00:00:01
Speaker 1: Do you accept responsibility for not telling your chief executive officer that you've done ten hours of work for defense during work hours with the NAG. Do you accept responsibility for not telling your chief executive officer about the fact that you had that ongoing role and you were doing the ongoing work for defense because you didn't tell him either of those things, did you No? Do you accept responsibility for that?
00:00:27
Speaker 2: No.
00:00:28
Speaker 3: Paul Brereton, the outgoing head of Australia's National Anti Corruption Commission, was grilled at Senate Estimates this week. Breton led the body tasked with investigating serious corruption in the Commonwealth public sector, but his time as its first Commissioner has ended in a crisis of confidence over Robodet, his ongoing Defense links, and whether the watchdog properly managed conflicts of interest inside its own walls.
00:00:54
Speaker 4: What lessons arise for the KNACK from this Robodet controversy. The lesson from that was that on obviously would have been better had I had nothing to do with that matter at all.
00:01:05
Speaker 3: From the outset, Breton says he's become a distraction from the Commission's work, but his resignation begs the question, do the next problems end with him. I'm will eat Ali. You're listening to seven AM today Independent journalist Nick Fike on how Australia's anti corruption watchdog ended up in crisis and whether it can recover. It's Friday, May twenty ninth.
00:01:43
Speaker 5: Nick.
00:01:44
Speaker 3: That was quite a showdown I think you can say, between Paul Breton and some senators in the Senate Estimates inquiry. But before that, I want to go back to twenty sixteen with the Brereton Inquiry into war crimes in Afghanistan, because that's into involved, isn't.
00:02:01
Speaker 2: It It is it's the start of a long story.
00:02:03
Speaker 5: So the Commissioner of the NAC is Paul Brereton, and he was also conducting the Afghanistan War Crimes Inquiry started in twenty sixteen, ran to twenty twenty. That was for the Inspector General of the ADF. He produced the Brereton Report. He was also a major general in the Army Reserve. He went on, obviously to be appointed as the inaugural Commissioner of the NAC and that relationship, his relationship with the ADF was the foundation of a series of conflicts, and he had a professional association with some of the subjects that he was investigating at the NAC. But it turns out that it was not just an affiliation. He was doing ongoing consulting work with the Inspector General's Office, and he also had a close association. In fact, occasionally he was termed a personal association with Katherine Campbell, who was the subject of the Robodet inquiry. She was one of the sixth who was referred to the KNACK over robo debt. So in multiple ways the Commissioner of the KNACK was conflicted, or there was a perceived conflict or the potential for a conflict in terms of his previous roles and his current role. That's been the basis of so much controversy and I think is at the heart of his resignation this week.
00:03:22
Speaker 3: So tell us about what we saw on Tuesday night in Senate estimates.
00:03:26
Speaker 5: So the background is that a few weeks ago, the Green Senator David Chubridge moved a successful Senate motion he directed Brereton and the three other the KNACK deputy commissioners to attend budget essenates this week to give evidence and to answer questions. On Monday, though, Breton announced his resignation, taking effect on six July. There's still speculation as to why he resigned, but the pressure was rising on a number of fronts, some of which we've discussed, and Breton had earlier told Parliament the Knack had also said that he'd resigned his position before becoming the NAC Commision, but this wasn't true, as we've discussed, he was still commissioning. And we know that Breton was currently under an investigation by the oversight Gail Furness. She's the KNACK Inspector, a kind of oversight role that she has. She had an investigation running into his defense ties and that was what primarily was the basis of a series of quite testing questions between Breton and David Shubridge and Senator Pocock also.
00:04:28
Speaker 6: Commissioner, can you surely not see that Australians who watch this the commissioner of our highest integrity body, and your inability to take any responsibility at any turn to throw the CEO under the bus to just conseque me not?
00:04:49
Speaker 2: When did I be willing to well?
00:04:51
Speaker 6: Earlier you said he has absolutely no right to know what you're doing in terms of the IGADF.
00:04:57
Speaker 4: I see the CEO, I said it was relevant for the other statutory officers to know that I had an ongoing affiliation with the IGADF, which they knew, which you didn't.
