A Word From the Commission
A Clarke and Dawe tribute
This sketch is written in the tradition of John Clarke and Bryan Dawe, whose weekly interviews, first on A Current Affair and then for many years on the ABC’s 7.30, set the standard for Australian political satire. It is offered as homage, not impersonation. John Clarke died in April 2017, walking in the bush he loved. Bryan Dawe continues to work as a writer and performer. Neither has any association with this piece beyond the debt every Australian satirist owes them. Copyright in the original Clarke and Dawe works belongs to Roderick Willows Pty Ltd and Bryan Dawe.
Clarke plays the Commissioner of a federal integrity body. Dawe interviews.
DAWE: Thanks for joining us.
CLARKE: Not at all, Bryan. Good to be here.
DAWE: You’ve handed down a finding on the community infrastructure grants. Three years in the making.
CLARKE: A thorough assessment, yes.
DAWE: And you found there is a corruption issue.
CLARKE: We did. Serious and possibly systemic, we concluded. The language doesn’t get much stronger in our line of work.
DAWE: So you’re launching an investigation.
CLARKE: No.
DAWE: No?
CLARKE: We’re not investigating. We decided against it.
DAWE: Why not?
CLARKE: Proportionality, Bryan. We have to be proportional. We only have so many staff, so many hours in the day. We can’t go chasing every multi-billion-dollar admission of serious possibly systemic corruption that wanders through the door.
DAWE: Isn’t that your mandate?
CLARKE: We prefer to think of ourselves as existing for the prevention of corruption. And prevention, as they say, is better than cure.
DAWE: How do you prevent corruption you’ve already found but won’t investigate?
CLARKE: Education.
DAWE: Education.
CLARKE: We’re developing a comprehensive case study module. PowerPoints, mostly. Some handouts for the regions. It’s quite ambitious.
DAWE: Won’t that require knowing what happened?
CLARKE: We know what happened. We wrote it all down. Six pages, single spaced. There’s a timeline, a cast of characters, one of those flowcharts with the boxes and arrows. Very professional.
DAWE: Have you spoken to anyone involved?
CLARKE: We haven’t needed to. The documentation was extensive.
DAWE: Supplied by whom?
CLARKE: The people concerned. Self-reporting is very big now, Bryan. We’re encouraging a culture of transparency.
DAWE: So the people who allocated grants to their own golf clubs have transparently reported that they allocated grants to their own golf clubs.
CLARKE: And we’ve transparently reported that we’ve read their reports. Everyone’s being terrifically open.
DAWE: The golf clubs keep the money?
CLARKE: Twenty-two million, yes. Much of it has gone on new irrigation. Very green, actually. Environmental.
DAWE: And the public gets?
CLARKE: Our letter. And the PowerPoint, eventually. We’re calling it Lessons in Governance: A Case Study in Proportionality.
DAWE: Right. A Mr O’Grady spent three years of his own time, unpaid, compiling the evidence. Documents, witness statements, financial records. He brought it all to you at considerable personal expense.
CLARKE: Extraordinary effort. Genuine public spiritedness.
DAWE: What does he get?
CLARKE: He gets to be a case study, Bryan. Not everyone gets to be a teaching moment. We’re acknowledging his contribution to the educational literature.
DAWE: He wanted justice.
CLARKE: Yes, well, justice is expensive. Education is cost-effective. It’s the difference between a royal commission and a workshop. We’re workshop people.
DAWE: Does your letter to him say his evidence was credible?
CLARKE: It says his submission was comprehensive.
DAWE: Not that it was true.
CLARKE: We haven’t investigated, so we can’t verify. Verifying would require investigating, and we’ve ruled that out. On grounds of proportionality.
DAWE: I see.
CLARKE: We do take enormous care with the tone, Bryan. Warm but inconclusive. Empathetic yet non-committal. It’s an art form.
DAWE: The New South Wales ICAC found pork-barrelling can constitute corrupt conduct. They investigate. They refer. There are consequences.
CLARKE: They’re a state body, Bryan. Different animal entirely. Different resources, different appetite. Different stomach.
DAWE: So the bar is lower federally.
CLARKE: The bar is precisely where we’ve decided to leave it. That’s rather the advantage of being the ones who hold the bar.
