Whenever a public hearing is held, a report to Parliament must be obligatory, including findings as to corrupt conduct.

The definition of corrupt conduct in the NSW legislation is of some complexity, and perhaps
needlessly so. There must, of course, be a definition, because otherwise the jurisdictional
limits to which the federal body is subject will be unclear. What matters is that the
definition should not be narrow. Let it by all means be coupled with a statutory requirement that the new commission concentrate upon the more grave instances of apparent corrupt conduct.

It is imperative that the federal ICAC - the body I am urging - have power to investigate matters on the basis of its own best judgment, not merely on the basis of complaints. If all an anti-corruption body can investigate is the question whether or not a complaint is made out, it will be crippled. While complainants are to be encouraged, they often know only half the story, and get part of it wrong.

Nor should the body be obliged to resolve every complaint. If everything that comes through the door has to be looked at, nothing may be looked at properly. It needs the power to pick and choose.

In the first five years of the NSW ICAC, we selected matters that we judged to have a high capacity to teach useful lessons to the public sector. We never ran several inquiries into tendering in a
given year, or simultaneously. The next investigation might be into the payment of bribes,
and the one after that into the use of prison informers, and the next into whether a senior police officer had concocted a case against a drug dealer.

As soon as we tapped a politician on the shoulder and asked him to explain dubious conduct,
the pressure came on to conduct hearings in private. The pressure to drive the ICAC behind
closed doors has continued ever since, although during the period of service of some
commissioners who did not do much – and a couple were notably inactive – little pressure
needed to be applied.

The public is entitled to know what the courts are doing, and how they are doing it. That is why the courts conduct public hearings. So it must be with any anti-corruption body. Furthermore, both the courts and ICAC perform better when under public scrutiny.

Over recent years the NSW Ombudsman conducted an inquiry, Operation Prospect, into whether or not abuses had occurred on the part of police and Crime Commission officers relative to certain search warrants. All the hearings were conducted in private. The investigation took years. Rumours swirled around. Many witnesses were called but ordered to tell nobody what they had said. Ultimately there was a public report. It caused some excitement in government ranks, but so far as the public was concerned it was a non-event.

Consider now the various hearings concerning Eddie Obeid and his closest associates
conducted by the NSW ICAC. The conclusion is available that Obeid became the most
powerful man in the NSW ALP and very unhappy consequences flowed from that accrual of power. All this played out in public hearings before the ICAC, and that exposure should diminish the likelihood of repetition. It is impossible to imagine such an impact had the hearings been behind closed doors.

Who believes the Hayne royal commission into financial services would have been better held in secret? Perhaps the Big Four banks, AMP and some shonky agents.  Nobody else.

Ian Temby QC is a Sydney barrister. He was the initial ICAC commissioner 1984-89.