00:05:08
Speaker 3: Was there anything that stood out to you from those exchanges?
00:05:11
Speaker 5: So, after having heard from the Attorney General's Office, having heard from the NAC Commissioner, the KNACK Deputy Commissioners, the KNACK Inspector herself turns up Gail Furness and she reveals, in something of a bombshell, that she's undertaken another investigation.
00:05:25
Speaker 7: So I received a complaint, I had the commissioner's response, I commenced an investigation.
00:05:31
Speaker 5: This is a third investigation into a complaint about Brereton's conduct. We just sat through an hour and a half of Breton and his fellow commissioners and the CEO fronting up to Senate estimates. They hadn't even mentioned this. Gail Furness gets up and the first thing she says is, oh, by the way, it only started last month.
00:05:49
Speaker 2: Yeah exactly.
00:05:50
Speaker 1: And are you able to recall when you first sent it to the commission for the response, Well, it.
00:05:57
Speaker 7: Was before the fourteenth of April.
00:06:00
Speaker 5: It was also revealed that the second investigation that she'd been looking into it had been going back and forth between her and Commissioner of Breton's office that he'd run up two hundred and four thousand dollars in legal fees paid by the taxpayer to defend himself from whatever her findings are, which we don't know yet.
00:06:19
Speaker 3: Okay, So three investigations is quite a lot to get your head around. Do we know much about them? Can we separate what the three are about and whether or not they're related.
00:06:29
Speaker 5: So the first one we already know about, that was the officer misconduct finding that was in relation to the Robodette findings.
00:06:36
Speaker 2: The second one is ongoing.
00:06:38
Speaker 5: It's into Breton's defense tires, the things we've been talking about, how he handled or mishandled them. We don't know her conclusions. The third one we literally don't know. We just learned about it last night. It was only mentioned in the context of a complaint about Breton's conduct.
00:06:54
Speaker 1: Can you identify did it relate to the commissioner in any way?
00:06:59
Speaker 7: As I've said, I commenced a complaint investigation into a complaint i'd received about the conduct of the commissioner.
00:07:05
Speaker 3: So let's talk about this concept of a conflict of interest here, if Brereton is connected with the ADF in some kind of formal way, and there have been photos circulating of him wearing army fatigues, for example, while he was Commissioner, the conflict of interest there is what that there might be some kind of corruption allegation that emerges from the Defense Force itself, and that, if so, how big a deal would that be? Could he not just recuse himself, for example, for those sorts of referrals.
00:07:34
Speaker 5: So the problem is a perception one. Primarily, it's that, as you said, he appears in uniform, that he has ongoing work with defense personnel defense referrals, of which there have been many, we believe over one hundred to the NAC. Defense is potentially the NAC's biggest customer. Allegations that have been made in relation to defense material, defense acquisitions, defense matters generally, we're talking about billion dollar contracts here. Now we have the head of the Knack who has since finally has recused himself from those referrals. He's recused himself after having presided over them for two years. For more than two years, the question to me now is what happens to all of those investigations that he presided over for two and a half years. Do they get revisited who do they get revisited by? Are they situations that were influenced by Brereton? Of course they would have been here was the head of the commission. So we have a genuine, deep seated problem here.
00:08:47
Speaker 3: Does this take us in the direction of wondering why Brereton was appointed commissioner in the first place. Nothing to do with his ability, but just because of the situation that he was inevitably in.
00:08:57
Speaker 5: I think there are serious problems about his original appointment, and I don't think they've been adequately discussed. I know that several integrity experts in the legal field, for example Jeffrey Watson SC they believe that the Commissioner of the KNACK should never have been a defense figure. The military is a hierarchical organization. It's generally secretive. They don't deal well with transparency and accountability issues as a culture, and I think the method of appointing all of the commissioners and deputy commissioners in the first instance was problematic. The KNAC had the run of the field when they opened this organization. It was a brand new integrity organization. They could have had former judges, they could have had scs. They ended up with the least qualified combination of deputies permitted under the Act.
00:09:48
Speaker 2: It was almost like it was built to.
