The clock is ticking on replacing National Anti-Corruption Commission deputy commissioner Nicole Rose, independent MP Helen Haines said on Tuesday, as the watchdog prepares for a senior leadership change this month. Rose has announced her resignation and is relocating overseas.
Rose will finish in the job this month before taking a period of leave, leaving the government to move quickly on a post that Haines said should be filled through a clear and transparent process. She told Guardian Australia that recruitment for a new deputy commissioner is a critical opportunity for the government to strengthen public confidence in the National Anti-Corruption Commission.
Haines, who helped craft the legislation that created the Nacc and now sits on its parliamentary oversight committee, said Labor must appoint a new commissioner through a transparent, merit-based process that Australians can have confidence in. She said the process should tell the public what skills and experience are required, how candidates will be assessed and how conflicts of interest will be declared.
"This is an important moment to show Australians that appointments to the Nacc are being handled in a transparent and rigorous way," Haines said, adding that "the clock is ticking" and that the appointment process should be beyond reproach.
The push comes after a bruising first five years for the anti-corruption watchdog, including criticism over commissioner Paul Brereton’s outside work for Defence and the way the commission handled referrals linked to the illegal robodebt scheme. The Nacc’s original decision not to investigate robodebt was heavily criticised, and the watchdog received more than 1,000 complaints about the matter.
That history still hangs over the agency. In October 2024, Nacc inspector Gail Furness released a report that found Brereton was affected by apprehended bias and said he should have removed himself from related decision-making and limited his exposure to relevant factual material. The report also said Brereton had appointed a deputy as a delegate to decide referrals to the Nacc because of a perceived conflict of interest with one of the individuals he had declared.
The Nacc said the report contained no finding of intentional wrongdoing or other impropriety. Brereton had also completed consulting work for the inspector general of the Australian Defence Force while serving as Nacc commissioner, work tied to his former role leading an inquiry into alleged war crimes involving Australian troops in Afghanistan.
Haines said the next appointment is a test of the standards the commission expects of others. A statutory review of the Nacc’s early operation is due in 2027, and she said the government should use the appointment now to show that the watchdog’s own processes meet the same public expectations it imposes elsewhere.
