When is a Cabinet not the Cabinet?
When the Prime Minister says that it is. Professor Spencer Zifcak Senator Rex Patrick has won the right to access documents from the National Cabinet. Scott Morrison should never have tried to keep them secret. The National Cabinet has been operating more or less...
The gaping hole in ministerial accountability – Julian Gardner AM
Both major parties decline to allow ministerial staff to be questioned by parliamentary committees. Who then holds these staffers to account? The Statement of Ministerial Standards states that ministers must accept responsibility for their staffers’ actions. But do...
Rorts, Porkies and Pork Barrelling with Stephen Charles and Anne Twomey
Join us for our next event in ART's discussion series 31 August 2021 - 5 pm to 7 pm. Have we developed a tolerance for politicians treating the public purse as a resource for maintaining their own party in power? Does no one mind that individual MPs benefit from using...
Easy Lies & Influence – ABC Interview
Warning of the consequences if corruption is left unchecked! See here for a great interview on ABC Radio National with Fran Kelly today (2/8). In Easy Lies & Influence, Fiona McLeod AO SC, Senior Counsel and Chair of the Accountability Round Table, explores corruption...
Data and privacy with Victorian Information Commissioner, Sven Bluemmel
ART's discussion series - data and privacy - July 2021 See here for the recording: Australian Governments are encouraging us to provide more and more personal data to be centrally stored and used by it to provide us with its services. The data we supply to government...
Accountability and the Rule of Law – ART workshop, 21 July, 6.15 pm
This event is co-sponsored by Accountability Round Table and Deakin University. Accountability and the Rule of Law. Government Accountability and the Rule of Law are two fundamental features of liberal democracy, recently lauded by Prime Minister Morrison. As the name...
The first task is to find the right answer…. Public service and the decline of capability
The Jim Carlton Annual Integrity Lecture was delivered by Glyn Davis AC, Distinguished Professor of Political Science on 7 May 2021 at the Melbourne Law School, Melbourne University - a collaboration between the Accountability Round Table (ART) and the Centre for...
Why should we tolerate self-serving politicians?
Dr Colleen Lewis, ANU, writes in the Canberra Times this week: The time has come for hypocritical and self-serving political decision-making to cease. For too long our members of Parliament have either made themselves the exception to the rules they impose on others,...
Rorts register
The Accountability Round Table has developed a register of notable recent rorts or alleged rorts at Federal and State level. We define a rort as ‘any arrangement or practice that enables, or results in, the misuse of public resources, assets or powers for personal or...
Integrity Bill workshop
This Workshop on 29 January is your opportunity to contribute to ART’s submission on the Commonwealth Integrity Commission Bill (CIC) to the Attorney-General’s Department. The workshop is your opportunity to contribute to ART's submission on the Commonwealth Integrity...