00:09:50
Speaker 3: Fail coming up. Does Breton's resignation actually fix the knack? You've identified the conflict of interest as a major issue and the way that appointments have been made to the knack. Does Breton's departure change any of that or fix any of those concerns.
00:10:23
Speaker 5: I think potentially a lot will be changed by his departure. I think some of it depends on who they appoint next. So I think the alber EASi government is a poor track record when it comes to appointing commissioners. They need to appoint someone who is top draw, completely unimpeachable, has the best possible qualifications.
00:10:43
Speaker 2: They need a transparent, rigorous process.
00:10:46
Speaker 5: They'll need someone that the legal community gets behind, that transparency experts get behind. Because Breton's left a serious mess at the knack. It's not just the conflicts. This is an organization with a serious deficit of public trust. There's the pile of defense investigations. There's only two deputy commissioners remaining. They have a track record of precisely zero major corruption findings from seven thousand referrals. With a staff of over two hundred people. They've never made a major corruption finding.
00:11:17
Speaker 3: Perhaps we should celebrate the fact we live in such a corruption free country, Nick, mean, that's another way to look at us.
00:11:22
Speaker 2: Oh, isn't it? Isn't it great? Wally?
00:11:25
Speaker 5: Yeah, I can barely laugh about it at this point.
00:11:28
Speaker 3: That you've mentioned some concerns with the appointments of commissioners in the way which is done. I suppose that raises the question of the design of the KNACK at the beginning of the whole process. Do you see design flaws here that would need government or legislative intervention?
00:11:42
Speaker 2: Not that many.
00:11:43
Speaker 5: Actually, the main problem I think was the lack of public hearings.
00:11:49
Speaker 2: The KNACK hasn't had any public hearings.
00:11:52
Speaker 5: It's only obliged to have them in exceptional circumstance. Apparently we have never come across an exceptional circumstance that requires a.
00:11:59
Speaker 2: Public head hearing.
00:12:00
Speaker 5: Yet otherwise to me, it's actually it was an issue of personnel and approach, I think, apart from the lack of public hearings, I don't think the problem was a legislative one.
00:12:11
Speaker 3: Well, you mentioned the privacy and secrecy element of it, as I recall, the argument for that was that the problem with public inquiries into corruption is that the minute you are investigated, the political damage is so severe that a judgment is rendered irrespective of whether or not you get cleared, and that that would ultimately just be too damaging to public officeholders who may not have done anything corrupt, and that this would just be a totally unworkable situation. You say you think they should fix that. Do you mean making it all public or do you think there is still some room for private hearings to take place.
00:12:46
Speaker 5: An investigation has to jump over several hurdles to reach the level of a formal investigation. I don't think anyone is saying that all of their investigations should be secretive. I think the New South Wales IIKAK is an excellent mode. They have public hearings when they choose to, when they think it's appropriate.
00:13:04
Speaker 2: Most of their work is done behind the scenes.
00:13:07
Speaker 5: Confidentiality is absolutely obligatory for an anti coruption organization. But once you reach a certain level where you know that there is a serious corruption matter to discuss, that it's a public matter. I think there have to be public hearings. With private investigations, all you end up with is an investigation report. At the end of years of investigation, you'll get one day of headlines, maybe you'll get two days of headlines.
00:13:33
Speaker 2: And then it will be gone again. We don't get an.
00:13:35
Speaker 5: Understanding of the depth of the corruption that has been investigated, compared to, for example, a royal commission like the Robot Royal Commission. The only reason this became a public issue and became so widely known was because we watched the blow by blow in public of Catherine Holmes's Royal Commission hearings.
00:13:54
Speaker 2: Now we need the equivalent of that for the knack.
00:13:57
Speaker 3: I would say there will be people in New South Wales who argue that the problem you have with IKAK is it just swept everything up, so you end up with you barrio'farrell resigning over a bottle of grange, and that's the same situation as you know, Edio bed.
00:14:09
Speaker 5: I've heard that argument well lead, but I would counter by saying the New South Wales's IKAK is the most respected and admired anti corruption organization in the country that actually should be the model according to public polling and according to one integrity experts say, I mean, we keep talking about the grange bottle that comes up a lot. No one was obliging him to resign over that. That was his choice, and I think it's entirely reasonable that politicians occasionally take a fall for doing the wrong thing. Is that not a reasonable thing to expect about politicians that they have integrity standards?
