Go through the long list of serious crimes, corporate and political scandals, corruption and misconduct that have marked recent years in public life in Australia, and check which ones have actually resulted in serious consequences for the perpetrators.
Nearly two years after the release of the Brereton inquiry report revealing dozens of killings among other war crimes by members of the Australian Defence Force in Afghanistan, evidence for prosecution of 25 ADF personnel, and more than four years on from detailed media reports of war crimes, no one has been charged, let alone convicted.
The “top tier” investigative team headed by former Attorney-General’s Department head Chris Moraitis, established after the Brereton report was released, has barely been heard from. And the senior officers who allowed a culture of war crimes and murder have faced no repercussions either.
Despite more than 500 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander deaths in custody in the past 30 years, no police officer has ever been convicted in relation to any of them. With deaths in custody increasing over the past 12 months, Indigenous people dying while detained or imprisoned is once again becoming normalised. But even after directly killing Indigenous men and women, police are rarely charged, and never convicted.
No senior financial executive in Australia has been prosecuted in relation to the the misconduct and crimes revealed by the Hayne royal commission, including systematic defrauding and misleading of customers that immiserated tens of thousands of Australians, and which has so far cost banks more than $3 billion in compensation.
No one has been prosecuted for the massive money laundering exposed at the Commonwealth Bank and Westpac by Austrac. No one has been prosecuted for the systematic money laundering that went on at the Star and Crown casinos, nor for the cultivation of links with organised crime figures.
Nor has there been any individual accountability for the epidemic of wage theft that has characterised many of Australia’s biggest businesses over the past decade (at least).
The news is no better on the political front. The perpetrators of some of the worst rorts and scandals of the Morrison era, such as Alan Tudge, Angus Taylor and Bridget McKenzie, not merely remain in Parliament but are unashamed opposition frontbenchers. The ministers and senior bureaucrats responsible for the crime that was robodebt may yet face accountability via the royal commission currently under way, but criminal prosecutions are unlikely despite the death toll from a scheme the government knew was illegal from the start.
In Victoria, the perpetrators of the Red Shirts scandal within Victoria Labor have gone unpunished. In Victoria, NSW and Queensland the politicians on all sides who enabled the misconduct of Star and Crown through their weakening of regulators and granting of favours have been untouched by the fallout from investigations into casino operators. Routine revelations of the extent to which bullying and harassment characterise our parliaments elicit commitments to improve, but it’s rare for perpetrators to be held to account — Walt Secord and Eleni Petinos in NSW are almost unique recent examples.
It’s little better in sport. Repeated incidents and reports of racism in the AFL and NRL produce extensive expressions of dismay and commitments to do better, with no one ever being held accountable. The latest revelations of quite extraordinary revelations of racial bullying and workplace abuse of Indigenous players at AFL club Hawthorn seem destined for the same fate — lots of words, yet another inquiry, no accountability.
The most serious fate that can befall the perpetrators of many of the examples listed above is to lose their jobs. Banking executives and directors moved on, casino executives and directors forced out, soldiers asked to show cause, politicians leaving politics. But that’s only in a minority of cases, and in all cases the executives and directors involved can simply move on to another, highly remunerative position.
Only the worst, most egregious perpetrators end up in jail: Eddie Obeid and Ian Macdonald, two of the most corrupt members in a NSW Labor government riddled with corruption, are locked up. Obeid and two former colleagues, Joe Tripodi and Tony Kelly, currently face prosecution.
While there are an array of factors that help shield perpetrators — high standards of criminal proof, defamation laws, insistence on due process for the subject of allegations (due process being something their victims usually never get), weak regulators, cultures of cover-up and silence within institutions, perpetrators having moved to other positions before their conduct is exposed — the result is that Australian public life is characterised by a culture of non-accountability for anyone with sufficient institutional protection.
