The last 12 months has seen numerous political scandals, pork-barrelling, and increased secrecy and corruption. Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index also showed Australia sliding down to our lowest ranking ever.

It’s not surprising that last year also saw Australians loudly banging the drum for reforms to strengthen political integrity and to stop corruption. The election result in May demonstrated the huge wave of public and political support for greater transparency. In 2005, Transparency International Australia first called for a federal anti-corruption agency. We are now very hopeful that a National Anti-Corruption Commission that prevents, detects and stops corruption will be legislated by the end of 2022. This will be the biggest integrity reform in 40 years.

Last year also saw rising authoritarianism and democracy backsliding across the Asia- Pacific. We helped launch the Pacific Corruption Barometer and actively worked with our sister chapter in the Solomon Islands to shine a light on political corruption and attacks on free media. We launched a major new project, the Infrastructure Corruption Assessment Risk Tool, and began working with TI Solomons and TI Indonesia to pilot the tool in the region.

Meanwhile, our global mining programme, which over the past six years worked with over 20 TI Chapters around the world, concluded its second phase and began a new project with a focus on business integrity.