00:14:48
Speaker 2: As in that was his choice.
00:14:49
Speaker 5: He wasn't obliged by the AKAK to resign because he'd received or mishandled.
00:14:54
Speaker 2: A bottle of grange. I think public scrutiny is really important.
00:14:58
Speaker 3: So you've set out some things you would like to see by the way of reform, some criticisms you've made of the way the Albanezi government has handled this. Are you optimistic at all your vision will become reality.
00:15:09
Speaker 5: I'm not optimistic necessarily, but we have to believe that it's possible to improve this organization. We have to fight for a proper National Anti Corruption Commission. I know that there's been talk of critics of the NAC. I know there was a defensiveness by Paul Burton. We actually believe we critics believe in the importance of a National Anti Corruption Commission.
00:15:32
Speaker 2: We just want it to be better. Everyone wants it to be better.
00:15:36
Speaker 5: So to me, it's very much a case of pessimism of the intellect, but optimism of the will.
00:15:43
Speaker 2: We have to believe it's possible. Nick, thanks so much, thank you.
00:16:02
Speaker 8: Also in the news, it's been revealed that the number of NDIS participants expected to be shifted off the scheme under new eligibility rules is considerably higher than first thought. Health Minister Mark Butler announced last month that the number of participants set to be exited or shifted from the NDIS would be at least one hundred and sixty thousand, but documents tabled in the Senate on Wednesday show the government is hoping to reduce current numbers by two hundred and forty one thousand participants by mid twenty thirty one. And the federal government is suing the manufacture of pfas or forever chemicals found in firefighting foam at twenty eight defense bases across Australia. It's seeking two billion dollars in damages, the government's largest ever legal claim. The Attorney General, Michelle Rowland, says multinational Corporation three M withheld information and misrepresented the effects and environmental risks of the foam. I'm Ruby Jones. Thanks for listening. Seven AM will be back tomorrow
Speaker 1: Do you accept responsibility for not telling your chief executive officer that you've done ten hours of work for defense during work hours with the NAG. Do you accept responsibility for not telling your chief executive officer about the fact that you had that ongoing role and you were doing the ongoing work for defense because you didn't tell him either of those things, did you No? Do you accept responsibility for that?
00:00:27
Speaker 2: No.
00:00:28
Speaker 3: Paul Brereton, the outgoing head of Australia's National Anti Corruption Commission, was grilled at Senate Estimates this week. Breton led the body tasked with investigating serious corruption in the Commonwealth public sector, but his time as its first Commissioner has ended in a crisis of confidence over Robodet, his ongoing Defense links, and whether the watchdog properly managed conflicts of interest inside its own walls.
00:00:54
Speaker 4: What lessons arise for the KNACK from this Robodet controversy. The lesson from that was that on obviously would have been better had I had nothing to do with that matter at all.
00:01:05
Speaker 3: From the outset, Breton says he's become a distraction from the Commission's work, but his resignation begs the question, do the next problems end with him. I'm will eat Ali. You're listening to seven AM today Independent journalist Nick Fike on how Australia's anti corruption watchdog ended up in crisis and whether it can recover. It's Friday, May twenty ninth.
00:01:43
Speaker 5: Nick.
00:01:44
Speaker 3: That was quite a showdown I think you can say, between Paul Breton and some senators in the Senate Estimates inquiry. But before that, I want to go back to twenty sixteen with the Brereton Inquiry into war crimes in Afghanistan, because that's into involved, isn't.
00:02:01
Speaker 2: It It is it's the start of a long story.
