In October 2014, when Bruce Lander was South Australia’s Independent Commissioner Against Corruption, he issued a press release with a jaw-dropping headline: “Six South Australian police officers arrested as a result of investigation headed by the Independent Commissioner Against Corruption.” The arrests were the result of an investigation known as ...
Read More »Eddie Obeid and Ian Macdonald verdict can give clarity on official misconduct
The conspiracy trial of former NSW politicians Eddie Obeid and Ian Macdonald is drawing to a close. And it is already clear that the verdict, whatever it is, will provide guidance for government ministers and public servants about the nature of misconduct in public office. When the judgment is delivered ...
Read More »Bleak pace of ICAC justice
In Bleak House, Charles Dickens had to invent the marathon case of Jarndyce v Jarndyce in order to poke fun at slow justice. In contemporary NSW, there is no need for such fiction. Reality is bad enough. Dickens, unlike some in NSW, was aware that justice delayed is justice denied ...
Read More »Nile legislation could right numerous ICAC wrongs
Fred Nile has wasted no time in making good on one of the promises he made in March before the NSW election. Nile had signed a pledge with other members of the state’s Upper House. They had committed themselves to compensating innocent shareholders who had been wrongly caught up in ...
Read More »Clear air to repair NSW parliament’s costly blunders
Gladys Berejiklian’s freshly re-elected government in NSW now has four clear years in which to make amends for two of the most expensive errors ever made by a state parliament. It will cost millions of dollars to set things right, but the sooner the NSW Premier addresses this disaster, the ...
Read More »Axed coal licence left family venture with loan to repay
After talking to the NSW government for five years, drilling contractor Warwick Howarth felt he had no option but to resort to litigation to recoup the $28 million loss that he says was imposed on him by the government of former premier Barry O’Farrell. “We pretty much exhausted all avenues ...
Read More »Crucial decision for misconduct in public office
Repercussions from a brief hearing yesterday in the NSW Supreme Court are set to affect every politician and public official. The circumstances in which they risk criminal prosecution over decisions that bestow benefits are now more certain. This will act as a long-overdue guide for anti-corruption commissions whose work, until ...
Read More »Crossbenchers pledge to seek compo over NuCoal Resources
The next NSW government will be confronted with a bloc of crossbenchers in the upper house, possibly holding the balance of power, demanding millions of dollars in compensation for innocent victims of an ICAC-driven expropriation of private property. They have pledged to use their numbers in the upper house to ...
Read More »Crossbench move for NuCoal compensation
The next NSW government will be confronted with a bloc of crossbenchers in the upper house, possibly holding the balance of power, who are demanding millions of dollars in compensation for innocent victims of an ICAC-driven expropriation of private property. They have signed a pledge acknowledging that 3400 innocent shareholders ...
Read More »Keneally evidence ‘withheld’
The extraordinary tale of Ian Macdonald has a very clear lesson: the findings of the NSW government’s anti-corruption commission are not conclusive and anyone who treats them as such does so at great risk. The quashing of Macdonald’s conviction for misconduct in public office by the NSW Court of Appeal ...
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