Introduction
The establishment of Australia’s National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC) in 2023 represented one of the most significant reforms to federal integrity architecture in a generation. It followed years of advocacy from crossbench parliamentarians and a public appetite sharpened by the Robodebt scandal. Appointed as its inaugural Commissioner, the Hon Paul Brereton AM RFD SC brought a résumé that seemed almost engineered for the role: a former judge of the Supreme Court of New South Wales, a King’s Counsel of long standing, and the officer who led the inquiry into alleged war crimes committed by Australian special forces in Afghanistan. Few appointees to a new statutory office have arrived with a stronger presumption of probity.
Yet Brereton’s tenure, from 1 July 2023 until his resignation took effect on 6 July 2026, became defined less by the corruption he was appointed to expose than by findings of misconduct in his own management of a conflict of interest. A formal investigation found he had engaged in what the NACC Inspector termed “officer misconduct” in the handling of referrals arising from the Robodebt Royal Commission. Freedom-of-information disclosures subsequently complicated his account of how thoroughly he had recused himself. Separately, his continuing informal ties to the Inspector-General of the Australian Defence Force (IGADF) attracted scrutiny. The cumulative effect was a commissioner whose personal conduct became the story, and an institution whose founding promise – that no one, including its own leadership, sits above scrutiny – was tested from within.
These events unfolded against a backdrop of fragile public trust in Australian political institutions and a striking development in federal polling: the sustained rise of Pauline Hanson’s One Nation, which by mid-2026 was drawing level with Labor on primary vote nationally. This essay sets out the Brereton controversies, examines what the evidence shows about their effect on public trust, traces the parallel rise of One Nation, and considers – with appropriate caution about causation – how integrity failures and populist appeal may be interacting.
Background: Paul Brereton And The Creation Of The NACC
Brereton’s career before the NACC was close to ideal preparation for an anti-corruption commissioner. A graduate of the University of Sydney in Arts and Law, he was admitted as a solicitor in 1981, joined the Sydney Bar, and took silk in 1998. In 2005 he was sworn in as a judge of the Supreme Court of New South Wales, sitting principally in the Equity Division, before retiring from the bench in 2023 to take up the NACC appointment. Running in parallel was three decades as an Army Reserve officer, rising to Major General. In that capacity, he was appointed in 2016 to lead the IGADF’s inquiry into alleged unlawful killings by Australian special forces in Afghanistan. The resulting Brereton Report, delivered in 2020, cemented his reputation as a figure willing to hold powerful institutions to account.
The NACC itself was the product of sustained pressure. Crossbench independents had campaigned for a federal integrity body for the better part of a decade, with renewed force following the Robodebt scandal – the unlawful automated debt-recovery scheme that pursued welfare recipients using a flawed methodology. The Robodebt Royal Commission, reporting in 2023, referred senior officials for possible investigation and recommended stronger integrity mechanisms. The NACC was legislated with broad jurisdiction to investigate corrupt conduct by Commonwealth public officials, powers to hold public hearings in exceptional circumstances, and a remit to function as an independent check on the political and administrative class.
Brereton was appointed inaugural Commissioner in March 2023 and took office on 1 July that year. Within roughly a year, however, the Commission’s own leadership had become the subject of the scrutiny it was designed to apply to others.
The Controversies: Misconduct Findings And Conflicts Of Interest
The central episode began in June 2024, when the NACC announced it would not investigate the so-called “Robodebt Six” – senior public servants referred by the Royal Commission. The decision provoked immediate backlash; roughly 900 complaints were lodged, triggering an independent investigation by the NACC Inspector, Gail Furness.
Furness’s findings, published on 30 October 2024, were unambiguous on process. She concluded that Brereton had engaged in officer misconduct by failing to fully recuse himself from the decision-making process concerning the Robodebt referrals, despite having declared a “close association” with one of the six officials – widely understood to be Kathryn Campbell, with whom Brereton had served for years in the Army Reserve. Although Brereton delegated the final determination to a deputy commissioner, the Inspector found his involvement in the lead-up to that decision had been “comprehensive,” and that the initial decision was affected by apprehended bias. Furness made no finding of intentional impropriety or personal gain; the misconduct related to the management of a declared conflict.
Subsequent reporting added further detail. Documents released under freedom-of-information laws showed Brereton had given differing accounts of his recusal. He told statutory colleagues at the Commission’s first formal meeting on 3 July 2023 that he would “delegate decision-making” in matters involving people well known to him. Weeks later, on 11 August 2023, he wrote to the then Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus stating he had declared he would “recuse” himself entirely. Minutes showed Brereton present for most of the senior assessment panel meeting in October 2023, leaving only as the final decision was being made – a sequence a former judge publicly described as rendering the delegation “pointless.”
