Corruption complaints have decreased by almost 70 per cent since the state’s crime and corruption watchdog shifted the threshold for what constitutes major corruption.
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Acting senior executive officer for the corruption arm of the Crime and Corruption Commission, Paxton Booth, told the commission’s parliamentary oversight committee on Tuesday that since July 1, 88 new complaints had been received about corruption.
That compared to 287 for the same time last year.
But he told the committee that “some caution needs to be extended to extrapolating those early figures to what will occur throughout the rest of the year”.
The government passed legislation to shift the commission’s focus last month.
Under the new threshold, corrupt conduct means anything that “adversely affects, or could adversely affect, directly or indirectly, the performance of functions or the exercise of powers of a unit of public administration, an individual person holding an appointment in a UPA, or results or could result...in the performance of functions or the exercise or powers mentioned...that is not honest or is not impartial, or involves a breach of trust.”
The misuse of information or material acquired or in connection with a public appointment, or the use of information for a personal benefit or detriment to another is also considered corruption that requires the attention of the CCC.
Anything below that threshold should be investigated by the government department or the Public Service Commission.
Acting CCC head Ken Levy who is still the subject of an investigation into whether he deliberately misled a parliamentary committee, said under the new legislation the “strategic role of the commission is to make sure that we do the most important things first”.
“If something is of higher priority then priority has to be given to more serious matters, which we have done recently but in the past the definition that required that something could amount to corrupt behaviour, the commission then, the test was so low, resources were spent doing all sorts of things which probably prevented an inadequate coverage of many more serious matters,” he said.
“So we had a lot of things going on concurrently.
“But the emphasis now, based on the test and also based on the role of the commission, is that we would have to look at the most serious matters and make sure there is a return, but also that we focussed on the most important matters of corruption and the most important organised crime over less important matters.”
