Joel Jenkins
The NACC: The high price you pay for corruption
Let’s all cast our minds back three years to July, 2023, when the much-anticipated National Anti-Corruption Commission officially started life… Or, as it’s turned out, officially started spending hundreds of millions of dollars of your money because the NACC needs to justify its existence while it uncovers a handful of low-level public servants doing pissy little things that could have otherwise been investigated by their relevant departments as per usual.
The NACC was a dangling, shiny bauble of election bait offered to the Australian people by Anthony Albanese, a so-called “corruption commission with teeth” as Albanese spruiked on the 2022 election trail.
Alas, beset by its own paranoid self-serving secrecy, a bizarre misunderstanding of what its primary function should be, and headed up by a NACC Commissioner who likes to collect multiple investigations into his integrity the way others collect fridge magnets, the NACC has been, in almost anyone’s estimation, a monumental failure.
In its three short years, the NACC has cost Australians well over $220 million. And for that – what have the punters got? You might want to look away now because the answer isn’t pretty.
Since it opened in July 2023, the NACC has managed to procure one successful conviction* in its own right, (yes, one) and even then, the NACC rode side-saddle on the issue with the main investigating body, the AFP. Of the eleven convictions it boasts of on its website, all but one were investigations launched by, and worked on, by the previous anti-corruption authority, the Australian Commission for Law Enforcement Integrity (ACLEI). In its own right, the NACC has only managed to start one investigation resulting in a conviction.
So, to date, the NACC has achieved one conviction and no public hearings.
But fear not, because while you and everyone who voted for the NACC thought we’d get an investigation authority that would tackle corruption, the NACC was busy reworking their role to what suited everyone best – the role of the gravy train riders.
When the NACC took over the ACLEI, they shifted their Canberra headquarters approximately 1100 metres away at a cost to Australian taxpayers of $789,913. You’ll be pleased to know though that the NACC’s CEO and the NACC’s Commissioner don’t have their offices in Canberra, so we didn’t have to pay for them to shift. For some strange and very costly reason, the CEO is based in Brisbane while the Commissioner is based in Sydney, and you pay for them to fly backwards and forwards to Canberra. What’s even more heartening is, you pay for their accommodation and meals as well. Lucky you. (See p.78-79 here.)
But don’t think the other staff have missed out. You paid $1.2 million for the NACC’s rented Melbourne offices to be “refurbished” so the Melbourne based Deputy Commissioner could have a suitable office there – and a car space. And don’t forget you also paid and continue to pay millions for the refurbishment and rent of the NACC offices in Brisbane and Sydney, as well as Canberra. One conviction. No public hearings.
To date, the NACC’s Commissioner, the three Deputy Commissioners, the CEO and the remaining staff of the NACC have racked up over $3.7 million in travel expenses in over 500 of something they like to call “presentations and engagements”. Results for the Australian public? One conviction. No public hearings.
In the year from July 2023 and June 2024 when the NACC was understood to be investigating Robodebt, the Commissioner Paul Brereton managed to fly all expenses paid to Vienna, Austria, to Hong Kong, and even Atlanta, USA, all at a cost of $75,609. Not to be outdone, the other Deputy Commissioners and the CEO in that year chalked up even more travel costs, bringing the group of five’s travel expenses for the year, plus all the extra staff, to $1.1 million. What’s more, you’ve paid $388,300 to date for the NACC’s software to manage all that never-ending travel.
No wonder they couldn’t find time to look into Robodebt – who the hell’s got that sort of time when there’s all that travel and a complimentary Qantas Chairman’s club to be taken advantage of?
And let’s not forget that when he wasn’t flying around Australia and the world, the Commissioner spent at least some of his time complaining to the NACC’s Inspector General over a tweet by yours truly and the public’s cheek in complaining about the Robodebt decision. Yes, it’s all about democracy and transparency, just not for the people who question it.
The NACC has an approximate staff of 220, but the five individuals at the top take in a combined salary package of just over $3.7 million a year. In the three years of its operations, taxpayers have paid out over $11 million for the salary packages of just five people – yes, five people. $11 million. One conviction. Zero public hearings.
But don’t forget, Australia has also recently slid down in international global rankings on tackling corruption from 10th to 12th place during the NACC’s time too, which is something I doubt they’ll be spruiking in their annual report but, at least they’ve got all their superannuation contributions covered.
As recently as December, Paul Brereton and an unidentified “senior manager” jetted off to Qatar. It’s not clear how much Australian government and public service corruption there is in Doha, Qatar, but Paul Brereton and his travelling deputy must have found some of it because you paid for their eleven-day trip (Dec 11-21, 2025). In hindsight, perhaps the NACC’s acronym might be better suited to WWWPDWYM – What Wealthy White People Do With Your Money. One conviction. No public hearings.
It’s very evident that the NACC – due to a lack of direction and oversight about its core role, plus paranoid over-the-top secrecy, incompetence, and a conflict averse Albanese government – has managed to turn itself into a multi-million dollar education unit focused on flying around Australia and the world talking about corruption instead of investigating it.
In short – the NACC’s main job appears to be talking about their job.
It is a cruel, callous and sneering insult to the victims of Robodebt that the Commissioner, the Deputy Commissioners and the CEO of the NACC have spent more on their taxpayer funded luxury travel in one 24-hour period than some Robodebt victims were pursued to their grave for.
The National Anti-Corruption Commission is one of the Albanese government’s biggest failures. It is a gravy train for Labor stalwarts and ex-Labor staffers and a cleverly disguised, very shiny shopfront to please the punters – a shopfront that spends an eye-watering and disgraceful amount of your money, and yet has nothing to show for it.
The Commissioner resigning and arrogantly muttering out the door as he goes will do nothing to reset the organisation. It has been steered from the start in entirely the wrong direction. The Australian public expected transparent and honest investigations and reporting into what they saw as a declining sense of trust and behaviour in politicians, public servants and the parasitical industries that feed off them. Until Anthony Albanese, the Cabinet and the Attorney General review and rearrange the NACC’s priorities and outrageous expenditure, it will forever remain in the public’s eyes – a failure.
***
*The NACC is not able to prosecute in its own right. Instead, it hands over potential criminal matters to law enforcement and public prosecutors for any resulting convictions.
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