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ABC News
5 days ago
- Politics
- ABC News
Australian and NZ anti-corruption bosses embroiled in 'chaos' at ICAC PNG
Papua New Guinea's peak anti-corruption body is on the brink of implosion, senior staff say, as its three commissioners, who hail from Australia and New Zealand, level criminal allegations at each other. The country's Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) began operating in 2023 but has been hamstrung by feverish leadership tensions. Deputy commissioners Graham Gill and Daniel Baulch have accused commissioner Andrew Forbes of suspected corruption and abuse of power, alleging in a letter that he secretly manipulated ICAC legislation to give himself exclusive power over key agency functions. Meanwhile, Mr Forbes has referred his deputies to police for alleged misconduct involving the authorisation of travel and accommodation costs. Several sources have told the ABC almost all the agency's expatriate staff, including multiple Australians, are likely to resign, stripping the organisation of expertise needed to fight corruption. They have described an environment of "chaos". One staff member, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the situation was "disgraceful" and the organisation had become "completely dysfunctional". It comes at a crucial time, as Papua New Guinea fights desperately to avoid being grey-listed by an international anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing watchdog. Kerenga Kua, an opposition MP and former head of the PNG law society, told the ABC the paralysation of ICAC was disappointing for PNG, which may lose more than a billion dollars to corruption each year. "After many, many years of decay and decadence at the hands of white-collar crime … we were looking forward to a bigger, better and brighter future," Mr Kua said. "The whole thing, the way it's been handled at the ICAC level and at the Appointments Committee level is truly regrettable." When the ICAC was set up two years ago, there were high hopes it would mark a turning point for PNG in combating corruption. The commissioners were selected by a group — chaired by PNG Prime Minister James Marape with representatives from the opposition, the judiciary, the Public Services Commission and churches — known as the Appointments Committee. But things at PNG ICAC turned south when the agency began to investigate its own commissioner, Andrew Forbes, early last year. "We reasonably suspect that the commissioner has engaged in a course of corrupt conduct," Mr Gill and Mr Baulch wrote in a letter to the Appointments Committee last July. The next month, ICAC PNG commenced a formal investigation into Mr Forbes, codenamed "Operation North". The investigation culminated in an arrest warrant being authorised last November, accusing Mr Forbes of abusing "the authority of his office". Operation North alleged Mr Forbes misused his position to secretly change laws, effectively giving himself exclusive power to probe politicians and public officials, according to a copy of the warrant seen by the ABC. The warrant said Mr Forbes allegedly changed the wording of key ICAC regulations so that only qualified lawyers could conduct hearings and make orders, directions and summons. Mr Forbes was the only commission member who fit that description, the warrant said, which meant those changes effectively gave him singular powers and stripped the ability of the deputy commissioners to carry out core responsibilities. It further alleged that Mr Forbes deliberately concealed the changes to the regulations from the deputy commissioners and other ICAC staff. The letter to the Appointments Committee also accused Mr Forbes of using his personal email address to message a senior public servant who was being investigated by the commission. The commissioner did not respond to the ABC's request for comment. Mr Forbes is a lawyer from Brisbane who was previously a partner at the commercial law firm Turks Legal and has no apparent prior experience in anti-corruption work. His LinkedIn page states that his areas of expertise include commercial litigation, administrative and regulatory law. After the arrest warrant was authorised, Mr Forbes obtained a court injunction stopping ICAC and the police from arresting him and conducting investigations into the matter while it was before the Appointments Committee. Over the weekend, Mr Forbes reported deputy commissioners Graham Gill and Dan Baulch to police for alleged financial misconduct. The ABC