NACH, in one
(01:09):
of its first very controversial decisions, it declined to investigate
referrals from the Robodet Royal Commission. It was heavily criticized
for that decision and it's now reconsidering. So tell me
what that looks like.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
Yeah, I'm glad you said that they declined to investigate
because they didn't They didn't do any investigation and it
took them eleven months to do no investigation. Essentially, there
were so many complaints made about that decision that the
fully independent Office of the Inspector of the NAC, staffed
by Galphin SSC is also the Inspector of the New
South Wales EYEKAK, launched an investigation of the back of
(01:47):
those complaints and found that the Commissioner of the NAC,
Paul Preriton, who had declared internally four times that he
had a conflict of interest with Person number one who
was referred through Robodet, but never actually fully recused himself
from the decision making process. Paul Brereton had engaged in
offers of misconduct as it's defined under the KNACK Act
(02:08):
and that they should revisit the decision, and the KNACK
of course saw the riding of the wall and had
already agreed through submissions to the Inspector that yes, they
would do that and because of the way this has
kind of been handled so far, they would seek to
appoint an independent eminent person to actually revisit that decision,
so someone who's not currently at the KNACK would be
(02:29):
brought in to relook at that initial decision of whether
or not to investigate one, two, three, or all six
of the Robete referrals. And what we're now learning is
that that position was actually offered to the former Solicitor General,
Justin Gleeson, and then it was abruptly rescinded.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
Right, Okay, So Justin Gleeson, former Solicitor General, was offered
this role as this independent eminent person to revisit the
issue of whether these six people referred to the Knack
over possible wrongdoing during the Robotut scandal should be investigated.
But you're saying you've discovered that before he was even appointed,
(03:13):
the idea was walked back.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
So why Yeah, that's a very good question. And there's
two different versions of this from people I've spoken to
within the Knack. One of them is that it was
just a simple conflict of interesting even though Justin Clison
had no conflicts with any of the six people referred directly,
one of the six people, a former Coalition minister, had
spoken publicly about Justin Gleeson during his time as a
(03:36):
Solicitor General, and that gave rise to the need for
them to be beyond reproach and that they couldn't go
ahead with it. Now, why that wasn't sorted out before
it got to almost appointing him properly is a really
good question. But the other version of this, and it
is not without precedent within the Knack, was that they
had actually countenanced the idea that this former minister would
(03:58):
complain and that they were worried about the views of
this former minister once or if they announced Justin Gleeson
as the eminent person to revisit the decision, and that
was actually a huge factor in the decision making to
pull the job off them.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
Right, So should concerns of a complaint be enough to
stop an appointment like this?
Speaker 3 (04:22):
Rick?
Speaker 2 (04:24):
No, No, shouldn't. I mean, if you listen to Jeffrey
Watson s See and other eminent kind of legal minds,
you know, decisions of corruption agency around the country are
always challenged and there will be for good or ill.
Speaker 3 (04:37):
He says, every single step you take is going to
be challenged for good or for real purposes by some
of the people who are the subject of allegations of corruption.
That's the way it pans out.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
So you know the fact that people might litigate or
have complaints. It's not in and of itself a sufficient
reason to not go ahead with something. In fact, you're
the Corruption Commission, you should do what you think is
right and just in the circumstances.
Speaker 1 (05:04):
And can we talk a bit more about the decision
making here? Do we know how or who made the
call that Gleeson should not be appointed to that role?
Speaker 2 (05:15):
Yeah, that's I don't know the complete answer about it.
They won't go into any detail, of course about who
said what and when and where or why. But I
did manage to speak to a number of people within
the Knack and within the government who said that a
lot of research went into the potential engagement of the
former solicit of General Justin Gleeson. And so you know,
(05:36):
we now have questions about did Breton approach Gleeson? If
he did, why did he back off? Or if it
wasn't Bretherton's idea, whose was it and who raised the
issues internally about the coalition minister and Justin Gleeson. And
we don't know the answers to that yet now. Of course,
even though there's all these questions going around, I did
(05:57):
ask the NA you know, did you consult with any
of the people about this appointment or any particular appointment,
and they said the KNACK has not consulted and has
no intention to consult with any referred persons about whether
they have a view on the appropriateness of the independent Eminent.
Speaker 1 (06:12):
Person and Rick, all of this does seem to have
happened at the very last minute, which begs the question
that if Justin Gleeson is not the right person for
this job for any reason, why was that not discovered sooner?
