Professor Gabrielle Appleby

Yeah, sure.

So NAC is one of these agencies that have sort of proliferated in the last couple of decades.

It's called an integrity agency.

It's a watchdog and accountability agency that has a level of independence from the government and it has its function of holding government to account and specifically in relation to investigating corruption and misconduct by government and public officials.

Yeah, well, it's really important to have an independent watchdog looking out for corruption at any level of government because we know that corruption and misconduct can occur, whether it's in relation to foreign relation, whether it's in relation to community grant schemes,

car parks, sports grants, this type of misconduct can occur and it's often difficult to have the powers to investigate such types of conduct.

And it's really important to have an independent agency with investigative powers that can step in and do that.

The Commissioner, Paul Brereton, announced his resignation three years into a five-year term.

So it's unexpected in that respect.

But it's fair to say that his tenure, those three years, have been controversial.

And they've been controversial in relation to particularly his own sort of personal conduct and his personal leadership in relation to the Commission.

One of the things he said in his resignation letter is that he was concerned that his own personal conduct and the controversy around it was becoming a distraction for the very important role and functioning of the commission.

And I think that's right.

It was a distraction and the commission has a very important role and now needs to have a sort of a refresh, a new start at fulfilling that role.

Look, the timing is an interesting one.

We now know through Senate estimates over the last couple of days, there has already been a finding by the Inspector of the NAC, that's sort of like the oversight institution of the NAC, of misconduct in relation to Commissioner Brereton, who...

didn't step away from a decision in relation to whether to investigate a robo-debt referral, what's called the robo-debt referrals, coming out of the Robodebt Royal Commission.

So we have known for quite a while there were concerns about how he was handling personal conflicts of interest with his previous ties and ongoing ties into the Defence Force.

We also knew that there's an ongoing investigation by the inspector.

So a second investigation in relation to continued ties with the Defence Force, providing consulting advice services really to the inspector of the Defence Force in relation to his previous role before he was NAC Commissioner in relation to the Afghanistan inquiry.