A sleazy minister, a corrupt official, a greedy bureaucrat. Welcome to Australia

Any of my readers who also happen to read the Sydney Morning Herald, may recognise this headline as being a modified version of the Herald’s headline ”A sleazy minister, a corrupt official, a greedy bureaucrat. Welcome to NSW’‘ which graced a story about corruption in NSW in September, 2010. I believe that the issues of sleaze, corruption and greed transcend the NSW bureaucracy and have become the norm for government, Australia wide, while you and I and every taxpayer in Australia is footing the bill for this circus of sleaze.

One of the major themes running through Blak and Black is the absolute lack of any kind of personal accountability from today’s Australian public servants. This issue is becoming more pronounced as the Commonwealth and State and Territory public services numbers continue to spiral out of control placing an ever increasing burden on Australia’s already over taxed and underserviced families.

While the exact number of commonwealth public servants seems to remain a mystery, according to Australian Treasury figures the number of commonwealth public servants as at 2010 was a staggering 258,321 up 65,000 since 2001. This figure does not include areas such as defence.

The 2006 census showed that there were 367,845 commonwealth government employees, including defence, education and training (such as universities) and telecommunications services.

Adding to these figures, are for example; 322,000 NSW state public servants, costing NSW taxpayers $27 billion a year and the bloated public services of Victoria at 200,000 or Queensland at 261,500 costing the Queensland taxpayer $15 billion in the 2006/07 financial year.

What should be of concern to all Australians, is not only the added cost of these extra public servants on our already inflated tax bills but, the level of corruption that takes place within the public service as a whole. The larger the organisation, the harder it is to track and deal with corruption.

In my post Public Servant: Defence to criminal conduct I discussed two recent cases where public servants were able successfully to escape criminal convictions being recorded against them because, and only because, they were public servants. This makes for an interesting comparison with the case of an unemployed Aboriginal lady from Young, NSW who received a three month jail sentence for obtaining a $1 financial advantage by deception!

In a similar vein, though perhaps more concerning, is the situation I discussed in my post Lawrence and King: a study in institutionalised racism. This situation discussed here involved a racial and indecent assault on Ms. King Australia’s most senior Aboriginal female bank executive by an ACT Department of Treasury official. As in the situations discussed in Public Servant: Defence to criminal conduct Ms. King’s assailant has managed to escape accountability because, and again, only because he is a public servant.

I have recently been advised that the Australian Federal Police are arguing that they don’t have to investigate Ms. King’s assault because no complaint has been received by them from Ms. King concerning this incident. In order to dispel this myth, that is, being perpetrated by the Australian Federal Police, in order to serve their own purposes, I am including excerpts from the statement Ms. King has provided me in support of my application to the United Nations Human Rights Committee alleging serious and sustained human rights violations against Australia’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people by the Australian Federal Police, among other Australian Government Agencies.

Statement by Ms. King

My full name is […] King, I reside at […] I hold a Bachelor of Arts Degree from the University of Sydney and have completed the course requirements of the Solicitors Admission Board (SAB) NSW.  I have been employed in the banking and finance sector since graduating from the University of Sydney in 1985. I am currently an executive manager with […].

[…]

On […] I was seated in the outdoor area of the Waldorf Café in Civic ACT with […] and Mr. Phillip Hart. After our coffees were served I heard a male voice shout from the street “you fucking boong cunt” while gesticulating towards […]. Who was seated next to me.

This person who I had not met before then approached our table. The then walked over to […] took him by the tie and stated “I told you I would get you, you useless boong cunt” […] assailant then made certain statements about changing documents at Ernst & Young with the assistance of Tanya Taylor […].

After yelling for him to stop he then turned to me slapped me across the face saying “so you’re the big tittered whore who fucks boongs” As a result of being slapped across the face by my assailant, my glasses were broken and my left eye was blackened. My assailant then looked me straight in the face as he ripped the front of my dress exposing my bra while bragging that my companion […] couldn’t do anything to stop him because he “is friends with Ted Quinlan the Treasurer and Police Minister […].

While this was occurring another Aboriginal person, who I later learned was Mr Darren Bloomfield from the Aboriginal tent Embassy approached our table. On seeing Mr Bloomfield my assailant turned to him and said “look another boong looser come to join his mates” […].

At this point Mr Hart pulled out his mobile phone and announced that he was phoning the police. Mine and […] assailant then left shouting back as he left that he was going to get me. I feared for my life as a result of what had just happened to me and the threat that my assailant made as he left.

[…]

[…] Mr Hart, Mr Bloomfield and […] accompanied me to Civic police station where I attempted to make a formal complaint about what had just happened to me and […]. I spoke to a uniformed officer at the counter who took mine and […] names and then requested that we take a seat while he locates a detective. A few minutes later he called me and […] over and said that my assailant is a “[…] and a friend of the Treasurer Mr Quinlan and told us to leave and not return or he would charge me and […]” He refused to take a statement from me about my assault.

[…]

After this encounter with my assailant […] and my subsequent treatment from the Australian Federal Police I felt used and violated and realised for the first time that Aboriginal Australians do not have the same protections under the laws that govern Australia that non-Aboriginal Australians do.

[…]

[…] my house in […] ACT was subsequently broken into on almost a daily basis, with the only desirable evidence of this happening was that when I returned home from work all of my windows and doors were open and my pets were roaming the streets. I reported many of these incidents to the Australian Federal Police but, no one attended to investigate. On one occasion the operator laughing said “which of your animals have been let out today?”

On the occasion of the final break and enter on my property [I believe it was the final] I arrived home to find my dog and cat dead with froth oozing from their mouths. […]

As a result of this and other harassment I received from the Australian Federal Police I was forced to move from Canberra.

[…]

When asked a direct question by […] a NSW government employee, acting in an official capacity, about the assault on me which occurred at the waldorf café, I confirmed that it had occurred and that the Australian Federal Police had refused to act on my complaint.