AUSTRALIA
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Authority derives from legitimacy. Credibility derives from transparency. By these definitions, the Royal Commission has fair authority but lesser credibility, for a few reasons, which should be addressed.
Established, under public pressure, by former Labor Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, the commissioners have the backing of the full force of government authority. There were some legitimacy problems, mostly coming from the rushed nature of the commission’s establishment.
This meant that there was no debate on who should be appointed as commissioners. Government has the authority to merely make the appointments. Legitimacy derived from authority, but this is not a democratic principle when it occurs this way round. Dictatorship has authority but no legitimacy.
Another aspect of the rush to set up the Royal Commission, which caused concern, was that less than a week was given for submissions as to the Terms of Reference. This meant, in reality, that only the large organisations with most to lose from revelations, entered submissions. Public debate on issues such as which categories of abuse were to be considered did not occur. There were many other issues of concern to many people, but time constraints were invoked to limit the enquiry to institutional responses and to child sexual abuse within institutions.
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