Who do our integrity systems exist to serve?
This September, I had the opportunity to participate in the Asia-Pacific Integrity School (APIS) in Brisbane, Australia.
Over five days, I joined more than 60 participants from 16 countries across the region, including Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Nepal, Fiji, Vanuatu and Australia, to learn, share and reflect on how we can strengthen our integrity systems, fight corruption, and hold power to account.
The program was hosted by Griffith University and Transparency International, in partnership with the Transnational Research Institute on Corruption, Australia Awards Indonesia and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), who together made this hands-on experience possible.
We heard from an extensive lineup of integrity and anti-corruption experts from across the region. We visited key integrity institutions in Brisbane, and engaged in informal workshops, giving us not only new insight but the opportunity to see integrity in action. Amidst a global decline in political and institutional trust, shrinking civic spaces, and integrity backsliding, APIS offers an invaluable and timely forum for bringing the next generation of integrity professionals together to strengthen regional knowledge on integrity, and the collective fight against corruption.
To start the week, Professor A J Brown, alongside Nichanee Wongba from the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and Professor Adam Graycar from the Transnational Research Institute on Corruption, introduced us to conceptual frameworks for thinking about integrity. These experts showed us that corruption is complicated, adaptable, and there exists no silver bullet solution. For Nichanee and Adam, corruption follows opportunity, so our responses must fit the problem. We also explored Australia’s integrity systems through Nikolas Kirby and Simone Webbe’s ‘three phases of integrity’ framework, presented by A J, who encouraged us to think about integrity as a whole ‘system’.
Day two marked the school’s official opening, with a Welcome to Country delivered by Baringa Barambah, Songwoman of the Turrbal People. Building on day one, we zoomed out and explored the bigger picture, with experts across academia, civil society, and government sharing insights into global integrity and corruption challenges. For Maira Martini, CEO of Transparency International, anti-corruption is at a turning point: thirty years of global norms are crumbling, former anti-corruption champions like the United States are backsliding, and the line between public and private power is blurring. She explained that good governance is about accountable power, and that corruption endures not because of a lack of knowledge or capacity, but because it serves those who hold power. We also heard from Iain Anderson, the Commonwealth Ombudsman, and Simone Webbe from the Queensland Crime and Corruption Commission (QCCC), both of whom shared candid reflections on the challenges facing independent oversight bodies and public institutions. Simone captured the importance of leadership when she quoted: “the standard you walk past is the standard you accept”.
On day three, we moved beyond the classroom to explore Queensland’s integrity institutions. We visited the QCCC and Supreme Court of Queensland, both of which stood out enormously to me. At the QCCC, I asked Chair Bruce Barbour to share a personal success story from his career working across Australia’s integrity institutions. Anti-corruption is a long-term project, and we often don’t get to see the fruits of that labour for years. Hearing his story was inspiring and reminded me of the ‘why’ behind this work.
Ann Lyons AM, former Senior Judge Administrator, led our visit to the Supreme Court. To my surprise, her speech was less about the Court’s role as an integrity institution and more about how individuals can become better decision-makers. She asked us to reflect on our strengths. Why? Because our strengths often become our weaknesses when they go unchecked. For Ann, understanding how that happens is the mark of a strong ethical decision-maker because it keeps our decisions grounded in our values rather than in our blind spots.
On day four, we stepped back into the classroom. Split across morning and afternoon sessions, we engaged in a selected range of interactive workshops on topics including secret company ownership and combatting money laundering, transparency and social accountability in civil society roles, as well as lobbying access and public sector ethics in practice. However, Leah Ambler started us off with an insightful speech on whole-of-system approaches to integrity. Leah quoted Daniel Kaufmann, who said, “you don’t fight corruption by fighting corruption”. Instead, for Leah, you fight corruption by building the systems, culture, and accountability that normalise integrity. She offered ‘geographies of corruption’ as an alternative lens through which to view corruption, encompassing its transnational and boundless nature.
But who do our integrity systems exist to serve? On our final day, the program’s focus turned to integrity’s most important stakeholders: whistleblowers, complainants, victims, and the public. Jane Olsen, former senior official at the NSW Ombudsman, described how whistleblowers are among the most important sources of information about wrongdoing, but gaps in legal frameworks and institutional policies leave them insufficiently protected.
Frank O’Toole’s story as a former whistleblower poignantly illustrated to us how this unfolds in practice. Together, they showed how often wrongdoing is observed and reported, why organisations struggle to respond adequately, and what effective protection and remedies might look like. We also explored how to keep integrity agencies themselves accountable. Integrity agencies hold extraordinary powers, and Andrew Young from Deakin University showed us how integrity institutions and the people in them should be accountable without compromising the independence that makes them effective.
This week exposed me to new and different perspectives, contexts, and cultures. And while corruption might look different across the world, I understand that the consequences, as well as the solutions, are shared. Corruption knows no boundaries, so neither should our learning or knowledge sharing.
Returning to my work after APIS, I feel more confident in my knowledge of the principles, institutions and systems behind international and Australian efforts to promote integrity and accountability. More importantly, I left with practical tools and a network of peers from across the region, and a clearer sense of how we can work together to strengthen our integrity systems and fight corruption.