Icac commissioner calls critics ‘buffoons’ after Scott Morrison labels it a kangaroo court.

Extract from The Guardian 

Independent Commission Against Corruption

Stephen Rushton’s comments come after the prime minister criticised the NSW Icac model.

Scott Morrison is opposed the NSW model of public hearings, describing it as a ‘kangaroo court’.

Australian Associated Press

Mon 2 May 2022 15.40 AEST

First published on Mon 2 May 2022 13.25 AEST

Critics who labelled the New South Wales anti-corruption watchdog as a “kangaroo court” – a phrase used by the prime minister in his criticisms of the agency – were “buffoons” who were launching unfounded attacks, a parliamentary committee has heard.

Independent Commission Against Corruption (Icac) commissioner Stephen Rushton told a parliamentary review that references to the body as a “kangaroo court” weren’t just misleading but were also untrue.

People who made those comments were “buffoons”, he told the review into the annual reports of the Icac and the Inspector of the Icac.

Rushton said the Icac had been in place for more than 30 years, exposing corruption and maintaining trust in public administration.

“To those buffoons who have repeatedly described this commission as a kangaroo court, I would say three things,” he said.

“First, it is deeply offensive to the hard-working staff of the commission. It undermines the institution. Second, there are vast differences between the functions of the commission and a court.

“Those differences are readily accessible, and there has been much written about those vast differences. To describe us as a kangaroo court is not just misleading, but untrue.”

“To make an uninformed comment that this commission is a kangaroo court has a real capacity to undermine the commission’s work, and just as importantly, public confidence in public administration.

Last month, Scott Morrison criticised the Icac while under pressure to commit to a federal anti-corruption body.

“I’m very critical of some of the Icacs, particularly in NSW,” Morrison said.

Morrison is opposed to the NSW model of public hearings, describing it as a “kangaroo court”, and criticised an investigation which exposed former premier Gladys Berejiklian’s previous personal relationship with former NSW MP Daryl Maguire.

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The Icac’s chief commissioner, Peter Hall, told the inquiry that the body’s extensive powers were given to the agency “on purpose”.

Hall said that an understanding of how the Icac functioned would reveal to any critic that “he or she is simply wrong”.

“Corruption involves acts performed under conditions of great secrecy, often concealed and there is seldom an eyewitness witness to it,” Hall said on Monday.

“It requires painstaking investigations to recreate the circumstances that previously existed that led to the suspected corrupt conduct,” he said.

“Occasionally, there is misguided and unfounded criticism of one or more in our community of the commission’s powers and its work.

“Whatever the motive or the purpose behind such criticism may be, a proper understanding of the legal conditions, processes of the oversight safeguards, will reveal to the misguided critic that he or she is simply wrong,” he said.

Last month, Hall told a budget estimates hearing the Icac had been forced to abandon some of its investigations and scale back others because of a lack of resources.

The key performance indicators for the commission had been revised down and reports had been delayed, he said.

Icac investigations are complex matters that can take extended periods of time.

“Those engaged in corrupt conduct do not leave paper trails and they destroy any material to show what happened,” Hall said.

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Appearing at a separate parliamentary inquiry last year, Hall said the commission’s “capacity to expand, develop and broaden our operations is constrained by the budget we get”.

In 2018, a KPMG report that analysed the functioning of the Icac recommended it have an increase in staff, which would have cost $4.1m.

An application for this was put to Treasury, but it was refused.

Hall also pushed for further parliamentary discussion of an independent funding model for the Icac, saying the present system of funding was seriously deficient.