Corruption Investigations
A review of ATSIC was commissioned in 2003. The report was titled In the Hands of the Regions: A New ATSIC and it recommended reforms which gave greater control of ATSIC to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people at a regional level. At the time, Indigenous Affairs Minister Amanda Vanstone stated that the review had concluded that ATSIC has not connected well with the indigenous Australians and was not serving them well.
In 2003, ATSIC became embroiled in controversy over litigation surrounding its Chairperson Geoff Clark, relating to his alleged participation in a number of gang rapes in the 1970s and 1980s. ATSIC was also investigated for financial corruption, and the embezzlement of ATSIC's funds, that were originally intended for service delivery to help Aborigines.
Soon after this the Howard government began to remove some of ATSIC's fiscal powers, which were transferred to a new independent organisation, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Services (ATSIS).
The government ultimately suspended Geoff Clark as Chairperson of ATSIC in 2003 (Lionel Quartermaine was acting Chairperson). After a court appeal Clark was briefly reinstated. In the same year, Clark was arrested for brawling in a Victorian bar.
Read more about this topic: Aboriginal And Torres Strait Islander Commission
Famous quotes containing the word corruption:
“Keep your hands clean and pure from the infamous vice of corruption, a vice so infamous that it degrades even the other vices that may accompany it. Accept no present whatever; let your character in that respect be transparent and without the least speck, for as avarice is the vilest and dirtiest vice in private, corruption is so in public life.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)