Saturday, October 22, 2011

Window Dressing #auspol

A tweet from Paul Barratt this week reminded me about the shortcomings of some of our government agencies. Especially those that have a watchdog role and the ability to expose corrupt and unethical behaviour.

Some of these agencies are intended to be window dressing. Ombudsman offices, Child Support agencies, Equal Opportunity commissions, Anti Corruption agencies and a raft of others exist to create the impression that governments are actually concerned about these things. When often they are not.

Many of these agencies and their services were created with great reluctance and much fanfare - and sometimes every opportunity is taken to remove or reduce funding and to make it difficult for their staff to do a top quality job.

They should be celebrated when they do succeed despite the best efforts of their political masters.

A few have had spectacular successes. I can't identify them here but their people know who they are.

There are probably a couple of books in it - but until we get an electorate that is awake and alert it will be a waste of time.

And it has been amusing to follow the ducking and weaving of our state governments - some of whom are resisting the creation of anti corruption agencies. Eventually they will give in and the agencies will be created - but probably not ever funded properly.

Investigation and exposure of these tactics is the real work of our mainstream media - but they don't do it. Perhaps that will change when Rupert leaves the building.

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