00:02:03
Speaker 5: So the Commissioner of the NAC is Paul Brereton, and he was also conducting the Afghanistan War Crimes Inquiry started in twenty sixteen, ran to twenty twenty. That was for the Inspector General of the ADF. He produced the Brereton Report. He was also a major general in the Army Reserve. He went on, obviously to be appointed as the inaugural Commissioner of the NAC and that relationship, his relationship with the ADF was the foundation of a series of conflicts, and he had a professional association with some of the subjects that he was investigating at the NAC. But it turns out that it was not just an affiliation. He was doing ongoing consulting work with the Inspector General's Office, and he also had a close association. In fact, occasionally he was termed a personal association with Katherine Campbell, who was the subject of the Robodet inquiry. She was one of the sixth who was referred to the KNACK over robo debt. So in multiple ways the Commissioner of the KNACK was conflicted, or there was a perceived conflict or the potential for a conflict in terms of his previous roles and his current role. That's been the basis of so much controversy and I think is at the heart of his resignation this week.
00:03:22
Speaker 3: So tell us about what we saw on Tuesday night in Senate estimates.
00:03:26
Speaker 5: So the background is that a few weeks ago, the Green Senator David Chubridge moved a successful Senate motion he directed Brereton and the three other the KNACK deputy commissioners to attend budget essenates this week to give evidence and to answer questions. On Monday, though, Breton announced his resignation, taking effect on six July. There's still speculation as to why he resigned, but the pressure was rising on a number of fronts, some of which we've discussed, and Breton had earlier told Parliament the Knack had also said that he'd resigned his position before becoming the NAC Commision, but this wasn't true, as we've discussed, he was still commissioning. And we know that Breton was currently under an investigation by the oversight Gail Furness. She's the KNACK Inspector, a kind of oversight role that she has. She had an investigation running into his defense ties and that was what primarily was the basis of a series of quite testing questions between Breton and David Shubridge and Senator Pocock also.
00:04:28
Speaker 6: Commissioner, can you surely not see that Australians who watch this the commissioner of our highest integrity body, and your inability to take any responsibility at any turn to throw the CEO under the bus to just conseque me not?
00:04:49
Speaker 2: When did I be willing to well?
00:04:51
Speaker 6: Earlier you said he has absolutely no right to know what you're doing in terms of the IGADF.
00:04:57
Speaker 4: I see the CEO, I said it was relevant for the other statutory officers to know that I had an ongoing affiliation with the IGADF, which they knew, which you didn't.
00:05:08
Speaker 3: Was there anything that stood out to you from those exchanges?
00:05:11
Speaker 5: So, after having heard from the Attorney General's Office, having heard from the NAC Commissioner, the KNACK Deputy Commissioners, the KNACK Inspector herself turns up Gail Furness and she reveals, in something of a bombshell, that she's undertaken another investigation.
00:05:25
Speaker 7: So I received a complaint, I had the commissioner's response, I commenced an investigation.
00:05:31
Speaker 5: This is a third investigation into a complaint about Brereton's conduct. We just sat through an hour and a half of Breton and his fellow commissioners and the CEO fronting up to Senate estimates. They hadn't even mentioned this. Gail Furness gets up and the first thing she says is, oh, by the way, it only started last month.
00:05:49
Speaker 2: Yeah exactly.
00:05:50
Speaker 1: And are you able to recall when you first sent it to the commission for the response, Well, it.
00:05:57
Speaker 7: Was before the fourteenth of April.
00:06:00
Speaker 5: It was also revealed that the second investigation that she'd been looking into it had been going back and forth between her and Commissioner of Breton's office that he'd run up two hundred and four thousand dollars in legal fees paid by the taxpayer to defend himself from whatever her findings are, which we don't know yet.
00:06:19
Speaker 3: Okay, So three investigations is quite a lot to get your head around. Do we know much about them? Can we separate what the three are about and whether or not they're related.
00:06:29
Speaker 5: So the first one we already know about, that was the officer misconduct finding that was in relation to the Robodette findings.
00:06:36
Speaker 2: The second one is ongoing.
00:06:38
Speaker 5: It's into Breton's defense tires, the things we've been talking about, how he handled or mishandled them. We don't know her conclusions. The third one we literally don't know. We just learned about it last night. It was only mentioned in the context of a complaint about Breton's conduct.
00:06:54
Speaker 1: Can you identify did it relate to the commissioner in any way?
00:06:59
Speaker 7: As I've said, I commenced a complaint investigation into a complaint i'd received about the conduct of the commissioner.