A second controversy concerned Brereton’s ongoing relationship with the IGADF. Despite public statements suggesting he had stepped back entirely, reporting indicated he continued providing informal advice on IGADF-related matters on multiple occasions after taking up the Commissionership. In October 2025 he announced he would recuse himself from all defence-related NACC referrals. The NACC Inspector authorised a further investigation into possible maladministration or officer misconduct arising from these dealings.
This cumulative pressure led to Brereton’s resignation, tendered in May 2026 and effective on 6 July 2026 – two years short of his five-year term. He cited the sustained focus on questions relating to him personally as a distraction from the Commission’s core work. He did not concede any finding of corrupt conduct, and none was made. In July 2026 the NACC Inspector discontinued the remaining investigations, citing resource considerations, his imminent departure, and the implementation of systemic reforms. The formal record rests at one adverse finding of officer misconduct in managing a declared conflict, alongside discontinued questions about his IGADF dealings.
Over Brereton’s three years, the Commission managed close to 7,500 referrals and produced seven investigation reports. Media coverage nevertheless repeatedly characterised the NACC as “controversy-ridden,” and crossbench parliamentarians called for stronger safeguards around future appointments. The irony is clear: an institution created to demonstrate that no one is beyond scrutiny found its own founding leader subject to precisely that scrutiny on a matter of process.
Impact On Public Trust In The Political System
Assessing the effect of the Brereton controversy on Australians’ trust in political institutions requires care, as the data is genuinely mixed. The OECD’s Survey on Drivers of Trust in Public Institutions, drawing on 2025 data, recorded an increase in Australians’ trust in the federal government between 2021 and 2025, reaching 51 per cent reporting high or moderately high trust – a record high and above the OECD average. Trust remained consistently higher for administrative and law-and-order bodies than for overtly political institutions.
Shorter-term surveys tell a less reassuring story. DemosAU’s TrustWatch series recorded trust in national institutions at 48 per cent in April 2026, down from 55 per cent in January 2025 – a seven-point fall within little more than a year. The Scanlon Foundation’s Mapping Social Cohesion surveys and Edelman Trust Barometer data have shown similar recent softening in belief that the federal government can be trusted to do the right thing “all or most of the time.”
These pictures are not contradictory. Longer-run data reflect underlying resilience and recovery from a low post-pandemic base. More recent surveys capture reactions to a cluster of specific controversies in 2024–2026, of which the NACC’s difficulties form one part. The honest position is that Australian trust in political institutions in mid-2026 remains volatile.
The NACC was explicitly conceived as a mechanism to arrest this volatility by demonstrating that corrupt conduct would be investigated independently and transparently. That promise gives the Brereton episode disproportionate symbolic weight. Public and parliamentary commentary described confidence in the NACC as severely damaged; one widely circulated assessment described it as being “in the toilet.” Nine hundred complaints over a single decision represented a substantial signal of concern in an institution barely a year old.
It is important, however, to resist treating this as a simple causal chain from Brereton’s conduct to a nationwide collapse in trust. The OECD’s more favourable longer-run figures suggest considerable underlying resilience. The more defensible claim is narrower: the episode materially damaged confidence in the NACC itself and added one more well-publicised data point to the accumulating stock of events that sustain scepticism about whether Commonwealth institutions apply the same standards to themselves that they apply to others. Much of this reputational damage appears concentrated among politically attentive citizens and commentators rather than the broader public.
The Rise Of Pauline Hanson And One Nation
Running alongside these developments has been a striking resurgence in support for Pauline Hanson’s One Nation. Having polled in the high single digits through much of 2025, the party’s primary vote climbed steadily. By early 2026, polls including DemosAU had it around 23 per cent. A Newspoll conducted 13–16 July 2026 recorded One Nation at 30 per cent, level with Labor and ahead of the Coalition on 19 per cent. Roy Morgan’s weekly tracking showed One Nation peaking above 31 per cent after Hanson’s National Press Club address in mid-June 2026, before falling roughly nine points amid scrutiny of her comments and partially recovering by mid-July.
Voter surveys consistently place immigration and multiculturalism at the top of reasons for considering One Nation, followed by housing affordability and cost-of-living pressures. Many respondents describe a sense that the major parties are “not listening.” Barnaby Joyce’s defection further raised the party’s profile. One Nation has for three decades positioned itself as a voice against political elites and the failures of major-party consensus.
