Office for Public Integrity (SA)

Act: Independent Commission Against Corruption Act 2012 (SA), Part 3.¹

Established: The Office existed as part of the Commission's own intake function before 2021; it became a standalone independent body under the amendments effective 7 October 2021. Its exact original commencement date in its earlier, less independent form is not confirmed.

Purpose: The Office for Public Integrity is the single point of entry for complaints and reports about South Australian public authorities and public officers — covering corruption, misconduct and maladministration together, in contrast to the Independent Commission Against Corruption's narrower, corruption-only jurisdiction. The Office assesses each complaint or report and determines which body is best placed to act on it. It is the entry point for the integrity scheme; it does not take away a person's own right to complain to Ombudsman SA directly about an agency's administrative action.

Powers conferred under the Act

The Office receives complaints and reports, assesses them, and refers them onward: corruption matters to the Commission, misconduct and maladministration matters to Ombudsman SA, and other matters to whichever public authority is best placed to deal with them. The Act is more exact than that summary. A matter must be referred to the Commission where it is assessed as raising a potential issue of corruption that could be the subject of a prosecution; a matter raising other issues that should be dealt with by an inquiry agency must be referred, or the complainant or reporting agency advised to refer it; and the Office may also refer to public authorities and public officers. Whether to take action, and what action, is at the absolute discretion of the Director of OPI.¹ This is an intake-and-assessment function, not a general investigative power of the kind the Commission holds.

It is not, however, without a compulsory power. For the purpose of assessing a matter, the Office may by written notice require a public authority or public officer to produce a specified document, to produce a written statement of information about a specified matter, or to answer specified questions, within a specified period and in a specified form, verified by statutory declaration if the notice so requires. A person who refuses or fails to comply with a requirement of such a notice commits an offence, with a maximum penalty of $10,000 or imprisonment for 2 years (s 18E(3)-(4)).¹ The power runs against public authorities and public officers only, and only for the purpose of assessing a matter.

Is it a prosecuting authority?

No. The Office does not itself prosecute; its role ends once it has assessed and directed a complaint to the appropriate body.

How it relates to the other SA integrity bodies — a genuinely different structure

It is tempting to assume the Office plays the same role as Western Australia's Parliamentary Inspector of the CCC or New South Wales's Inspector of the LECC — a body that watches the corruption commission's own conduct. That assumption would be wrong. The Office is not primarily an oversight body at all: it is the shared front door through which every public- integrity complaint in South Australia arrives, before being sorted to whichever body — the Commission, the Ombudsman, or elsewhere — actually has jurisdiction over it. The role WA's and NSW's models give to a dedicated inspector is instead held in South Australia by a separate office again: the Office of the Inspector, which reviews how the Commission, the Office for Public Integrity and the Ombudsman each exercise their own powers. Three distinct functions — investigation (the Commission), intake and referral (this Office), and oversight of both plus the Ombudsman (the Inspector) — sit in three distinct bodies, not two.

Self-check

• Have I described the Office as a complaint-intake and referral body, not as an oversight body watching the Commission's own conduct?
• Have I named the correct destination body (Commission, Ombudsman, or elsewhere) rather than assuming the Office itself investigates every complaint it receives?
• Have I kept this Office distinct from the Office of the Inspector, which performs the genuinely different oversight function?