00:07:05
Speaker 3: So let's talk about this concept of a conflict of interest here, if Brereton is connected with the ADF in some kind of formal way, and there have been photos circulating of him wearing army fatigues, for example, while he was Commissioner, the conflict of interest there is what that there might be some kind of corruption allegation that emerges from the Defense Force itself, and that, if so, how big a deal would that be? Could he not just recuse himself, for example, for those sorts of referrals.
00:07:34
Speaker 5: So the problem is a perception one. Primarily, it's that, as you said, he appears in uniform, that he has ongoing work with defense personnel defense referrals, of which there have been many, we believe over one hundred to the NAC. Defense is potentially the NAC's biggest customer. Allegations that have been made in relation to defense material, defense acquisitions, defense matters generally, we're talking about billion dollar contracts here. Now we have the head of the Knack who has since finally has recused himself from those referrals. He's recused himself after having presided over them for two years. For more than two years, the question to me now is what happens to all of those investigations that he presided over for two and a half years. Do they get revisited who do they get revisited by? Are they situations that were influenced by Brereton? Of course they would have been here was the head of the commission. So we have a genuine, deep seated problem here.
00:08:47
Speaker 3: Does this take us in the direction of wondering why Brereton was appointed commissioner in the first place. Nothing to do with his ability, but just because of the situation that he was inevitably in.
00:08:57
Speaker 5: I think there are serious problems about his original appointment, and I don't think they've been adequately discussed. I know that several integrity experts in the legal field, for example Jeffrey Watson SC they believe that the Commissioner of the KNACK should never have been a defense figure. The military is a hierarchical organization. It's generally secretive. They don't deal well with transparency and accountability issues as a culture, and I think the method of appointing all of the commissioners and deputy commissioners in the first instance was problematic. The KNAC had the run of the field when they opened this organization. It was a brand new integrity organization. They could have had former judges, they could have had scs. They ended up with the least qualified combination of deputies permitted under the Act.
00:09:48
Speaker 2: It was almost like it was built to.
00:09:50
Speaker 3: Fail coming up. Does Breton's resignation actually fix the knack? You've identified the conflict of interest as a major issue and the way that appointments have been made to the knack. Does Breton's departure change any of that or fix any of those concerns.
00:10:23
Speaker 5: I think potentially a lot will be changed by his departure. I think some of it depends on who they appoint next. So I think the alber EASi government is a poor track record when it comes to appointing commissioners. They need to appoint someone who is top draw, completely unimpeachable, has the best possible qualifications.
00:10:43
Speaker 2: They need a transparent, rigorous process.
00:10:46
Speaker 5: They'll need someone that the legal community gets behind, that transparency experts get behind. Because Breton's left a serious mess at the knack. It's not just the conflicts. This is an organization with a serious deficit of public trust. There's the pile of defense investigations. There's only two deputy commissioners remaining. They have a track record of precisely zero major corruption findings from seven thousand referrals. With a staff of over two hundred people. They've never made a major corruption finding.
00:11:17
Speaker 3: Perhaps we should celebrate the fact we live in such a corruption free country, Nick, mean, that's another way to look at us.
00:11:22
Speaker 2: Oh, isn't it? Isn't it great? Wally?
00:11:25
Speaker 5: Yeah, I can barely laugh about it at this point.
00:11:28
Speaker 3: That you've mentioned some concerns with the appointments of commissioners in the way which is done. I suppose that raises the question of the design of the KNACK at the beginning of the whole process. Do you see design flaws here that would need government or legislative intervention?
00:11:42
Speaker 2: Not that many.
00:11:43
Speaker 5: Actually, the main problem I think was the lack of public hearings.
00:11:49
Speaker 2: The KNACK hasn't had any public hearings.
00:11:52
Speaker 5: It's only obliged to have them in exceptional circumstance. Apparently we have never come across an exceptional circumstance that requires a.
00:11:59
Speaker 2: Public head hearing.
00:12:00
Speaker 5: Yet otherwise to me, it's actually it was an issue of personnel and approach, I think, apart from the lack of public hearings, I don't think the problem was a legislative one.