understands Mr Gill and Mr Baulch have since left PNG. Mr Baulch is a former detective with Victoria Police in Australia and Mr Gill was a senior executive in charge of evaluation, intelligence and corporate affairs at the Serious Fraud Office in New Zealand. The fraud and anti-corruption squad confirmed it was investigating "serious allegations" related to fraudulent approval of travel and accommodation expenses. In a written response to the ABC, the deputy commissioners said they believed they had been "subjected to retaliatory behaviour" and that they would strongly defend the allegations". In a media release, Mr Forbes said he "did not tolerate misconduct at any level" but did not provide further details about the deputies' alleged misconduct. It is not the first accusation levelled against a deputy commissioner. In August last year, two weeks after the complaint against him was lodged, Mr Forbes referred Mr Baulch to the Appointments Committee. He claimed Mr Baulch failed to disclose a prior criminal charge in his application for a PNG visa and other immigration documents. He also accused Mr Baulch of bullying and harassing Mr Forbes's assistant when she was interviewed by Mr Baulch as part of the Operation North investigation. The commissioner further claimed Mr Baulch falsely made out he was authorised to approve ICAC requisitions and expenses. Almost a year since the matters against Mr Forbes and Mr Baulch were referred to the Appointments Committee, no decision has been reached. Several ICAC insiders have told the ABC they believe the Appointments Committee failed disastrously in its handling of the allegations against the deputy commissioners. "It's been terribly handled," one source said, speaking anonymously. "I think if they'd done their job properly then it wouldn't have got to the extent is has." Peter Aitsi, who chairs anti-corruption organisation Transparency International PNG, said when serious allegations of misconduct are made, the "right thing for individuals to do is step aside". Do you know more about this story? Contact Mr Aitsi said an oversight committee should be appointed to resolve the issues as quickly as possible and restore ICAC's functions. Prime Minister James Marape did not respond directly to the ABC's questions. In a public media statement, he said the Appointments Committee had asked for a detailed report and legal review to be submitted to PNG's cabinet for consideration. "Once recommendations are endorsed, cabinet will take swift and responsible action to restore stability within ICAC," he said. "This institution must not fall. It was created to be a cornerstone in the fight against corruption — not a battleground of personalities and power struggles." Many are concerned the recent issues within ICAC could worsen PNG's already-bleak chances of being grey-listed by the international anti-money laundering watchdog, the Financial Action Task Force (FATF). FATF "grey lists" countries it believes have weaknesses in its regimes for combating money laundering and terrorist financing. The country has already been put on notice by FATF and faces a review in October this year. Stephen Howes, an economist at the Lowy Institute in Australia, said PNG was grey-listed in 2014 — but removed quickly because it passed legislation the following year to strengthen the anti-corruption framework in the financial sector. "But now the view is that not enough has been done to implement that legislation," he said. "The recent ICAC implosion will do nothing to dispel that impression." Professor Howes said being grey-listed would make it harder for PNG's new banks to operate internationally. Grey-listing would also be a reputational blow for PNG, which marks its 50th anniversary of Independence in September this year. Despite the concerns, Transparency International's Peter Aitsi said the PNG public still had a strong belief in the value of ICAC. "We need to work quickly to reset and restore that trust again," he said.
SBS Australia
23-05-2025
- Politics
- SBS Australia
Sussan Ley seeks Coalition resolution, while David Littleproud's leadership in question
Sussan Ley seeks Coalition resolution, while David Littleproud's leadership in question Published 23 May 2025, 9:06 am Australia's riven parties of opposition are on course for a weekend reunion after the Liberal Party held internal crisis talks on a possible resolution. After a week of acrimony between the parties, The Nationals' decision to break away has provoked a campaign to undermine the leadership of David Littleproud.
