The Risk of Corruption in Australia
Corruption is the major key issue in recent times in terms of business and as well as in other sector. Corruption is the behavior that allows the unethical practices and it is generally related to the monitory issues. Along with this in corruption, there is a high chance of involvement of influential persons like police officers, government officers, CEO of a company. Corruption may happen in government sectors and as well as in private sectors also. There are different forms of corruption and they include mainly bribery, influence peddling,fraud,clientism, extraction of natural resources networking, corruption in education system and as well as in Australian Public Services( APS).The different types of corruption becomes one of the major reasons of headache for Australian government. To minimize the various issues concerning corruption, government of Australia has taken several steps and as well as implemented many laws (Esarey and Chirillo, 2013). Still corruption is there in many systems that may be addressed by the government in near future.
The sectors, which are at the most risky condition concerning the corruption issue, are the process of extraction of natural resources, corruption issues in legislation, monitory fraud, mortgage fraud, and as well as bribery issues. Australian public service sector is a sector where corruption exists. According to a report, since 2012, the economical loss of Australia has touched the mark of $72 billion dollars. Most of the employees of the APS believe that workplace has the problem of corruption. Along with this due to increased in corruption the rank of Australia in corruption index has downed to 13th from 7th and they have the score of 79 right now (Government News, 2018). In the APS system it is suspected that all the tender are not processed in a right and transparent manner and it is mostly happened when the applier of tender has a family member in that government sector (Rowe et al. 2013). Another high-risk sector of Australian corruption is buried in the natural resources. Natural resources are important part of Australia. The most common natural resources in Australia are iron ore, gold, coal, diamond, aluminum (Johnston, 2014). Among them Australia is number one in exporting of coal that is almost 35% of overall international market, gold holds the second place and aluminum is at third position (Nappi 2013).It is so evident that corruption should be in the extraction of natural resources. The areas, in which the chances are very high, are budgeting, licensing and taxation (Busse and Gröning 2013.).In Western Australia and Queensland, the rate of licensing is very poor and this region is prone to be corrupted due to the poor licensing issues (Merrington et al. 2015). Along with this negligence in licensing process is another reason of corruption in Australia (Warren and Palmer 2014). Another major concern is the ‘ revolving door’ that promotes the practice of revolving among the government, industry and the people who are contributing to the political parties in Australia (Perry 2017).In NSW corruption is found in the issues related to granting leases. Active and passive bribery is another important area of concern for Australian government regarding the corruption issue. Among them Foreign bribery is a key area. The term foreign bribery refers to the practice of bribery to the foreign officials. Because of foreign bribery, improper allocation of natural resources happens and as well as economical deformities takes place. It is a serious matter of fear for the government and as well as to the democracy. Foreign bribery by the Australian can cause the hampering in position of Australia in global market (Hernandez and McGee 2014).As this is a very serious issue in Australia, almost 18 bribery cases was found until April 2016. Risks of corruption in banking sector is another important area of concern related to the corruption (Gray, S., Harymawan, I. and Nowland, J., 2016). According to the report of Global Fraud Study,2014 there was 91 corruption cases and they cause severe loss of Australian economy and that costs almost $ 200000 US dollar. In recent years along with the banking frauds, there are also inside trading, mortgage fraud, and kickbacks. The allegation against the senior employees in helping the companies in getting lucrative orders related to that company and in return, they will receive kickbacks from them. It I am very difficult to detect whether the employee has received payments or they have been offered any kind of bribes for influencing the decisions (Spence, 2017). Those employees can be penalized. Although this kind of employee may receive some costly gifts and hospitality. In case of involvement of two or more employees in a corruption case, it is very difficult to detect the corruption. Insider trading is another form of corruption in Australia.
Government Measures to Reduce Corruption
In this method, the employee uses the knowledge of confidentiality in a wrong way to give facilities. Another risk of corruption is mortgage fraud or lending fraud and it is mainly associated with the lenders. The money security of the lender can be challenged by the fraud loan agreement. In this scenario, there may be a fraud signature or a fraud amount of money and that may not be even known by the lender (Rajapakse and Gardner 2014). The risk of fraud is not only threat for the banking and financial sectors but also other industries in Australia are at moderate to high risk zone as well (Lee and Fargher 2013).A new field of Australian corruption is the Australian sports. In recent times, it is seen that misconduct in sports ethics and wrong practices are the main area of concern for the Australian government. In sports, corruption mainly includes the practice of match fixing, leaking of internal information for betting issues, issues related to doping. The corruption related to sports is mainly happened in international scales and there is also involvement of local actors as well. However, the relation between sports and corruption is very much older in nature. Corruption in sports is now incorporated in various sports like cricket, football, athletics, tennis and it should also be mentioned that the badminton and the snooker are less targeted in terms of corruption in sports. In sports, there are many people who can be a part of the corruption and they may be the coach of the team, senior member of the team, physiotherapist and even though the managers as well. In recent time, the Australian soccer team named Southern Stars FC had been convicted for the match-fixing issues and it had been found that the players and the support staffs were engaged in this corruption. In recent times, Australian national cricket team was caught in the field for tampering of cricket ball in the field in a test match. Doping is another form of sports corruption. In this practice, players use drugs to enhance their performance. In Australian athlete was convicted for the use of PIED drug, which is not permissible for use according to World Anti Doping Agency (WADA).According to WADA this drug is scheduled under 7A or 8 sections of prohibition (Australian Institute of Criminology, 2018).
