Crime and Corruption Commission (Qld) 

Act: Crime and Corruption Act 2001 (Qld).¹

Established: The Commission's origins trace to the 1989 Fitzgerald Inquiry. The former Criminal Justice Commission and Queensland Crime Commission were merged into a single body — then named the Crime and Misconduct Commission — on 1 January 2002. It became the Crime and Corruption Commission on 1 July 2014, when the Act itself was renamed from the Crime and Misconduct Act 2001 to the Crime and Corruption Act 2001 and the Commission's jurisdiction was refocused on serious and systemic corruption.

Purpose: Under s 4 of the Act, the CCC's main purposes are to combat and reduce the incidence of major crime, and to continuously improve the integrity of, and reduce the incidence of corruption in, the Queensland public sector. It is an integrity and major-crime body, not a general police force or prosecutor.

Powers conferred under the Act

Section 5 gives the CCC investigative powers not ordinarily available to the police service: powers to investigate major crime and criminal organisations, and powers to investigate — and to help units of public administration deal with — corrupt conduct, particularly its more serious forms. Its powers also extend to confiscation-related investigations undertaken with the Commission's involvement. As with every other integrity body in this overlay set, these are investigative and reporting powers, not powers to determine guilt or impose punishment: s 48B of the Act expressly forbids the Commission from finding or stating that a person should be prosecuted for a criminal offence, or even that prosecution should be considered.

Is it a prosecuting authority?

No. In PRS v Crime and Corruption Commission [2019] QSC 83,² Davis J held that the CCC has no power to prosecute a person for a criminal offence. Section 50 of the Act lets the Commission apply to the Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal (QCAT) for a disciplinary order against a "prescribed person" — a police officer or a public-administration appointee — which is a disciplinary avenue, not a criminal one. Criminal charges are instead brought by police exercising powers under the Police Powers and Responsibilities Act 2000 (Qld). The Court of Appeal dismissed an appeal from this decision in PRS v Crime and Corruption Commission [2019] QCA 255. A student who describes the CCC as "prosecuting" a matter has made the same specific, checkable error as a student who says the same thing about WA's CCC.

How this compares with Western Australia's Corruption and Crime Commission

Western Australia's own integrity body is also commonly abbreviated "CCC" — but it is the Corruption and Crime Commission, established by the Corruption, Crime and Misconduct Act 2003 (WA), a different Act in a different jurisdiction with a different history. Notice the words are in a different order: Queensland's is the Crime and Corruption Commission; Western Australia's is the Corruption and Crime Commission. The two bodies operate under entirely separate statutes, and a student who cites WA's Corruption, Crime and Misconduct Act 2003 to support a Queensland problem answer — or the reverse — has cited the wrong jurisdiction's Act, even though the acronym on the page reads "CCC" either way. Always check which Act, and which state, sits behind a "CCC" citation before relying on it.

Structurally the two bodies are close cousins: both are integrity and major-crime commissions descended from a royal-commission-style reform (Fitzgerald in Queensland, the Kennedy Royal Commission in WA's case), and neither is a prosecuting authority under its own Act — see Western Australia's Corruption and Crime Commission for the parallel WA authority, A v Maughan [2016] WASCA 128. Their oversight design differs, though: WA's CCC is checked by a single independent statutory office, the Parliamentary Inspector of the CCC. Queensland instead splits oversight between the Parliamentary Crime and Corruption Committee — a standing committee of the Legislative Assembly, established by s 9 of the Act, with responsibility for monitoring and reviewing the Commission's performance — and the Parliamentary Crime and Corruption Commissioner, an officer of Parliament established by s 10 who audits the Commission's records and helps the committee perform its functions. A committee-plus-adviser model, not a single inspector-general office.

Self-check

• Have I named the correct Queensland Act — the Crime and Corruption Act 2001 (Qld) — rather than assuming it mirrors Western Australia's Corruption, Crime and Misconduct Act 2003?
• Have I stated the CCC's function as investigation and referral, not prosecution, and cited PRS v Crime and Corruption Commission [2019] QSC 83 rather than asserting the point without authority?
• Have I kept Queensland's Crime and Corruption Commission distinct from Western Australia's differently-ordered Corruption and Crime Commission, both in name and in governing Act?
• Have I noted that Queensland's oversight of the CCC runs through a parliamentary committee and commissioner, not a single inspector-general office like WA's Parliamentary Inspector?