DAWE: What happens when the next Mr O’Grady arrives? With evidence of a fifty million dollar fraud. A hundred million.
CLARKE: Then we’d develop a multi-module curriculum. Possibly a webinar series. Integrity in Practice: Lessons from the Field. We might bring in a facilitator. Catered morning tea.
DAWE: But no investigation.
CLARKE: Investigate what? We’ll have already written the case study. The facts won’t have changed. Just the font size.
DAWE: Last question. If someone watching has evidence of federal corruption, serious, systemic, documented, what should they do with it?
CLARKE: Send it to the states. New South Wales has ICAC. Victoria has IBAC. They’ve kept their appetites. We’re on a special diet here at the Commonwealth. All presentation, no substance. Very light. Won’t trouble the digestion at all.
DAWE: Thanks for your time.
CLARKE: Good to be with you, Bryan.
Also by David
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It must be difficult to establsh a commission concerning integrity of any type in Australia if one cannot find professional levels of integrity in candidates. One heard, long ago, that NSW law graduates received a quiet welcome full of meaning, “Welcome to the brotherhood of the law.” Solidarity in every way was expected, even though one gave drunken boasts of getting a murderer off even though guilt was “known.” Who could trust the bought integrity of the flexible heartless?
We’re never going to get decent governments when factional loyalty and”solidarity” trumps the good of the country.See:Ed Husic and obsessive secrecy.Might as well forgo the outrageous costs of elections and jobs for the boys and employ professional administrators…and management consultants…who would notice the difference?How would they be appointed?Lotteries, or draw straws.Politicians in their current iteration are like Real Estate Agents…clipping the tickets on the way through.
Phil, an excellent comment. The grass-roots need to be free of the canker of graft and collusion. Not only do we need to test candidates’ for probity, we need to take a long hard look at what we condone and whom we platform. I am shocked, for example, at the hearty platforming of a notorious racist by our ABC on national television.
Harry, you are right. There is a direct link between the factional animal and the MP who is happy to put his own conscience on hold, especially when indulging the outrageous lobbyists who strangle our democracy. The gun clubs are but one recent example.
This pattern plays out across many issues: party discipline often trumps independent judgment, and well-funded interest groups amplify that pressure. In the gun control space, we’ve seen accusations fly about donations from sporting shooters’ organisations and related groups influencing stances on licensing, imports, and storage rules—particularly in Queensland and federal circles involving the LNP and some Nationals figures. Critics argue this creates a chilling effect on MPs who might otherwise support tighter safeguards post-Port Arthur or in response to rising firearm numbers, while supporters frame it as legitimate advocacy for rural recreation, hunting, and target shooting.
The deeper problem isn’t any single lobby—whether guns, mining, unions, environment, or pharma—but the incentive structure. MPs enter as representatives of their electorates and principles, yet factional loyalty, preselection battles, and the need for campaign funds can erode that. Conscience votes are rare precisely because they expose this tension. When lobbyists (outrageous or otherwise) get privileged access or shape policy behind closed doors, it fuels cynicism: voters see outcomes that feel pre-cooked rather than deliberated in the public interest.
Solutions worth considering include stronger donation caps and real-time disclosure, independent parliamentary ethics oversight, and more frequent free votes on divisive moral or rights-based issues. Ultimately, the “factional animal” thrives because the system rewards it. Restoring room for individual conscience requires both cultural pushback from voters and structural reforms that make transparency the default and independence politically viable. What specific aspect of this bothers you most, or which other examples stand out?
The only thing I might add to that David, is the poisonous effect of allowing basically one individual control of 70% of the local media, who amplifies the demands of those vested interests,because he’s one of them,not to mention the deliberate bias and misinformation, and often outright lies.
The necessary changes are not going to come from our current crop of baked in toadies, and as I’ve often shouted,vote for Greens or Independents.Of course, as has been shown,Albo and Farrell are throwing up as many obstacles as they can.Democracy my arse.
His little, rah, rah speech yesterday about AI might sound good, but implementation will be a whole other matter.The Tech giants will have other ideas..no doubt backed by Murdoch’s garbage.
2027? let’s not rush into anything.What the Labor Party can do in the meantime is exchange the manager with a leader.