00:12:11
Speaker 3: Well, you mentioned the privacy and secrecy element of it, as I recall, the argument for that was that the problem with public inquiries into corruption is that the minute you are investigated, the political damage is so severe that a judgment is rendered irrespective of whether or not you get cleared, and that that would ultimately just be too damaging to public officeholders who may not have done anything corrupt, and that this would just be a totally unworkable situation. You say you think they should fix that. Do you mean making it all public or do you think there is still some room for private hearings to take place.
00:12:46
Speaker 5: An investigation has to jump over several hurdles to reach the level of a formal investigation. I don't think anyone is saying that all of their investigations should be secretive. I think the New South Wales IIKAK is an excellent mode. They have public hearings when they choose to, when they think it's appropriate.
00:13:04
Speaker 2: Most of their work is done behind the scenes.
00:13:07
Speaker 5: Confidentiality is absolutely obligatory for an anti coruption organization. But once you reach a certain level where you know that there is a serious corruption matter to discuss, that it's a public matter. I think there have to be public hearings. With private investigations, all you end up with is an investigation report. At the end of years of investigation, you'll get one day of headlines, maybe you'll get two days of headlines.
00:13:33
Speaker 2: And then it will be gone again. We don't get an.
00:13:35
Speaker 5: Understanding of the depth of the corruption that has been investigated, compared to, for example, a royal commission like the Robot Royal Commission. The only reason this became a public issue and became so widely known was because we watched the blow by blow in public of Catherine Holmes's Royal Commission hearings.
00:13:54
Speaker 2: Now we need the equivalent of that for the knack.
00:13:57
Speaker 3: I would say there will be people in New South Wales who argue that the problem you have with IKAK is it just swept everything up, so you end up with you barrio'farrell resigning over a bottle of grange, and that's the same situation as you know, Edio bed.
00:14:09
Speaker 5: I've heard that argument well lead, but I would counter by saying the New South Wales's IKAK is the most respected and admired anti corruption organization in the country that actually should be the model according to public polling and according to one integrity experts say, I mean, we keep talking about the grange bottle that comes up a lot. No one was obliging him to resign over that. That was his choice, and I think it's entirely reasonable that politicians occasionally take a fall for doing the wrong thing. Is that not a reasonable thing to expect about politicians that they have integrity standards?
00:14:48
Speaker 2: As in that was his choice.
00:14:49
Speaker 5: He wasn't obliged by the AKAK to resign because he'd received or mishandled.
00:14:54
Speaker 2: A bottle of grange. I think public scrutiny is really important.
00:14:58
Speaker 3: So you've set out some things you would like to see by the way of reform, some criticisms you've made of the way the Albanezi government has handled this. Are you optimistic at all your vision will become reality.
00:15:09
Speaker 5: I'm not optimistic necessarily, but we have to believe that it's possible to improve this organization. We have to fight for a proper National Anti Corruption Commission. I know that there's been talk of critics of the NAC. I know there was a defensiveness by Paul Burton. We actually believe we critics believe in the importance of a National Anti Corruption Commission.
00:15:32
Speaker 2: We just want it to be better. Everyone wants it to be better.
00:15:36
Speaker 5: So to me, it's very much a case of pessimism of the intellect, but optimism of the will.
00:15:43
Speaker 2: We have to believe it's possible. Nick, thanks so much, thank you.
00:16:02
Speaker 8: Also in the news, it's been revealed that the number of NDIS participants expected to be shifted off the scheme under new eligibility rules is considerably higher than first thought. Health Minister Mark Butler announced last month that the number of participants set to be exited or shifted from the NDIS would be at least one hundred and sixty thousand, but documents tabled in the Senate on Wednesday show the government is hoping to reduce current numbers by two hundred and forty one thousand participants by mid twenty thirty one. And the federal government is suing the manufacture of pfas or forever chemicals found in firefighting foam at twenty eight defense bases across Australia. It's seeking two billion dollars in damages, the government's largest ever legal claim. The Attorney General, Michelle Rowland, says multinational Corporation three M withheld information and misrepresented the effects and environmental risks of the foam. I'm Ruby Jones. Thanks for listening. Seven AM will be back tomorrow
