Australia’s membership of a global, US-based anti-corruption alliance is under threat after years of inaction and missed deadlines prompted a formal warning that the nation was acting “contrary” to the body’s requirements.
The Australian government signed up to the Open Government Partnership (OGP) in 2015, a 78-country multilateral initiative designed to promote open government, fight corruption and empower citizen participation in policymaking.
However, Australia’s efforts since have frustrated the group. It has failed to act on prior promises — including to improve donations transparency and strengthen the nation’s anti-corruption framework — and has missed the deadline to file its latest two-year action plan for 2021-2023, which was due in December last year.
Photo: AFP
That prompted OGP chief executive Sanjay Pradhan to write to the Australian Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet last week, warning that if it failed to meet the next deadline, its membership status would be reviewed.
“This letter is to inform you that as of the deadline of 31 December 2021, the Support Unit has not received Australia’s 2021-23 Action Plan, and therefore has acted contrary to the OGP process,” Pradhan said.
“Governments that act contrary to process for two consecutive cycles are placed under review by the OGP Steering Committee, which involves enhanced support to resolve the issues that led to being placed in that status. Guidance materials for the new standards will be available soon,” he wrote.
Freedom of information expert Peter Timmins, who led efforts for Australia to join the OGP in 2015, said the latest failure showed Australia was now under serious scrutiny from the OGP.
“Regrettably, it comes as no surprise to anyone familiar with the government’s record,” he said.
“Those not suffering fatigue from trying to get government to take meaningful steps to improve how our democracy can work better are ready, willing and able to put skepticism to one side,” he said.
“And we await with interest to see what those running for office have to put on the table,” he added.
Prior commitments made through the OGP process have never come to fruition, including a 2016 pledge to ensure “Australia’s information access laws policies and practices are fit for the 21st century.”
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison government’s official Web site on the OGP lists several of the nation’s prior commitments as “delayed,” including commitments to “enhance the transparency of political donations and funding” and “strengthen the national anti-corruption framework”.
Australia has submitted two separate action plans to the OGP, the first from 2016-2018, and the second spanning 2018-2020.
The second plan largely repeated commitments made in the first plan.
In September last year, the OGP published an independent assessment of Australia’s efforts in 2018-2020. The report found progress had been slow on donations and corruption issues, and that progress on the second action plan was now treated as “old news.”.
“Commitments on strengthening the national anti-corruption framework and enhancing transparency of political donations made little or slow progress over this period,” the assessment said.
The assessment suggested Australia has been working on a third action plan. However, the OGP has received no such document from the responsible minister, Ben Morton.
The report added that COVID-19 had disrupted some of the government’s OGP work.
A spokesperson for the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet said Australia remained committed to the OGP and delivering on its national action plans.
“Significant accomplishments have been made since Australia joined in 2015,” the spokesperson said. “However, the response to the COVID-19 pandemic has been the government’s priority over the last two years.”
In months, Lo Yuet-ping would bid farewell to a centuries-old village he has called home in Hong Kong for more than seven decades. The Cha Kwo Ling village in east Kowloon is filled with small houses built from metal sheets and stones, as well as old granite buildings, contrasting sharply with the high-rise structures that dominate much of the Asian financial hub. Lo, 72, has spent his entire life here and is among an estimated 860 households required to move under a government redevelopment plan. He said he would miss the rich history, unique culture and warm interpersonal kindness that defined life in
AERIAL INCURSIONS: The incidents are a reminder that Russia’s aggressive actions go beyond Ukraine’s borders, Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha said Two NATO members on Sunday said that Russian drones violated their airspace, as one reportedly flew into Romania during nighttime attacks on neighboring Ukraine, while another crashed in eastern Latvia the previous day. A drone entered Romanian territory early on Sunday as Moscow struck “civilian targets and port infrastructure” across the Danube in Ukraine, the Romanian Ministry of National Defense said. It added that Bucharest had deployed F-16 warplanes to monitor its airspace and issued text alerts to residents of two eastern regions. It also said investigations were underway of a potential “impact zone” in an uninhabited area along the Romanian-Ukrainian border. There
The governor of Ohio is to send law enforcement and millions of dollars in healthcare resources to the city of Springfield as it faces a surge in temporary Haitian migrants. Ohio Governor Mike DeWine on Tuesday said that he does not oppose the Temporary Protected Status program under which about 15,000 Haitians have arrived in the city of about 59,000 people since 2020, but said the federal government must do more to help affected communities. On Monday, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost directed his office to research legal avenues — including filing a lawsuit — to stop the federal government from sending
Three sisters from Ohio who inherited a dime kept in a bank vault for more than 40 years knew it had some value, but they had no idea just how much until just a few years ago. The extraordinarily rare coin, struck by the US Mint in San Francisco in 1975, could bring more than US$500,000, said Ian Russell, president of GreatCollections, which specializes in currency and is handling an online auction that ends next month. What makes the dime depicting former US president Franklin D. Roosevelt so valuable is a missing “S” mint mark for San Francisco, one of just two
RSS