And what does that failure say to you about what's
(06:34):
going on inside the KNACK and its processes.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
Yeah, they're not good, and I don't say that off
one or two examples. In fact, we just had the
inspectors and your report table where there were other deficiencies
noted in the knacks handling of corruption referrals. Their IT
systems are not mature. I mean, there are new agencies,
so they are always going to be teething issues. But
some of these decisions relate to the judgment of the
(07:00):
Commissioner and the deputy commissioners. So we've got some issues
with the way they handle stuff. There doesn't appear to
be a coherent sense of how they go about their work.
And having spoken to people now who have worked within
the Knack who are still within the knack. There is
a real sense that they're kind of making some of
these things up on the fly, and in doing so
(07:23):
trusting their own discretion and their own kind of eminence.
As in Grotran's case, it's a former judge, but not
realizing or not giving full credit to the idea that
they might actually make mistakes as they go. And we're
seeing that now come out, not just in the decisions
they've been making, but in terms of this hiring process,
which was so far advanced from what I can tell,
(07:43):
and which almost made it to the end. And then
suddenly something's changed, and someone's got cold feet somewhere, and
Gleason's being told see you later.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
So can faith in the Knack be restored? That's after
the break Rick, We're in a situation now where the
KNAK is appointing an outside expert to revisit a decision
(08:16):
made by the Commission. We don't know who that person's
going to be now, and there are are serious questions
around the process there. But the fact that this is
happening at all, what does that say to you about
the viability of the NAC's leadership.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
There has been a lot of external commentary right, including
from the inspector, but also other eminent appeals court judges.
Margaret White, former appeals court judge in Queensland, who is
you know they've kind of build the cat on this
and said, it doesn't seem like Breton fully understands the
function of his own commission.
Speaker 4 (08:48):
They seem to misconceive their role with the greatest of respect.
They seem to think that because they couldn't provide some
kind of compensation or remedy to those who who were
injured by this huge breach of public trust, therefore there
was no point in taking it up.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
Someone I was speaking to you from the NAC were like,
he suffers from having been a judge in that he
thinks that, you know, there is an appeals court above
him that will overturn any mistakes they make, but there isn't.
The fact that the Inspector received so many complaints was
lucky that their role was triggered. It was also lucky
that they figured that the public interest was high enough
that their report was published into what they found about
(09:28):
Commissioner Puritan's handling of this matter, Because had that not
been the case, it's only in very specific circumstances where
any of this would have been public knowledge. And of
course I get the sense that a lot of the
internal discussions that we had about what to do with Robodet,
the Commissioner didn't think would ever see the light of DACK.
So that's been pretty out of statements, and it's only
a new practice, but they appear to be quite sensitive
(09:49):
and defensive of public commentary, some of it on social media,
but most of it in the media about things that
people have been saying about the knack. One of the
misinformation bits they seek to correct is that he had
a conflict of interest with someone and they were very
close personal friends. Now Breton, again not for the first time,
corrects the record by saying they had a prior professional
(10:12):
relationship and they were not close. Now, that in itself
has been debunked by former Federal court judge Allen Robinson. Now,
Alan Robinson said that whatever Paul Bretherton is saying now
to the inspector and now publicly about his relationship with
person number one is gloss. That was the word he used.
(10:33):
It's gloss because the way he declared it internally before,
mind you, before he thought anyone was going to see
these words, was that he had a close association with
person number one, and on another occasion he said, this
person is well known to me. I believe as we speak,
Paul Brereton is talking about public trust in government at
a conference. Well, this is public trust, and this is
(10:55):
how you get rid of it, step by step, bit
by bit, erosion by erosion.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
And the very reason that the KNAC was set up
was to counter this suspicion that the people that voters
had that there is or was corruption in public life.
So if the KNACK fails to address that, then we
lose more than just a bureaucratic body, don't we We
lose more faith, more trust in public life.
Speaker 2 (11:23):
Well, we had one shot at this, right, We had
a shot to bring about a National Anti Corruption Commission.
You know, key considerations were warded down in the making
of it. You know, the people corruption experts wanted public
hearings unless there were really good reasons not to. But
we didn't get that. The people we appointed to lead
it had to be to use their own term in
(11:45):
how they dismissed Justin Gledson. Beyond reproach, the standards have
to be the highest for the agency that enforces standards,
whoever they appoint as the independent person, and they might
be another equally good candidate, that person who is only
making a decision about whether the KNACH should investigate or not.