News.com.au
23-05-2025
- Politics
- News.com.au
Federal politics: Former Nationals leader Michael McCormack delivers ominous statement on David Littleproud
Former Nationals boss Michael McCormack has delivered an ominous statement about leader David Littleproud as chaos and confusion continues to roil conservative politics in the wake of Labor's stomping May 3 election victory. Mr McCormack, speaking on Friday morning, said he was 'ambitious' for Mr Littleproud. While ostensibly a statement of support, the words echo those used by Scott Morrison before he moved on Malcolm Turnbull to snatch the Liberal leadership. Mr Morrison delivered the now-famous line during an August 21 press conference with then-prime minister Turnbull as leadership speculation mounted over the Liberal Party's future. Mr Morrison hugged Mr Turnbull and said 'this is my leader and I'm ambitious for him'. Mr Morrison became prime minister on August 24. Mr McCormack declined to state clearly whether he supported Mr Littleproud as leader into the future. 'He's been messy, he's been really messy and for people on the outside looking in they just wonder what the hell is going on,' Mr McCormack said. The Liberals and Nationals split on Tuesday, ending a decades-long Coalition designed to present a united front against Labor. The decision to walk away, pushed by Mr Littleproud, was controversial and does not hold unanimous support among Nationals. But the shock break-up could be suspended, with both party rooms meeting on Friday to discuss a possible patch-up. Mr Turnbull has weighed in on the split, calling the move 'stupid'. 'This holding a gun to the Liberal Party's head, which is what the Nats are doing, is really, really unwise, stupid politically,' he told the ABC. 'This is just so bad politically for them, so unwise.' Why the Coalition split Mr Littleproud abandoned the Coalition over four policies: divestiture powers for supermarkets, support for nuclear power, a proposed $20bn regional Australia fund and greater telecommunications coverage. He wanted guarantees from newly elected Liberal leader Sussan Ley that she would support the measures. But his demands clashed with Ms Ley's vision of a 'nothing adopted and nothing abandoned' approach to reviewing policies in the wake of the Coalition's decimation at the federal election. On Thursday, Ms Ley said Mr Littleproud had re-entered 'good faith negotiations'. 'Earlier today I wrote to, and met with, David inviting him to re-enter good-faith negotiations. I am pleased he has accepted,' she said in a statement. 'In relation to the policy positions proposed by the Nationals party room, consistent with my consultation commitment, the Liberal Party will consider these, utilising our party room processes. 'It has always been the Liberal Party's objective to form a Coalition and we welcome the Nationals' decision to re-enter negotiations.' There is broad support among Liberals for stitching back a Coalition with the Nationals. Senior Liberal Dan Tehan, speaking to ABC Radio on Friday morning, said he was focused on 'making sure that we come together and we get outcome that is in the best interests of this nation'. 'We all have deep concerns that we're going to see an arrogance out of the prime minister, given the size of the election result,' he said. 'We have a big job on behalf of the Australian people in making sure that we hold the Albanese Labor government to need a proper functioning opposition.' Labor now holds at least 93 seats in parliament, while the Liberal Party has just 28 and the Nationals 15 in the 150-seat parliament. Parliament returns in late July.
ABC News
09-05-2025
- Politics
- ABC News
In Australia the conclaves continue for the top jobs in politics
The conclave is over. Habemus Papam! Overnight, the Catholic Church has made a decision that is at once historic (first American Pope) and high risk (creating from scratch an American leader who will be more famous than Donald Trump). For the 133 cardinals, it's time to go home. But in Australia, the conclaves continue. Not just for the Liberal Party, but among the National Party and the Greens too. Never before have these three political groupings suffered — simultaneously, and as a result of the same electoral event — such an extinction event of leadership. And while the Labor Party's headline news from Saturday was triumph — So many seats! So many smiling women! — the truth is that the influx of new talent has challenged the existing pecking order so sorely that the crepuscular conclave of the NSW and Victorian Right factions are delivering scenes of backroom carnage that would make even a Borgia Pope blanch. These negotiations do not involve the wearing of robes and zuchetti, and they do not take place under Michelangelo's The Creation of Adam. But they are secretive, they are brutal, and, yes, a lot of the time, they involve groups of men