Corporate executives, police, ADF personnel, football clubs, politicians, judges, directors all know that, unless they break the law outrageously, the worst they can face, and it’s an unlikely fate, is losing their job, and often times they’ll get an equivalent job if they wait long enough for controversy to die down and the media to move on.
These groups frequently end up deploring the lack of trust the public has in institutions: the business leader who laments the lack of support for economic reform; the politician who vows to restore trust on government; the football club executive who talks about the spirit of the game; the military who demand respect for their sacrifice.
Run a crooked system long enough, rig the game often enough, and eventually people wise up: if those with institutional power face no consequences, why should anyone else. Why are only the powerless and the penniless required to pay for their actions?
A national anti-corruption commission is a good start federally, but the push for true accountability needs to go much further than politics.
M-DBA rip-off? The water buy-back scheme? Who’d be left making the tea – let alone drinking it – if an ICAC got stuck into various gNatrorts?
And re accountability, anyone anywhere. GFC anyone….?
100% BK. Those that make the rules or pay those who make the rules. Like taxation, they’re only for us proles.
The Golden Rule still applies – those that have the gold make the rules.
It helps that the rich and powerful have some of the msm in their pockets which allows for stories to disappear abruptly or even go unreported BUT if “we” put a foot wrong the full force of the law comes down on us like a ton of bricks.
Important point and reflects how degraded legacy media has become in informing citizens and residents; in favour of right wing agitprop and manipulation.
A base tactic is to present only a single factor, or at best, a binary of factors to present an issue or situation. However, this dumbing down ignores many other salient factors which then precludes any analysis versus preference for people to ‘don’t think, just (re)act’, ala playing in AFL.
Worse is how it impacts media presenters, reporters and journalists, along with politicians too, in the same media eco-system?
Not only that, but the proliferation of offences of ‘strict liability’. These are arbitrary (I parked somewhere for 15 minutes, if it was 14 I was OK) and next to impossible to defend. In effect regressive taxation, and source of revenue particularly for local government.
What a profoundly thought-provoking piece Bernard!!
Thank you so much for that.
The headline for your article reads:
“War crimes… deaths in custody… political corruption: is anyone powerful ever held accountable for anything?”
In a short answer to your own question, you (In not so many words), say ‘not often’.
If we were for re-frame the question in the following way:
War crimes… deaths in custody… political corruption: why is anyone in a powerful position so rarely ever held accountable for anything?”
Then I think we can explore some more concrete explanations.
For what it is worth (and I know that is not much), I would suggest that the rich and powerful individuals and organizations who really ‘run the show’ in any so-called “Western democracy”, have the legal, cultural, financial and political systems organized in such a way as to not only protect, but also to further, their interests. When one stops for a moment to think about it, you have to ask yourself, “well, why wouldn’t this be the case”. The dominant class in any society makes the rules in order to gain maximum benefit from those arrangements for themselves. If there is to be any change to this arrangement that it only comes about through what might be described as ‘major disruption’ of the kind seen in Paris in 1789 or in Russia in 1917. The lesson to be learnt from history is that the ruling class do not give up their wealth, their power, their influence or their privilege without a fight.
And furthermore, if you dare to challenge them (or even if you are seen to challenge them in any serious way) then you face the same fate as that which befell the democratically elected Chilean President Salvador Allende in 1973.
Of course our contemporary plutocrats are, in the main, a little more sophisticated than the aristocrats of yesteryear. They know that by careful use of the mainstream media (which of course, they own) they can manipulate the masses for their own ends.
More broadly, the plutocracy are able to consolidate their power and influence; and to maximize their profits by keeping the majority distracted with trivia such as sport, alcohol, gambling (grotesquely described as ‘entertainment’), Hollywood or Royal gossip, puerile programs on television and elsewhere and mindless pursuits on social media. The population become consumed by these inanities, which deflect much interest in, or criticism of, the ruling class when it’s nefarious activities are exposed by critical and serious media outlets such as Crikey.
Well said.
160,000 deaths in Iraq following the American invasion – no calls for sanctions or prosecutions