{"id":254548,"date":"2025-11-01T02:54:21","date_gmt":"2025-11-01T02:54:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/254548\/"},"modified":"2025-11-01T02:54:21","modified_gmt":"2025-11-01T02:54:21","slug":"nacc-chief-paul-brereton-steps-away-from-all-defence-investigations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/254548\/","title":{"rendered":"NACC chief Paul Brereton steps away from all defence investigations"},"content":{"rendered":"

The head of the National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC), Paul Brereton, will step away from all defence-related corruption referrals following questions over his handling of perceived conflicts of interest.<\/p>\n

The backdown, announced quietly on Friday evening, comes amid increasing pressure on the commissioner to address concerns about his military ties and their potential impact on corruption investigations involving Defence.<\/p>\n

“The recent attention the Commissioner’s Defence service and connections have attracted in some quarters has become a distraction from the Commission’s work,” the NACC statement said.<\/p>\n

“As a result, the Commissioner has decided that he will not participate in consideration of any referrals which involve the interests of any Defence or ADF individual or unit that is or comes before the Commission, regardless of whether it might reasonably be perceived to involve a conflict. Those matters will be allocated to a Deputy Commissioner.”<\/p>\n

Last month the ABC revealed Mr Brereton had twice been given special permission to stay on in the reserves past retirement age<\/a> so he could continue to provide high-level support to ministers and government agencies in relation to the Afghanistan war crimes inquiry.<\/p>\n

Anti-corruption chief kept consulting role after saying he had resigned<\/a><\/p>\n

The head of the national anti-corruption commission told a Senate inquiry he had resigned his role at the defence force’s investigative arm. But the ABC has learned he continued consulting for them, and documents proving his resignation could not be identified.<\/p>\n

This was despite previous assurances given by both Mr Brereton and Labor politicians he had stepped away from the body.<\/p>\n

One Senate Estimates hearing in October was told Mr Brereton had “consulted” for the Inspector-General of the Australian Defence Force<\/a> (IGADF) on 11 occasions since becoming head of the federal integrity watchdog.<\/p>\n

While another was told neither the NACC CEO Philip Reed nor the NACC Inspector Gail Furness had been aware of the arrangement.<\/p>\n

Prior to Friday’s announcement, a spokeswoman for the NACC Inspector confirmed to the ABC that the integrity watchdog’s oversight body had sought more details from the commissioner.<\/p>\n

“The Inspector is requesting information from the NACC about matters that have been the subject of recent media reporting and the evidence of the NACC CEO before the Supplementary Budget Estimates 2025\u20132026 Hearing on 7 October 2025,” she said.<\/p>\n

Friday’s NACC statement describes Mr Brereton’s decision to step away from defence matters as “unnecessary” given he has “declared and appropriately managed any perceived or actual conflicts of interest relating to defence”, but concedes the ties had become “a distraction” for the body.<\/p>\n

“The Commissioner is taking this step, although it is unnecessary from the perspective of properly managing actual or apparent conflicts, solely in an endeavour to recentre the focus on our important operational and educational work,” the NACC said.<\/p>\n

The latest development comes almost a year after the NACC Inspector found Mr Brereton had engaged in unintentional “officer misconduct” in relation to a conflict-of-interest issue linked to a Robodebt referral.<\/p>\n

Greens Justice and Defence spokesperson David Shoebridge said Mr Brereton’s defence recusal still left “many unanswered questions”.<\/p>\n

“In a show of contempt for transparency the NACC only disclosed this major development with a website post put up after 5pm on Friday night,” he said.<\/p>\n

“There’s a name for this \u2014 it’s called ‘putting out the trash.'”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The head of the National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC), Paul Brereton, will step away from all defence-related corruption referrals…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":254549,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[14040,23156,6012,3403,43,150510,42299,150509,621,44,150508,41,39,42,40,39834],"class_list":["post-254548","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-adf","tag-anti-corruption","tag-commission","tag-defence","tag-headlines","tag-inquiries","tag-investigations","tag-nacc","tag-national","tag-news","tag-paul-brereton","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-watchdog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254548","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=254548"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254548\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/254549"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=254548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=254548"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=254548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}