Rule of Law

This is a primary corruption issue where the ‘fear and favour’ politicisation of the bureaucracy is extended to include enforcement processes – decisions regarding those against whom the law is enforced and/or not enforced.

The ‘fear and favour’ system can also be extended to include how legal advice is used in the administration of enforcement, and/or to include how judicial processes are managed to ensure that only the guilty pay damages or go to prison.

In a properly functioning liberal democracy, every person, irrespective of status or wealth, should be equal before the law. The law should be applied to all consistently in materially similar circumstances. Position should not allow a person or a group to stand above the law.

Rogue ‘fear and favour’ legal opinions, inconsistent with the established law, should not be used within government to avoid the application of any established law against the government itself, in order to avoid its application against its elected officials, and against its favoured public service appointments.

QWAG submits that powerful industries and/or unions and/or media organisations should not be readily enabled to apply their own alleged ‘fear and favour’ tactics upon elected officials, or indeed upon the decisions of agency CEOs or of the CEOs of corporations and Not-for-Profits (NFPs), if this has occurred, or to ridicule whistleblowers who disclose wrongdoing. This position is based on the premise that no one is above the law.