(Image: Gorkie/Private Media)

If you didn’t think Australian democracy was dysfunctional before this week (where have you been?) you have no legitimate basis for doubt now.

In Canberra a small rump of climate denialists resisted even a token climate policy unless they were handed billions in porkbarrelling. And the government blocked an inquiry into how a minister could seriously claim it was fine to accept personal gifts worth hundreds of thousands of dollars from anonymous sources.

In Sydney, a former premier described his shock at the failure of his successor to undertake the most basic governance requirements around millions of dollars in grants while occupying the position of state treasurer. In Victoria, the IBAC hearings into the squalid, disgraceful Victorian Labor Party rolled on. There was also the minor matter of two corrupt NSW Labor ministers being sentenced to prison for their crimes in the 2000s.

The upside, if there was one, is that at the state level, politicians face some kind of accountability for their egregious misconduct. Not the faux-accountability of the media conference or the parliamentary proceeding, but that of an empowered independent integrity body. One of the characteristics of the week was the contrast between politicians or former politicians and staffers appearing before integrity bodies and their usual performance in the media or parliament. In the witness box, there’s no ignoring questions, or rejecting their premise, or refusing to answer them; none of the tricks of the media trade are available. And what a difference it makes.

Even so, there’s an element of luck to that. IBAC is only probing the weeping sore of the Andrews government because federal MP Anthony Byrne decided corruption inside his own party was a hill to die on. In NSW, ICAC has only ended up focusing on Gladys Berejiklian because Daryl Maguire’s conduct was so egregiously crooked it began wiretapping him. And, of course, in Canberra there is no integrity body to investigate the widespread, indeed almost systematic, corruption of the Morrison government.

Each of the scandals demonstrates design features of our democracy that make post-fact anti-corruption bodies necessary.

For example, we allow influential interests and the very wealthy to buy access to and influence over decisionmakers. Fossil fuel companies continue to dictate the terms of the climate debate in Australian politics, with the pantomime of the government’s 2050 target really a struggle between two parties heavily reliant on fossil fuel donations to determine what climate figleaf policy to adopt to ward off international condemnation.

We allow the process of buying and exercising access and influence to remain hidden from public view, with minimal disclosure rules — and even fewer now that the Morrison government has announced, through its backing of Christian Porter, that anonymous personal donations are acceptable for MPs. Henceforth, why not bribe a crossbench MP to secure the passage of favourable legislation via a blind trust? There’s no reason you need ever be found out.

We still allow politicians far too much discretion with their use of electoral and ministerial resources, such that branchstacking as a virtual full-time taxpayer-funded role became a feature of the Andrews government — just as taxpayer-funded electioneering by the Victorian ALP was a feature in the “red shirts” scandal.

And branchstacking arises from the way we’ve allowed our political system to be run by hollowed-out political parties propped up by public funding, the benefits of incumbency and donations, leaving party branches as shells that can be moved around by ambitious party powerbrokers.

And the discretionary allocation of public funding — in the view of politicians across the political spectrum, the very core of democracy — remains a process riddled with partisan and, perhaps, personal self-interest, rather than a rigorous process of determining the public interest in the use of precious taxpayer funds.

Each of these features incentivises soft corruption, partisanship and porkbarrelling and the abuse of public funding — outcomes that anti-corruption bodies have to clean up afterwards if and when they come to light.

Curbing donations, subjecting interactions between public officials and private interests to much greater transparency and removing most of the discretion that politicians have in relation to funding — whether for their own office purposes or the use of grants and programs — is the only way to reduce these incentives. A federal integrity body worthy of the name is still necessary beyond that.

We have a political system that far too heavily relies on the goodwill and good faith of those within it. When malign actors come along — like the Morrison government, or Victorian Labor — the system too readily bends to misconduct and corruption. The answer is a more rigorous system, not hoping some better participants show up.