Office of the Inspector (SA)
A short factsheet on the Office of the Inspector: its establishing Act, its annual review function, and its unusually broad oversight remit spanning three separate SA integrity bodies.
Learning outcomes
- State the Office of the Inspector's establishing Act and its annual-review function.
- Explain how the Inspector's oversight remit differs from WA's Parliamentary Inspector of the CCC and NSW's Inspector of the LECC, each of which oversees only one body.
- Identify who can trigger an Inspector review (own motion, complaint, Attorney-General, or the Crime and Public Integrity Policy Committee).
Act: Independent Commission Against Corruption Act 2012 (SA).1
Established: The Act requires the Governor to appoint an Inspector. The exact original commencement date of the Office is not confirmed; its oversight remit over Ombudsman SA's exercise of ICAC-Act-related powers was confirmed, or added, by the amendments effective 7 October 2021.
Purpose: The Inspector conducts an annual review examining the operations of the Independent Commission Against Corruption, the Office for Public Integrity, and Ombudsman SA's exercise of powers under the Act and the Ombudsman Act 1972 (SA) — asking, each year, whether each body's powers were exercised in an appropriate manner.
Powers conferred under the Act
The Inspector can investigate complaints made against the Commission, the Office for Public Integrity, or the Ombudsman; conduct reviews on the Inspector's own motion; and conduct reviews at the request of the Attorney-General or of the Crime and Public Integrity Policy Committee, a parliamentary committee established under the Parliamentary Committees Act 1991 (SA).
Is it a prosecuting authority?
No. The Inspector's function is independent review and reporting on how the three bodies it oversees exercise their own powers, not prosecution of offences.
How it relates to the other SA bodies — broader than a typical "inspector of the corruption
commission" model
Western Australia's Parliamentary Inspector oversees only the CCC. New South Wales's Inspector of the LECC oversees only the LECC. South Australia's Inspector is deliberately broader: its remit spans three separate bodies — the Commission, the Office for Public Integrity, and the Ombudsman's exercise of ICAC-Act-related powers — reflecting the fact that South Australia split what used to be one integrity commission's jurisdiction across three separate bodies in 2021. A student should not assume the Inspector's scope in SA matches the narrower, single-body oversight role an "inspector" or "parliamentary inspector" plays in other states.
Self-check
- Have I named all three bodies the Inspector oversees, rather than assuming it watches only the Commission?
- Have I distinguished the Inspector's annual-review and complaint-investigation function from the Office for Public Integrity's complaint-intake-and-referral function — they are not the same office?
- Have I noted that the Inspector's broader three-body remit is a genuine structural difference from WA's and NSW's narrower, single-body inspector models, not assumed it is the same?