Australia may be moving into chickens-coming-home-to-roost time. It is now royal commission and public inquiry season. Those in reasonable prospect involve the influence of money in politics, how cheaply players are bought, who gets what and for what, and what moral and ethical violations the public can expect as players prostitute their power and access, to their own private ends.

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Such inquiries always come at inconvenient times, and have unpredictable courses, even for those who have tried to narrow terms of reference, fix the referee and arrange the result. What looms this time is not so much the findings we may expect, which will probably be dire for the parties and individuals involved. It will instead be the impact of such findings on an electorate which has shown itself to be angry, cynical and jaundiced about the political process. Particularly when one side is as bad as the other.

Victoria, under its new premier, is to have a royal commission into its infrastructure programs, and the relationship between Labor politicians and the CFMEU. It may not prove corruption of politicians, but is bound to show incompetence, mismanagement, undue influence and appalling stewardship of public money. There are only four months before the next election, but one can be pretty sure that voters in Victoria, and for that matter the rest of Australia, will have heard some evidence supporting serious allegations before they go to vote.

NSW is having an ICAC inquiry into efforts by members of a conservative faction of the Liberal Party to take control of the party administration at federal, state and local government level. The allegations are said to involve serious corruption because their efforts were subsidised by unlawful donations from development and building interests, efforts to influence the outcome of development applications, and attempted corruption of several aldermen, this time by Labor operatives.

The Albanese government is awaiting the report of a royal commission into the Bondi massacre. But it is, or ought to be, braced for potential inquiries into other open sores. There is alleged skulduggery, whether by politicians, public servants, or lobbyists and vested interests attempting to improperly influence government decisions. Calling such inquiries is not entirely a matter of its own judgment, because the so-far-inert National Anti-Corruption Commission may try to prove itself relevant, and some independent watchdogs, such as the Auditor-General and the Ombudsman are capable of making a great fuss, entirely unwanted, perhaps particularly on defence spending. Once the fire is lit, the interests of government are more likely to be served by open inquiries, rather than ones behind closed doors. It's a matter of trust, and Albanese, for all his majority, does not have a lot of credit in that bank.

It's nearly always about money in the end. In the wrong hands or pockets or wrongly spent

Some of the scandals involve the connection between politicians and political donors; others additionally involve the government's chronic secrecy and evasion, and failures of accountability, transparency and proper process. Others involve the opaque and smelly way by which a group of privileged insiders - many of whom were politicians, and senior bureaucrats - get special access to ministerial ears, and decisions in their favour that mere mortals cannot get. The getting of access is greased with political donations, and as was seen at the recent Labor conference in Adelaide, the sale by the party organisation of "rights" to lobby ministers, and places at the dinner table. The appearance was of a government - from the Prime Minister down, appearing to be for rent to the highest bidder. It's always an unattractive, and usually fatal impression to be conveying to ordinary voters but is additionally damaging because Albanese in opposition had railed against the rorts and corruption of purpose of the Morrison government and had promised to be better. It is an open question whether he is in fact worse.

It erodes trust and the assumption that........

© Canberra Times