trying to wrap their heads around why they are not more popular with women. To the Liberal Party first, where the organisational trauma inflicted on Saturday night is so new, and so deep, that early attempts at number-counting defaulted to include MPs who — like inexplicably itchy phantom limbs — were simply no longer there. An outfit habitually dependent on the healthy rivalry between conservatives and moderates floundered in a brand new hellscape in which neither grouping has a surviving leader. Angus Taylor is the leader of the conservatives now, we assume. He has yet to be sighted since election night, granted. But it is the hope of the tribe that he turns out to be more John Howard than Howard Hughes, moving forward. Sussan Ley — is she a moderate? She is now! The previous moderate leaders were — more or less — Victorian Senator Jane Hume, with a side helping of David Coleman, who was shadow foreign minister for the election period, after former moderate leader Simon Birmingham retired. (Ley wanted that job, by the way, and as deputy leader she was nominally entitled to demand it, but these Liberal Party rules do sometimes have a way of evolving a lady-shaped carve-out when push comes to shove. Bookmark this thought.) Coleman has been popped on light duties, okay no duties, by his electorate of Banks, now the property of Labor's surprised but beaming Zhi Soon. And Senator Hume seems to be in some kind of purgatory, and in any event is in the wrong chamber for party leadership. Times are tough. You know they're tough, because the Liberal Party is seriously considering electing a female leader. It's all moving pretty fast, in a conclave that is happening where we can't see it, but from which periodically puffs of smoke burst forth, like the truly extraordinary news yesterday that Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price has defected from the Nationals party room to join the Liberals. This sounds, to the untrained ear, like a minor thing. Aren't they all part of the Coalition? Isn't she just moving to a different seat in the same room? Actually it's utterly explosive, because the Nationals have already lost deputy leader Perin Davey in a slight Senate vote misadventure on Saturday. To lose another Nat from the Senate takes them from six senators to four. This has serious consequences for party resourcing. And for the Liberal Party, the addition of Senator Price to the already-fraught leadership skirmish is like the addition of a scorpion to a jar full of confused baby mice. Ley — who this morning declared that her leadership would enhance the party's appeal to women — is now not the only woman in the mix, and there is talk that she could team up with Taylor as a leadership duo. Is it ironic that in order to find a woman when they finally decide they need more, the Liberal party had to shoplift one for their Coalition partner? Yes, it is. But these are unusual times. The sky is thick with portent. It couldn't be more different from last time, when the Liberal ranks — thinned methodically by voters who didn't love Scott Morrison — found themselves nevertheless obliged by the merciless laws of mathematics to elect as their leader someone who was a slightly newer and slightly more banana-scented model of the same guy. The electorate has come back for a second go at explaining the 2022 concept, and this time the Liberal conclave's waters are turbid and ill-disciplined. People are ditching on each other and circulating files of past blunders. Women are involved. I remind you: WOMEN ARE INVOLVED. Anything could happen. They are expected to convene in Canberra next week. Across this vast and unprepared continent, other conclaves smoulder unseen. The Greens — having conceded yesterday that the Melbourne seat of leader Adam Bandt is gone — now move into their famously opaque leadership process. It's too soon to assess how this will go. And realistically, we won't know until it happens. The Greens are the most leak-proof party operation in Australia, probably more so than the real conclave. But the acting Greens leader, Tasmanian Senator Nick McKim, this morning ruled himself out of contention, so the field is probably Queensland's Larissa Waters, South Australia's Sarah Hanson Young, and NSW's Mehreen Faruqi. But the strangest conclave — and the blokiest (in domestic terms I mean, line honours and a tip of the zucchetto always of course going to the Vatican) — belongs, surprisingly, to the Australian Labor Party. Yes, this is the party that just won a historic victory and increased its parliamentary ranks after one term of government, in a way that actually never happens. Want even more? Here's where you can find all our 2025 federal election coverage Catch the latest interviews and in-depth coverage on ABC iview and ABC Listen Yes, this is the party that has achieved gender parity 30 years after making some very hard