Seven Royal Commissions in the first term — coercive powers, no carve-outs, full public reporting, first commission within 90 days of government. The questions Australia has never been allowed to ask, finally asked. What comes through that process will reshape this country.
The COVID inquiry excluded states. Lobbying is unregulated. FOI requests stonewalled for years. Media monopoly unchallenged for decades. Family court failures reviewed but never fixed. The pattern is consistent: where the questions get hard, the institutions designed to answer them are unable or unwilling to do so.
Parliamentary inquiries cannot compel witnesses or documents. Departmental reviews are run by the departments being reviewed. Royal Commissions have been promised and delivered too rarely, on terms too narrow, and too often after the damage has hardened into permanence. The accountability architecture is decorative.
Who authorised lockdowns and on what evidence? Where did Indigenous royalties go? Who owns the media and what did they receive in return for what coverage? What is the full accounting of the family court system? Where did the proceeds of three decades of asset sales actually end up? These are not extreme questions. They are the questions a serious country asks of itself periodically — and Australia has not been allowed to.
Full Royal Commission into the COVID-19 pandemic response — federal and state, no exclusions. Terms of reference cover: legal basis for emergency powers; cost-benefit analysis of lockdowns, border closures, mandates; full accounting of vaccine adverse events; suppression of dissenting medical and scientific voices; RBA monetary policy decisions during and after the pandemic; and the long-term economic, educational, and social cost of the response.
Australia has some of the most concentrated media ownership of any liberal democracy. News Corp and Nine Entertainment control approximately 90% of metropolitan daily readership. Three corporations collect 80% of free-to-air and subscription TV revenue. The RC will examine what ownership limits serve a functioning democracy, what relationships existed between media proprietors and successive governments, and what reforms can restore the diversity of voices a democracy requires.
Australia has a lobbying register that is largely decorative. Foreign influence laws applied selectively. Former ministers taking industry positions within months of leaving government. The RC will examine every aspect of the lobbying industry — who paid whom, what access was purchased, what decisions were influenced, what legislative changes were made — and design enforceable rules to replace the current ornamental ones.
Whether the adversarial model serves children; whether ex parte FVROs are used tactically; whether the 2023 removal of equal parental responsibility was evidence-based; why proceedings cost $100,000+ per party; and the deeper question of why marriages are failing at this rate. Full detail in the Family Law one-pager.
The Aboriginals Benefit Account holds over one billion dollars in mining royalties that have not reached communities. Most royalty agreements are confidential. The RC will audit every resource royalty payment made over twenty years, examine every body holding funds on behalf of Aboriginal communities, and determine — with full coercive powers if necessary — how much money has accumulated, where it sits, who controls it, and how it is to be returned to community control.
The council took the author of this platform to court over a compost toilet and a shed. That experience — multiplied across thousands of Australians every year — illustrates the problem. Local government has accumulated powers disproportionate to its democratic mandate and accountability. The RC will examine rate-setting, enforcement conduct, CEO accountability, council planning decisions, and the systemic failure of state-level oversight.
Freedom of Information is a theoretical right in Australia. In practice: requests are delayed for years, documents are redacted into meaninglessness, exemptions are applied to routine operational information, and agencies have developed sophisticated strategies to exhaust requesters. The RC will examine the full architecture of government secrecy — who developed it, who benefits, and how to restore the right to know that the FOI Act was supposed to deliver.
Commonwealth Bank, Qantas, Telstra, gold. Three decades of asset sales, mostly briefed to the public as 'value for taxpayers'. The full accounting has never been published. A separate audit — informed by the Royal Commission process — examines where the proceeds went, what the assets are worth today, and what the long-term cost to the Commonwealth has been.
RBA monetary policy decisions before, during, and after the COVID response examined alongside the COVID Royal Commission. The decisions that produced the largest cost-of-living crisis in a generation deserve examination by an institution with coercive powers — not by the institution that made them.
The COVID Royal Commission is commissioned within 90 days of an MMP government. The other six follow over the first 18 months. All seven report within the first term. Each report is published in full — no executive summaries that hide the substance. The recommendations are implemented or rejected publicly, with reasons given.
| Current — Decorative Accountability | MMP — Sunlight Agenda |
|---|---|
| Parliamentary inquiries cannot compel witnesses or documents. | 7 Royal Commissions with full coercive powers. |
| COVID inquiry excluded states. Narrow terms of reference. | Full COVID RC — federal and state, no exclusions, all decisions examined. |
| Media ownership unchallenged for decades. | Media monopoly RC. Ownership limits restored. Diversity reformed. |
| Lobbying register decorative. Foreign influence laws selective. | Lobbying RC. Enforceable rules. Public register of meetings and decisions. |
| Aboriginals Benefit Account: $1B+ in royalties, communities never paid. | Indigenous Governance & Royalties RC. Full audit. Funds returned to community control. |
| FOI in practice unworkable. Years of delay, blanket redaction. | FOI RC. Architecture of secrecy dismantled. Right to know restored. |
| Asset sales never properly accounted for. | Separate audit. Three decades of sales reconciled and published in full. |
No memos pinned to this policy yet. When an MMP memo on this topic is published, it will appear here with a short summary. The full memo index is at moralmajority.com.au/memos.html.