The government of Australia has taken several measures to minimize the corruption in various sectors. In order to minimize the corruption concerning the bribery they have the act named Anti-money laundering, counter-terrorism financing act, and the corporations act. However there is no guideline in Australia that depicts whether the gift is legal or not. In order to resolve this problem there is a guideline named Australian public service code of conduct. In case of corruption, the convicted person may receive the penalty of 10 years imprisonment and fine up to 1.1 million AUD. Government should hold strong position regarding the maintaining of this law to reduce corruption related to bribery fraud. To minimize the risk of corruption in field of extraction in natural resources government should start continuous monitoring programme and as well as licesensing procedure should properly maintained as well. In case of foreign bribery Australia has a formed an organization named OCED and a Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials in international Business Transactions ( Anti-Bribery Convention) and Australian government can implement it in domestic areas through legislation (Hessami 2014). In finding guilty with corruption in foreign bribery, the convicted person will be suspended from the government contracts. The employee of that organization also applies the penalty for breaching of duties. The Australian government has signed convention against corruption along with United Nations named United Nation Convention against Corruption (Aph.gov.au, 2018). In order to reduce corruption in banking sector the audit and risk committees should take essential steps and there will be proper supervization the suspected employee. Along with this, company should identify and assess the employee properly before the employment. Along with this, proper training about the policies, procedures, penalties and as well as the laws regarding to corruption is also introduced to the employee. In order to minimize the corruption in sports sector the players and as well as the support staffs should be given a proper training about the misconducts. The consequences of doping should also be described so that all the players have the knowledge. Dope tests should be conducted randomly to reduce the practice of doping in the field of sports.
Finally, it can be concluded that, in Australia corruption is buried in various sectors. Some incidents are identified and a few are still under the carpet. Australian government identifies several strategies in order to minimize the corruption in various sectors. Implementation of those strategies boldly will definitely reduce the corruption in Australia.
References
Aph.gov.au. (2018). Corruption and integrity issues – Parliament of Australia. [online] Available at: https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/pubs/BriefingBook45p/CorruptionIssues [Accessed 12 Sep. 2018].
Australian Institute of Criminology. (2018). Corruption in Australian sport. [online] Available at: https://aic.gov.au/publications/tandi/tandi490 [Accessed 12 Sep. 2018].
Busse, M. and Gröning, S., 2013. The resource curse revisited: governance and natural resources. Public choice, 154(1-2), pp.1-20.
Esarey, J. and Chirillo, G., 2013. “Fairer sex” or purity myth? Corruption, gender, and institutional context. Politics & Gender, 9(4), pp.361-389.
Government News. (2018). Significant corruption revealed in Australian Public Service – Government News. [online] Available at: https://www.governmentnews.com.au/significant-corruption-revealed-australian-public-service/ [Accessed 12 Sep. 2018].
Gray, S., Harymawan, I. and Nowland, J., 2016. Political and government connections on corporate boards in Australia: Good for business?. Australian Journal of Management, 41(1), pp.3-26.
Hernandez, T. and McGee, R., 2014. Attitudes toward bribery in Australia: A demographic study.
Hessami, Z., 2014. Political corruption, public procurement, and budget composition: Theory and evidence from OECD countries. European Journal of political economy, 34, pp.372-389.
Johnston, M., 2014. Corruption, contention and reform: the power of deep democratization. Cambridge University Press.
Lee, G. and Fargher, N., 2013. Companies’ use of whistle-blowing to detect fraud: An examination of corporate whistle-blowing policies. Journal of business ethics, 114(2), pp.283-295.
Merrington, S., Lauchs, M., Bell, P. and Keast, R., 2015. An exploratory study of noble cause corruption: The Wood Royal Commission New South Wales, Australia 1994-1997. International Journal of Management and Administrative Sciences, 2(4), pp.18-29.
Nappi, C., 2013. The global aluminium industry 40 years from 1972. World Aluminium, pp.1-27.
Perry, P.J., 2017. Political Corruption in Australia: A Very Wicked Place?.Routledge.
Rajapakse, P. and Gardner, J., 2014. The Unconscionable Conduct and Consumer Protection in Subprime Lending in Australia. Banking & Finance Law Review, 29(3), p.485.
Rowe, E., Akman, T., Smith, R. and Tomison, A., 2013. Organised crime and public sector corruption: A crime scripts analysis of tactical displacement risks.
Spence, E.H., 2017. Corruption in the Media. In The Handbook of Business and Corruption: Cross-Sectoral Experiences (pp. 453-480). Emerald Publishing Limited.
Warren, I. and Palmer, D., 2014. Corporate security, licensing, and civil accountability in the Australian night-time economy. In Corporate Security in the 21st Century (pp. 174-195). Palgrave Macmillan, London.
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