(12:08):
Now they might come to the same conclusion, which case
the process ends there nothing happens. But if they recommend
an investigation, then the NAC has to do that investigation
the same people who do they delegate it to. Now
the Commissioner still presumably has to be recused. So who
the KNACK does the investigation, who signs off on any
of this? As someone I think joking you said on Twitter,
(12:30):
we're going to need a parallel KNACK set up just
for the robotet stuff. And of course then you get
turtles all the way down because already in this case,
we've had the KNACK making decision that the inspector then
called into question by hiring a former federal court judge
to back up the legal argument she was making. And
then they referred this back to the NAC, who said, well,
(12:52):
we will get an independent person to remake the decision.
And it's like having a highway upgrade all the way
to the end of the city, and there's just a
one laid road. There's a bottleneck at the end. In
the bottleneck, it's the same commission as the same Knack,
revisiting the same issue that they have comprehensively failed on.
Speaker 1 (13:11):
It's a dispiriting state of affairs.
Speaker 2 (13:14):
Rick, Do I do anything else?
Speaker 1 (13:17):
Thank you so much, bea Dan.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
Thanks Ruby, I appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (13:30):
Also in the news today, the Prime Minister Anthony Alberesi
has backed Kevin Rudd to remain as Australia's ambassador to Washington.
There's been speculation that Trump could demand Rudd's withdrawal after
disparaging remarks that Rudd made about the President elect in
the past resurfaced. Speaking from the APEX summit in Peru,
Alberzi described his first ten minute phone conversation with Trump
(13:54):
as very constructive and positive, and said that Kevin Rudd
was not mentioned. Meanwhile, Donald Trump has nominated oil and
gas industry executive Chris Wright, a staunch defender of fossil
fuel use, as his pick to lead the US Department
of Energy. Chris Wright is the founder and chief executive
of Liberty Energy, an oil filled services firm based in Denver, Colorado.
(14:19):
He's previously called climate change activists alarmist, and has likened
efforts by democrats to combat global warming to Soviet style communism.
I'm Ribby Jones. See tomorrow
From Schwartz Media.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
I'm Ruby Jones.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
This is seven AM. In deciding not to probe ROBODEBT,
Australia's anti corruption body seemingly failed its first big test.
But the NAC has been given a second chance to
reconsider an investigation into the scheme and the six people
(00:25):
referred to the body by a royal commission. But now
it's been revealed the person had picked to make that
decision has had the offer withdrawn over concerns his appointment
might offend one of the very people referred for investigation. Today,
senior reporter for the Saturday paper, Rick Morton on the
dumping of the proposed Robodett investigator and what it means
(00:48):
for the future of the knack. It's Monday, November eighteen.
So the National Anti Coruption Commission, the NACH, in one
(01:09):
of its first very controversial decisions, it declined to investigate
referrals from the Robodet Royal Commission. It was heavily criticized
for that decision and it's now reconsidering. So tell me
what that looks like.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
Yeah, I'm glad you said that they declined to investigate
because they didn't They didn't do any investigation and it
took them eleven months to do no investigation. Essentially, there
were so many complaints made about that decision that the
fully independent Office of the Inspector of the NAC, staffed
by Galphin SSC is also the Inspector of the New
South Wales EYEKAK, launched an investigation of the back of
(01:47):
those complaints and found that the Commissioner of the NAC,
Paul Preriton, who had declared internally four times that he
had a conflict of interest with Person number one who
was referred through Robodet, but never actually fully recused himself
from the decision making process. Paul Brereton had engaged in
offers of misconduct as it's defined under the KNACK Act
(02:08):
and that they should revisit the decision, and the KNACK
of course saw the riding of the wall and had
already agreed through submissions to the Inspector that yes, they
would do that and because of the way this has
kind of been handled so far, they would seek to
appoint an independent eminent person to actually revisit that decision,
so someone who's not currently at the KNACK would be
(02:29):
brought in to relook at that initial decision of whether
or not to investigate one, two, three, or all six
of the Robete referrals. And what we're now learning is
that that position was actually offered to the former Solicitor General,
Justin Gleeson, and then it was abruptly rescinded.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
Right, Okay, So Justin Gleeson, former Solicitor General, was offered
this role as this independent eminent person to revisit the
issue of whether these six people referred to the Knack
over possible wrongdoing during the Robotut scandal should be investigated.
