Abuse and Corruption the Australian Way

By John Warhurst
Eureka Street
June 27, 2014

http://www.eurekastreet.com.au/article.aspx?aeid=41622#.U66dGfl_uSp

We should open our eyes and take in what multiple government inquiries are telling us about Australian society at the moment. It is not enough to focus on just one; we should consider the revelations cumulatively. It is little exaggeration to say that almost no major institution in our society, public or private, has been left untouched. We should join the dots and cry.

There are many inquiries underway. The four most significant are being conducted by the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, the Royal Commission into Trade Union Governance and Corruption, the New South Wales Independent Commission against Corruption, and the Defence Abuse Response Taskforce. Each of them is broad and the preliminary findings and the content of public hearings, on top of what we already know from previous investigations and trials, point towards damning conclusions.

A significant focus of the Child Sexual Abuse commission has been dioceses and orders of the Catholic Church. But hearings have also focused on the terrible shortcomings of government-run institutions, other churches and secular non-government organisations, including the Salvation Army, the Scouts and the YMCA. The police and the legal profession have also been implicated.

ICAC has examined many cases of criminal and/or unethical behaviour in public life. Both sides of major party politics are implicated. Numerous former and current ministers look guilty of corruption and/or association with dubious if not criminal behaviour. MPs, lobbyists, businessmen, fund-raisers and party officials have been caught in the net, revealing a dark underside to public life.

The Trade Union commission is investigating alleged corruption and widespread malpractice and bullying in many parts of the labour movement, including big unions like the Heath Services Union and the Australian Workers Union. At least one major company is also involved.

An ABC Four Corners report recently cast further light into the long-running inquiries into sexual harassment and abuse within the Defence Force. Investigations are ongoing under Justice Len Roberts-Smith, chairman of the Defence Abuse Response Task Force. There have been several damning reports over the last decade; hundreds of cases, many involving serving officers, remain unresolved. There are calls for a Royal Commission, and Roberts-Smith reckons sexual abuse in the Defence Force is much greater than has ever been publicly admitted.

Publicity about these inquiries tends to be too narrow. Reporters have their specialities and readers have their pet guilty parties: governments, unions, churches, political parties or the military. Too few join the dots.

There are, however, common themes. In each of these institutions there are not just a few bad apples. Whole institutions are dysfunctional and their cultural problems include lack of transparency and giving primacy to their own self-interest. Senior office-holders have abused not just their members but also public trust. It is not enough to say that these institutions also do good things.

Furthermore, this institutional malfunction indirectly touches nearly all of us through our association, support, or identification with one or more of these institutions.

We should look beyond individual inquiries and institutions and take a much broader view. Once the facts have been established, the criminals punished and the victims compensated, the bigger picture of social dysfunction becomes more important, if history is not to be repeated.

Government must take its share of the blame and bear its share of compensation to victims. But stronger or better government is not the solution to bad individual behaviour, no matter how much the law is enforced or new regulations introduced.

Because these institutions are largely run by men the bulk of the perpetrators in all sectors appear to be men.

Finally, individual human responsibility is central. The problems are so widespread that no one political, religious or economic philosophy has the answer. Very few of us can be absolved from contributing in some way to the maintenance of these institutions and to the cultural understandings that support these abuses.