Shouts from the desert

It's been a busy week for those of use with an interest in principles of government accountability. We had the report of the second Truth Overboard inquiry in the Senate, allegations by a public servant against Minister for Health, Tony Abbott, and one I didn't bother commenting on until now - the report of the judicial inquiry into the Centenary House affair.

The reason I didn't mention the Centenary House inquiry was that I did not see it as particularly important. Unless you follow political news very closely, you could be excused for not even knowing of its existence, or even what the Centenary House issue was. In a nutshell, about 10 years ago, the Labor Government took out a long term lease on a building called Centenary House at a price three times the market value for such a lease. The owner of the building was the ALP. Thus the Ministers of the ALP Government entered into a financial deal with the ALP that was extremely beneficial to the ALP, and detrimental to the taxpayer.

The reason I comment on this now is that Howard has come out and said that the previous Labor Government should be held accountable for this. Now in principle Howard is correct. The whole transaction stinks of an abuse of power by the ALP Government of the time. However it is quite meaningless to talk about holding a Government accountable when that Government only exists 10 years in the past. But Howard's next line "If this had happened in the time I've been Prime Minister, quite properly I'd have been held to account and the minister for finance held to account," beggars belief. We have the most unaccountable Prime Minister and unaccountable Government since Federation - for him to trot out this lie is an absolute disgrace.

The fact that the offending Government is history is one reason why I felt the Centenary House inquiry was not worth commenting on. The other reason was that I felt the whole issue was a trivial matter when compared to the issues we face with today's Government.

But the PM's comments bring a whole new flavour to the issue. He has quite rightly pointed out that this is something for which the Government of the day should have been held accountable. Indeed he had established a judicial inquiry for this purpose. Yet that was not far out of the range of business as usual in Canberra, and there are several issues which rank as much more serious on the accountability scale that relate to the present Government: going to an illegal war; misinformation on government affairs for political advantage; suppression of government information for political advantage; bribery of an MP by the Government.

Howard was willing to establish a judicial inquiry into the acts of a Government that is long gone, yet he refuses to establish such an inquiry into his own Government, which stands accused of far more serious wrongs.

This is not to say that the ALP would have acted differently. Rather this is a symptom of a system that is fundamentally broken. Government party control of the House of Representatives means that there is no real chance of anything happen to enforce accountability until long after the issue becomes irrelevant.

One solution is to have a strong third party, or independents, control the balance of power in the House of Representatives. That is the ideal situation, but it is one that is vulnerable at future elections.

Another solution is the Federal Anti-Corruption Commission - a standing Royal Commission like ICAC, which has the power to investigate Government misconduct on referal from any complainant. The Centenary House inquiry merely enforces this. With the FCAC, Centenary House would almost certainly have been investigated when it could make a difference, rather than a decade after it has ceased to matter.