But you're saying you've discovered that before he was even appointed,
(03:13):
the idea was walked back.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
So why Yeah, that's a very good question. And there's
two different versions of this from people I've spoken to
within the Knack. One of them is that it was
just a simple conflict of interesting even though Justin Clison
had no conflicts with any of the six people referred directly,
one of the six people, a former Coalition minister, had
spoken publicly about Justin Gleeson during his time as a
(03:36):
Solicitor General, and that gave rise to the need for
them to be beyond reproach and that they couldn't go
ahead with it. Now, why that wasn't sorted out before
it got to almost appointing him properly is a really
good question. But the other version of this, and it
is not without precedent within the Knack, was that they
had actually countenanced the idea that this former minister would
(03:58):
complain and that they were worried about the views of
this former minister once or if they announced Justin Gleeson
as the eminent person to revisit the decision, and that
was actually a huge factor in the decision making to
pull the job off them.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
Right, So should concerns of a complaint be enough to
stop an appointment like this?
Speaker 3 (04:22):
Rick?
Speaker 2 (04:24):
No, No, shouldn't. I mean, if you listen to Jeffrey
Watson s See and other eminent kind of legal minds,
you know, decisions of corruption agency around the country are
always challenged and there will be for good or ill.
Speaker 3 (04:37):
He says, every single step you take is going to
be challenged for good or for real purposes by some
of the people who are the subject of allegations of corruption.
That's the way it pans out.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
So you know the fact that people might litigate or
have complaints. It's not in and of itself a sufficient
reason to not go ahead with something. In fact, you're
the Corruption Commission, you should do what you think is
right and just in the circumstances.
Speaker 1 (05:04):
And can we talk a bit more about the decision
making here? Do we know how or who made the
call that Gleeson should not be appointed to that role?
Speaker 2 (05:15):
Yeah, that's I don't know the complete answer about it.
They won't go into any detail, of course about who
said what and when and where or why. But I
did manage to speak to a number of people within
the Knack and within the government who said that a
lot of research went into the potential engagement of the
former solicit of General Justin Gleeson. And so you know,
(05:36):
we now have questions about did Breton approach Gleeson? If
he did, why did he back off? Or if it
wasn't Bretherton's idea, whose was it and who raised the
issues internally about the coalition minister and Justin Gleeson. And
we don't know the answers to that yet now. Of course,
even though there's all these questions going around, I did
(05:57):
ask the NA you know, did you consult with any
of the people about this appointment or any particular appointment,
and they said the KNACK has not consulted and has
no intention to consult with any referred persons about whether
they have a view on the appropriateness of the independent Eminent.
Speaker 1 (06:12):
Person and Rick, all of this does seem to have
happened at the very last minute, which begs the question
that if Justin Gleeson is not the right person for
this job for any reason, why was that not discovered sooner?
And what does that failure say to you about what's
(06:34):
going on inside the KNACK and its processes.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
Yeah, they're not good, and I don't say that off
one or two examples. In fact, we just had the
inspectors and your report table where there were other deficiencies
noted in the knacks handling of corruption referrals. Their IT
systems are not mature. I mean, there are new agencies,
so they are always going to be teething issues. But
some of these decisions relate to the judgment of the
(07:00):
Commissioner and the deputy commissioners. So we've got some issues
with the way they handle stuff. There doesn't appear to
be a coherent sense of how they go about their work.
And having spoken to people now who have worked within
the Knack who are still within the knack. There is
a real sense that they're kind of making some of
these things up on the fly, and in doing so
(07:23):
trusting their own discretion and their own kind of eminence.
As in Grotran's case, it's a former judge, but not
realizing or not giving full credit to the idea that
they might actually make mistakes as they go. And we're
seeing that now come out, not just in the decisions
they've been making, but in terms of this hiring process,
which was so far advanced from what I can tell,
(07:43):
and which almost made it to the end. And then
suddenly something's changed, and someone's got cold feet somewhere, and
Gleason's being told see you later.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
So can faith in the Knack be restored? That's after
the break Rick, We're in a situation now where the
KNAK is appointing an outside expert to revisit a decision
(08:16):
made by the Commission. We don't know who that person's
going to be now, and there are are serious questions
around the process there. But the fact that this is
happening at all, what does that say to you about
the viability of the NAC's leadership.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
There has been a lot of external commentary right, including
from the inspector, but also other eminent appeals court judges.
Margaret White, former appeals court judge in Queensland, who is
you know they've kind of build the cat on this
and said, it doesn't seem like Breton fully understands the
function of his own commission.
Speaker 4 (08:48):
They seem to misconceive their role with the greatest of respect.
They seem to think that because they couldn't provide some
kind of compensation or remedy to those who who were
injured by this huge breach of public trust, therefore there
was no point in taking it up.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
Someone I was speaking to you from the NAC were like,
he suffers from having been a judge in that he
thinks that, you know, there is an appeals court above
him that will overturn any mistakes they make, but there isn't.
