Accountability Round Table Executive Membership
The Accountability Round Table is a non-partisan group of citizens with diverse backgrounds (academics, lawyers, politicians, journalists, authors) who are concerned with the current erosion of honesty and integrity in our democracy. The Accountability Round Table is...
ART’s Victorian election survey
In the lead-up to the Victorian election, the Accountability Roundtable asked all candidates to respond to a range of questions concerning their support of integrity and accountability measures. Neither the Labor nor Liberal parties have responded. In fact, of the...
As politicians resist a Federal ICAC, Australia becomes more corrupt
This article BY ART member David Harper, appealing for a "Federal ICAC", appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald 14 November 2018. https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/as-politicians-resist-a-federal-icac-australia-becomes-more-corrupt-20181112-p50fib.html As...
The case for a National Integrity Commission
The Accountability Round Table through Fiona McLeod SC and Professor Colleen Lewis, has written to the Prime Minister on 1st October, putting the case for a National Integrity Commission. That letter, and its underwhelming departmental reply are reproduced below. 1...
Freedom of Information – Our Submission to Senate Committee
The Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee’s inquiry into the Freedom of Information Legislation Amendment (Improving Access and Transparency) Bill 2018 was set up following the introduction of this Bill by Senator Rex Patrick on 22nd August 2018. The Bill...
Political parties and voter data – what checks and balances?
Ever wondered what political parties do with the data they collect on you? Its amazingly unclear, especially since the Privacy Act does not apply. Equally obscure is how they pay for the software and analysis and what links the software has with other data collection...
‘Guardian’ Transparency Project
The Guardian Australia newspaper has been running a project "The Transparency Project", featuring a group of articles on their Government Accountability investigations over the week 17th to 21st September. They have aggregated them together on one page along with some...
Agencies spend big to block FOI requests
ART's Tim Smith has tirelessly pursued the parlous state of the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner, where funding has not been reinstated and one Commissioner has been doing the work of three. Tim's letters containing the arguments for refunding and...
Sick Victorian politics – Colleen Lewis
Colleen Lewis, member of Accountability Round Table has been tireless in pursuit of self serving government actions that breach principles of good governance - especially breaches of the principle that public office is a public trust. In this article below she takes...
Public office as/is a public trust – David Solomon
The following paper on concepts of Public Trust, by David Solomon, longstanding member of Accountability Round Table, was given at the Australasian Study of Parliament Group (ASPG) conference held over July 19 and 20th, 2018. David is a former journalist, who after...
New Ministerial Code of Conduct
On Thursday 30th August, the new Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, released a set of Ministerial standards. These may be found at https://www.pmc.gov.au/resource-centre/government/statement-ministerial-standards . We reproduce them here so you can refer to them, and so...