One Nation’s rise is relevant to the NACC controversies thematically rather than as a direct cause. The spectacle of the nation’s first anti-corruption commissioner facing an adverse misconduct finding and an early resignation under scrutiny is easily folded into a populist claim that even institutions built to police the political class are compromised by insider relationships. Hanson has not made the Brereton affair central to her messaging, and no polling evidence directly links NACC sentiment to One Nation’s vote share. The connection is inferential – a plausible contributing current within a larger set of drivers.
It is also important to note the structural limits of One Nation’s position. While primary votes in the high 20s and low 30s are impressive, translating that support into lower house seats remains difficult under Australia’s preferential voting system, particularly in urban and suburban electorates where preference flows often favour the major parties.
Interconnections And Broader Implications
The Brereton controversy, the resulting damage to perceptions of the NACC, and the parallel surge in One Nation’s polling are best understood as related through a shared theme – institutional trust – rather than any direct causal chain. The NACC was built, in part, to counteract the cynicism that fuels populist appeal. When its own founding Commissioner became subject to a formal misconduct finding and disclosures suggested inconsistencies in his account of conflict management, the episode inadvertently supplied evidence for the very critique the Commission exists to rebut – regardless of the fact that no finding of corrupt conduct or personal gain was ever made.
This political consequence need not depend on proof of actual wrongdoing to be real. It contributes to a feedback loop in which declining confidence in rules-based mechanisms increases the relative appeal of movements promising to bypass them. One Nation is positioned to benefit from this dynamic given its anti-establishment framing, though it would overstate matters to credit the NACC episode with more than a marginal contribution to a rise whose principal drivers – immigration sentiment, cost-of-living pressure, and diffuse disillusionment – long predate and operate largely independently of it.
This volatility serves as a useful corrective against treating One Nation’s surge as inevitable. The same National Press Club address that briefly pushed the party above 31 per cent in Roy Morgan tracking also triggered a nine-point fall within a fortnight. DemosAU and Resolve polling has found Hanson’s specific policy positions unpopular with a majority of the electorate even as primary support climbs – an unstable protest dynamic rather than a settled ideological realignment.
Looking ahead, the NACC faces a consequential reset under a new Commissioner to be selected through a merit-based process, with reforms to conflict-of-interest protocols already signalled. Whether these changes restore confidence in the Commission – and whether that restoration affects the broader trust environment – will only become clear over the coming electoral cycle. Further missteps would likely reinforce rather than arrest the populist dynamics currently working in One Nation’s favour. Both major parties face challenges: Labor, which championed the NACC’s creation and appointed Brereton, has faced criticism over the adequacy of the vetting process, while the Coalition must present a credible account of accountability rather than simply capitalising on Labor’s discomfort.
Conclusion
The Paul Brereton NACC controversy illustrates, with unusual clarity, the gap that can open between formal legal findings against a public official and the broader political damage an episode can still cause. Brereton was never found to have acted corruptly. The adverse finding was limited to officer misconduct in managing a declared conflict of interest, associated with apprehended bias in a single high-profile decision. Yet the fact this occurred within an institution created specifically to exemplify integrity, at the hands of its own inaugural leader, generated damage to the NACC’s public standing that the formal findings alone do not fully capture – compounded by disclosures suggesting inconsistencies in his account of his own recusal.
That damage occurred within a trust environment that is itself genuinely mixed, with longer-run OECD data showing resilience even as shorter-term surveys show recent softening. It has also occurred alongside a substantial rise in support for One Nation, driven predominantly by immigration sentiment, economic pressure, and disillusionment with the major parties. The NACC’s difficulties form part of the environment in which One Nation’s rise has occurred, without being a primary driver of it. The polling volatility through 2026 counsels against reading that rise as inevitable or permanent.
Australia’s experience reflects a challenge common to liberal democracies: integrity institutions must not only function effectively but must be seen to hold themselves to the same standard they apply to others. The credibility cost of failing to do so – even absent proven corrupt intent – can be disproportionate to the formal findings involved. Whether the NACC’s coming leadership transition and signalled reforms are sufficient to restore confidence remains, as of mid-2026, genuinely open.
– – –
Bakchos is the founder of Blak and Black, an Australian media and advocacy platform established in 2010. Bakchos writes from the intersecting perspectives of Wiradjuri heritage, Jewish identity, and humanism.
© Bakchos, July 2026
The handling of the matters around the Robodebt six was appalling.
That’s a good summary of our integrity commission, without any actual integrity.