The fact that the Inspector received so many complaints was
lucky that their role was triggered. It was also lucky
that they figured that the public interest was high enough
that their report was published into what they found about
(09:28):
Commissioner Puritan's handling of this matter, Because had that not
been the case, it's only in very specific circumstances where
any of this would have been public knowledge. And of
course I get the sense that a lot of the
internal discussions that we had about what to do with Robodet,
the Commissioner didn't think would ever see the light of DACK.
So that's been pretty out of statements, and it's only
a new practice, but they appear to be quite sensitive
(09:49):
and defensive of public commentary, some of it on social media,
but most of it in the media about things that
people have been saying about the knack. One of the
misinformation bits they seek to correct is that he had
a conflict of interest with someone and they were very
close personal friends. Now Breton, again not for the first time,
corrects the record by saying they had a prior professional
(10:12):
relationship and they were not close. Now, that in itself
has been debunked by former Federal court judge Allen Robinson. Now,
Alan Robinson said that whatever Paul Bretherton is saying now
to the inspector and now publicly about his relationship with
person number one is gloss. That was the word he used.
(10:33):
It's gloss because the way he declared it internally before,
mind you, before he thought anyone was going to see
these words, was that he had a close association with
person number one, and on another occasion he said, this
person is well known to me. I believe as we speak,
Paul Brereton is talking about public trust in government at
a conference. Well, this is public trust, and this is
(10:55):
how you get rid of it, step by step, bit
by bit, erosion by erosion.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
And the very reason that the KNAC was set up
was to counter this suspicion that the people that voters
had that there is or was corruption in public life.
So if the KNACK fails to address that, then we
lose more than just a bureaucratic body, don't we We
lose more faith, more trust in public life.
Speaker 2 (11:23):
Well, we had one shot at this, right, We had
a shot to bring about a National Anti Corruption Commission.
You know, key considerations were warded down in the making
of it. You know, the people corruption experts wanted public
hearings unless there were really good reasons not to. But
we didn't get that. The people we appointed to lead
it had to be to use their own term in
(11:45):
how they dismissed Justin Gledson. Beyond reproach, the standards have
to be the highest for the agency that enforces standards,
whoever they appoint as the independent person, and they might
be another equally good candidate, that person who is only
making a decision about whether the KNACH should investigate or not.
(12:08):
Now they might come to the same conclusion, which case
the process ends there nothing happens. But if they recommend
an investigation, then the NAC has to do that investigation
the same people who do they delegate it to. Now
the Commissioner still presumably has to be recused. So who
the KNACK does the investigation, who signs off on any
of this? As someone I think joking you said on Twitter,
(12:30):
we're going to need a parallel KNACK set up just
for the robotet stuff. And of course then you get
turtles all the way down because already in this case,
we've had the KNACK making decision that the inspector then
called into question by hiring a former federal court judge
to back up the legal argument she was making. And
then they referred this back to the NAC, who said, well,
(12:52):
we will get an independent person to remake the decision.
And it's like having a highway upgrade all the way
to the end of the city, and there's just a
one laid road. There's a bottleneck at the end. In
the bottleneck, it's the same commission as the same Knack,
revisiting the same issue that they have comprehensively failed on.
Speaker 1 (13:11):
It's a dispiriting state of affairs.
Speaker 2 (13:14):
Rick, Do I do anything else?
Speaker 1 (13:17):
Thank you so much, bea Dan.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
Thanks Ruby, I appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (13:30):
Also in the news today, the Prime Minister Anthony Alberesi
has backed Kevin Rudd to remain as Australia's ambassador to Washington.
There's been speculation that Trump could demand Rudd's withdrawal after
disparaging remarks that Rudd made about the President elect in
the past resurfaced. Speaking from the APEX summit in Peru,
Alberzi described his first ten minute phone conversation with Trump
(13:54):
as very constructive and positive, and said that Kevin Rudd
was not mentioned. Meanwhile, Donald Trump has nominated oil and
gas industry executive Chris Wright, a staunch defender of fossil
fuel use, as his pick to lead the US Department
of Energy. Chris Wright is the founder and chief executive
of Liberty Energy, an oil filled services firm based in Denver, Colorado.
(14:19):
He's previously called climate change activists alarmist, and has likened
efforts by democrats to combat global warming to Soviet style communism.
I'm Ribby Jones. See tomorrow
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