decisions about quotas at the urging of some extremely firm-willed women including a young Penny Wong. And yes, this is the party that — having experienced uncomfortable chafing from its tight margin of victory in 2022 (77 seats, in a House that requires a majority of 76) — now finds itself in the elasticated pants zone of a 90-plus seat count. Ten years ago, the ginger group of Labor MPs who plotted to get rid of Julia Gillard and reinstall Kevin Rudd — most active among which was the former NSW Right MP Joel Fitzgibbon — used to call themselves The Cardinals. And — wow. The Right faction has really donned the robes again this week. The new influx of talent is playing merry hell with the existing power structures, delicately titrated over generations by the watchful factions. The NSW Right — which has long observed an orderly queue for leadership rendered no less matronly by the fact that it is all-male — has been struck amidships by the unexpected success of the Victorian Right, and the Left. Numerically, it is obliged to surrender a cardinal from its cabinet ranks, thanks to the iron laws of factional arithmetic, which determine the membership of the cabinet, if not the specific job allocation, which is the pleasure of the prime minister. The NSW Right — whose western Sydney heavyweights include Tony Burke, Chris Bowen, Jason Clare, Michelle Rowland and Ed Husic — does not want to surrender a cardinal. In a party swamped by exultant new female MPs, the power struggle now rages among men of the Right. The Victorian Right appears to have sacrificed Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus, without his consent, to make way for newcomer Sam Rae, who just won the seat of Hawke. The NSW Right has countered, it seems, by offering the scalp of Minister for Science Ed Husic. Again. What is fascinating about these conclaves — and do not underestimate the ugliness of these tussles, as disagreements between believers are always the most horrible of all — is the extent to which they miss the point. The biggest headline story from election night was the massive swing towards Labor, and Anthony Albanese's dominance of the House of Representatives, which is the chamber of government. But the much more powerful, and much less evident under-story is the evolving realisation about where the real power is after July 1 this year. The Labor Party, after that date, will have more seats in the Senate than the Coalition. This is unprecedented in this century. And despite the humiliations of the Greens in the Lower House, including the loss of the Greens leader, the Greens will hold the balance of power in the new Senate. In order to get legislation passed through the Senate, the Government will have to persuade either the Greens or the opposition. This is a sobering reality both for the Greens and for the Coalition, in different ways. It will be true no matter how the residual Senate races pan out, including the transfixing arm-wrestle between Jacqui Lambie and Lee Hanson (daughter of Pauline) in Tasmania. This is the story of real power, and where it lands. Forget all the pre-election talk of deals and minority government, which Anthony Albanese — the grizzled managerial veteran of Julia Gillard's minority term — effectively downplayed during the campaign. Forget the Teals. Forget all the Labor blokes jockeying for front-bench spots on the House of Representatives' green leather. These are struggles around personal ego and legacy. How do we know this? Here's a clue: Andrew Charlton, who just held on to the marginal seat of Parramatta and is among the most clearly gifted people of the NSW Right — isn't anywhere near the head of the Cabinet queue, and it's not because he's a man. It's because he's in a queue, and the queue is full of dudes. Forget, even — honestly, you can afford to, because they are going to be a hot mess for quite some time — who becomes Liberal leader. Whoever it is will almost certainly be a placeholder. Because the real power, after July 1, is in the Senate. The real deals on what gets through and what doesn't are going to be struck on red carpet, not green. Who's in charge in the Senate? Let's check, because hardly anyone ever mentions it, but it's about to be screamingly important. At present, the government's leader is Penny Wong, who manages Senate business with the assistance of Albanese's implicitly-trusted Finance Minister Katy Gallagher. The Coalition's Senate leader is Michaelia Cash, flanked by South Australian Liberal Anne Ruston. Who knows who the Greens' new leader will be? But if (as is possible) the job goes to either the Senate leader Larissa Waters or deputy leader Mehreen Faruqi or long-serving South Australian senator Sarah Hanson Young, who manages the party's Senate business, the quiet pattern is confirmed. The current theatrics feel blokey, but the future is female. Don't tell the cardinals.
