Friday, May 14, 2010

Independent Commission Against Corruption. A Mike Rann smokescreen!

In a recent article, Attorney-General John Rau is quoted as saying he believed proponents of a local ICAC “have so far made a very poor case”.

I can but wonder to what proponents he has heeded. Certainly not me, and I am the poster boy for all that is wrong with the present system.

Starting with a single complaint in March of 2000, my anti-workplace bullying and corruption campaign devoured 10 years of my life, as I ducked and weaved my way through a myriad of sometimes overlapping investigatory bodies within the Justice Department. The crowning glory was a 2009 Parliamentary Inquiry, but not even that publicly unearthed the more licentious shenanigans of the government agency in question.

At one particular point I was dealing with four discrete bodies: the Government Investigation Unit, the Equal Opportunity Commissioner, the anti-corruption branch of SAPOL, and the state Ombudsman. Oh yes, and there was the Crown Solicitor’s Office, Workplace Services, Workcover, the Commissioner for Public Employment, and there were more!

My dear Mr Rau. Had I been able to take my early suspicions to a body other than one of the government’s own, just maybe I would not have suffered through years of torment and illness. Your system DOES NOT WORK. In particular, you CANNOT investigate yourself.

And don’t insult the people of this state with that worn old diatribe about a national ICAC. This party room smokescreen fools no one.

(Submitted to The Advertiser, 14 May 2010)