The Holmes report and the peculiarities of Recommendation 4

Holmes seems very sensitive about the capacity of the CCC and similar bodies through their reports to be able to influence the democratic process using such suggestions that any CCC report about elected officials should be "purely factual and neutral". Yet surely all persons, whether elected official, other public official or general member of the public who comes within the purview of the CCC should be subject to the same standards of judgment as to behaviour?

It is always the reputation and liberty of the individual that is at risk when bodies such as the CCC, with their extraordinary coercive powers, take aim at an individual through receiving a complaint and undertaking an investigation.

One of the great problems posed by the growth of these extraordinary institutions across Australia is that their proponents in academia and the persons who pursue career opportunities within the institutions now constitute what can be termed the 'New Puritans'. They seek to apply to the behaviour of many of the individuals who come under their scrutiny a standard that does not reflect the fact that all democratic politics is a matter of the provision of favours either directly or indirectly to one's supporters.

Only the CCC and its staff, in their view, have the true capacity to objectively determine what is right and proper for the good of the public. They fail to accept that the democratic process evolved as an alternative to the use of force and represents a mechanism for continually changing compromises all of which are driven by the endless battle to ameliorate the conflicting wants, needs and desires of individuals and groups. There is no objective right-only an everchanging series of compromises. It always was and will be a mucky process to undertake but as has been long acknowledged, it is far better than the alternative.

Political careers have been destroyed through the public reporting by these oversight bodies over minor issues such as bottles of wine and hair dressing appointments through actions and behaviours that constantly occurs in the general community, and which will always continue as part of the human condition.

Holmes purports to weigh the human rights of elected officials in a different manner to other officials apparently on the basis that "privacy assumes less weight for politicians given that they lay themselves open to scrutiny".

However, given the growth of social media and mechanisms for administrative review of actions by public officials it can be equally argued that issues of privacy for such persons as well as the general community are now substantially less than they once were. As society moves further into the digital age, the capacity for any individual, no matter their position or role, to maintain privacy for any of their actions continues to lessen.

In my submission, any suggestion that elected officials should be in any way differentiated from other public officials in reports from the CCC does not pass the pub test. This recommendation of Holmes should be abandoned for the special pleading that it is.

That is not to say that her fundamental recommendations to facilitate the publication of reports by the CCC when it cannot discover evidence of behaviours that can be judged on the criminal standard is itself acceptable.

If a criminal prosecution cannot be maintained on acceptable community standards, then all person's reputations, whatever their position as elected official or not, should remain unsullied by the reporting of our 'New Puritans'.