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The recent Transparency International report “finding” that Australia slipped 12 places in its Corruption Perceptions Index, and out of the top 10, with a score of 73/100 is utterly baseless and should be condemned. It unfairly smears Australia’s reputation as a country with the highest standards of business integrity.
From my experience of doing business in many countries around the world, Australia is about as corruption free as it is possible for any country to be, given that there will always be a small number of breaches of any law, even given our robust regulatory framework and population which is well educated in the imperative of ethical behaviour. Given that no one is ever awarded perfection on any performance scale, Australia should have scored around 95/100. The missing 5 points would adequately account for the acceptance of certain inappropriate political donations by property developers in the Eastern States.
This report also claims that Uruguay is less corrupt than the United States!
Media reports claimed that key reasons for Australia’s “Score” were:
1. (Allegedly) not having the world’s best practice anti-bribery laws. This claim is patently false. Australia’s laws against foreign and domestic bribery are comprehensive and appropriate. Yes, a small number of other jurisdictions, such as the UK, have more stringent anti-bribery laws. But these laws are unworkable, and place an unfair burden on business by outlawing even minor facilitation payments, which are an unfortunate but necessary condition of doing business in many developing countries. The UK law contains unfair provisions which effectively deem directors to be guilty of bribery in certain circumstances unless they prove otherwise. This goes well beyond best practice into overkill, and creates (yet further) disincentives to fair business risk-taking.
2. The lack of a Federal anti-corruption commission. Australia already has comprehensive anticorruption laws at Federal and State levels, which are rigorously enforced, and anti-corruption commissions in all States. All a Federal anti-corruption commission would add would be the ability to pursue Ministers for misconduct such as unfairly directing Government spending to their own political advantage. This is not an omission which should have cost Australia 27 points on the scale, or more than about two points. Further, any Federal commission needs to have rules of operation which the stain on its State counterparts, which have destroyed numerous careers in cases where no corruption has ultimately been found.
Multinational NGOs such as Transparency International (the author of the report) are often co-opted to the left-wing social agenda, which can impede the credibility of their output. Serious scrutiny must be placed on the people who make up this body and the methodology which it adopted.
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/mapped-corruption-in-countries-around-the-world/
Australian business people who know that our country is largely corruption free should give no credence to this report.
