Australia's Anti-Corruption Bodies: Strengthening Trust?

This volume is the first comprehensive overview in book form of Australia's network of anti-corruption commissions. Australia is the only Westminster democracy with such bodies, whose antecedents derive in part from developments in Asia rather than elsewhere. Seven of the nine commissions are analysed by relevant experts, from Australia's first anti-corruption body, the New South Wales Independent Commission Against Corruption formed in 1988, to the most recent, the National Anti-Corruption Commission established in 2023.

Given anti-corruption commissions exist in all nine Australian jurisdictions and several have been operating for over three decades, now is an appropriate time to assess and compare: how these different bodies perform; their roles compared to ad hoc royal commissions; the different factors that led to their formation; their various powers; controversies, successes and failures; their impact on civil liberties; relations with executive government and parliament; issues of accountability; their overall impact and effectiveness; and their place in the architecture of modern Australian government.

In identifying and explaining the similarities and differences of anti-corruption bodies across the jurisdictions this volume asks whether there is an ideal model? Has there been any learning by later bodies from their predecessors? Has the just formed NACC, for instance, reflected any lessons learnt from all the previous state and territory bodies that went before it?