Geez ….. I do not know why, but possibly because I read too many articles on AIMN, but the glacial pace of ”reform” by this Albanese LABOR government makes voting for the Greens a possibility.
A tamed Bandt interview on 7.30 Report 150726 included more bite that any Labor government Minister. Doubtless the COALition misgovernment ”opposition” will manage to shoot itself in the Suppository and the PHONeys supporters will waken up to the Pawlein wages & conditions rip off, but is Albanese fit to be re-elected in 2028??
Remeniscent of the Operation Bannister report from the NACC as reported in MWM.
Operation Bannister report on two public servants was a case in point. Brereton investigated the awarding of uncontested lucrative Home Affairs contracts to Paladin Holdings for what amounted to sub-par offshore services that involved two members of the Senior Executive Service within Home Affairs in the awarding of the contract.
Those senior executives were referred to pseudonymously as Ms Anne Brown and Mr Carl Delaney. Brown was related to the Paladin principal who subsequently gifted her $200,000 which enabled her to purchase a house. Delaney was subsequently appointed to the Paladin board.
Brereton found no evidence of corruption and the public was no wiser as to the identities of Brown or Delaney.
The report itself also mentions that there was no record of the public servant, under the pseudonym of Ms Brown, having made a written conflict of interest declaration in accordance with her obligations regarding her being a close relative of the Paladin princial, also that she had a personal relationship with the other public servant (pseudonym: Delaney) involved.
Nothing to see in all of this apparently.
Maybe the plot thickens….
https://kangaroocourtofaustralia.com/2026/07/19/the-greens-sell-out-robodebt-victims-and-nacc-complainants/ not sure how accurate this article is.
If its not the plot thickening then it would certainly be the soup Heather.
Is the article accurate? I would be confident it is.
Shane is often quick to jump to conclusions, and some of his conclusions seem a stretch at times, but off the top of my head I can’t think of a time that he was proven wrong.
The nuts and bolts of this are the fact that a number of people who were in power at the time have walked away scott free from Robodebt. The failure of the NACC to deal with the deceit, breach of trust and dishonesty is a blatant and egregious instance of the powerful being above the law.
Irrespective of what good or bad things Gail Furnace may or may not have done, she was an integral part of the mechanisms that resulted in what is an obvious lack of justice in a case that had devastating consequences for so many.
Reading through the articles that Shane has published on Gail Furnace and the NACC, sometimes there appear to be assumptions made that might not be correct, conclusions drawn that might not be consistent with the law or a stretch at best, and so on.
The bottom line, though, and where Shane is right, is that Robodebt victims deserve justice, and they have been dudded by Labor, the NACC it set up, and, given that any member of the NACC could resign if they felt they were inhibited by its design, the commissioners and inspector. To make matters worse when commissioners make bad, perhaps corrupt, decisions and are able to avoid investigation by just being able to resign and walk away from this is wrong, deeply wrong. It should not be allowed to happen.
Shane’s criticism of the Greens, correct me if I’m wrong, seems to be based on two actions of David Shoebridge’s.
Firstly, a perceived lack of action from Shoebridge on Furnace’s findings in relation to the initial NACC decision to drop the Robodebt case; and secondly Shoebridge’s expressing gratitude to Gail Furnace for her work and his soft approach to the decisions made, as made in this passage: “While I disagree with this decision from the NACC Inspector, I remain deeply grateful for the diligence and independence she has shown in her role. Respectful disagreements based on competing public interest principles have a place in any democracy.”
It needs to be remembered that Shoebridge and the Greens are not in power, Labor has the power to change things here. That Shoebridge took such a softly, softly approach is frustrating to me, but not necessarily out of order.
The Greens should continue to seek justice for the victims, as Shoebridge claimed would happen, and take a strong stance on fixing the NACC and reinvestigating this travesty. If not, then as Shane claims, they too will have sold out on Robodebt victims and NACC complainants.
Perhaps that this saga has gone on for so long is justification for Shane’s, as it appears to me, hasty criticism of Shoebridge and the Greens; but again, they are not in power and only have little more than Senate committees with which to hold people to account. Would a more antagonistic approach have achieved anything more at this stage?
The Australian public have the vote, the question is will we hold the designers of this dysfunctional NACC to account?
More power to the likes of Shane as he tries to hold our legal system to account.