faulker03

The Transparency International Australia National Integrity 2017 conference in Brisbane last week brought together 160 government, business and civil society delegates from all corners of Australia, including senior legal figures, heads of integrity agencies, federal, state and local parliamentarians, community groups, corporate leaders and individual TI Australia members. Lots of energy at the conference and a perceptible whiff that positive change is in the air with more voices calling for improvements in integrity in the public and corporate sectors. The release of a major paper canvassing key issues for the design of a federal anti-corruption commission was one of many highlights. Here's me giving a rundown on lessons learned from Australia's experience in developing the national action plan required as a result of the commitment by PM Turnbull in December 2015 to join the Open Government Partnership. Someone told me the only thing missing from the timeline diagram ar...

 Crikey this morning "A monumental waste of everyone's time." That's how shadow attorney-general Mark Dreyfus has described the three-year battle to release Attorney General George Brandis' diary for the months leading up to the 2014 budget. Brandis has finally released a heavily redacted version of his diary, after challenging Dreyfus' freedom of information request all the way to the Federal Court, which ordered Brandis to hand over the diary in September. So what does it show? The 34-page printout of his Outlook calendar doesn't include any meetings with community legal centres, which had their funding slashed in the 2014 budget. The Attorney-General's office says this isn't the whole story though, as the diary doesn't show meetings made at short notice or by the Attorney-General himself. The only correction to this and Adam Gartrell's longer piece in the Sydney Morning Herald is that the Federal Court ruled there was no valid reason f...