The National Anti-Corruption Commission chief has rejected calls to quit over his handling of referrals from the robodebt royal commission, suggesting he was being made a scapegoat and insisting neither he nor his agency will be influenced by public pressure.
Paul Brereton told a governance forum on Friday that he accepted the independent Nacc inspector’s finding that he had failed to adequately manage a declared conflict of interest in relation to a past professional association with one of the six people referred to the Nacc for possible corruption investigation.
But the Nacc commissioner was defiant, insisting that what the inspector called “an error of judgment” did not justify stepping down.
“Perhaps the most important lesson is that we are not the best person to manage our own conflict of interest,” Brereton told the annual public sector forum hosted by the Governance Institute of Australia.
“And to the suggestions that I should resign – I think you will have probably gathered my response by now. If every judge found to have made a mistake of law or fact resigned, there wouldn’t be one sitting on the bench in this country.”
Brereton referred to a speech he gave at the same forum last year, in which he remarked on the resignation of then Optus CEO Kelly Bayer Rosmarin over the handling of a nationwide internet outage. He reiterated concern that a “blame culture” deterred people from owning their mistakes.
“Reputationally, there’s been a sacrifice to the gods, if you like, but that’s about all there is,” Brereton said, reiterating his remarks of a year ago in respect of Optus. “If we recognise that the mistakes will happen, accept responsibility for them and put things right, rather than just seeking a scapegoat, we will do a lot to improve culture in the public service. And ironically, a year later, I find myself in that very situation.”
He said he had accepted he “got the balance wrong” and was now “setting about putting it right”.
The Nacc inspector was deluged with complaints after the commission decided against further investigating the referred individuals. In the wake of the misconduct finding against Brereton last month, the Nacc is now having an independent appointee review its decision.
Brereton said he was not there to be popular or to bow to pressure.
“If I’m to be deterred from discharging my duties by adverse publicity, that will undermine the independence of the commission in more than a minor way,” he said.
“It will say that we should avoid making difficult decisions, lest they be unpopular. It will be a statement that our yardstick should be popularity becoming an architect of oppression and a vehicle for vengeance, rather than an instrument of integrity.”
He suggested public expectations did not match the commission’s actual function.
“We are not a complaints handling agency, nor an administrative decisions review authority,” he said, adding that the Nacc would mostly focus on matters that “have not been and are not the subject of investigation by other agencies”.
He blamed leaders for a poor public-sector integrity culture, describing culture as “what people do, not what formal policies might tell them to do”.
Brereton called for a top-down culture of honest, impartial and public-interest-focused decisions “in which matters are reported honestly, without embellishment or omission, and in which responsibility is accepted, including for the inevitable mistakes”.
