ABSTRACT
The most stimulating and thoughtful account of the causal dimension of Australian political corruption is Hay's 1977 paper in the New Zealand journal Political Science. Hay argues five basic causes for political corruption: behavioural expectations imposed by law but not shared by society at large; rapid social change; size of political unit; the level of ideological content in political activity; and inequalities. The second and fifth of these he regards as inapplicable to contemporary Tasmania, but they certainly can be applied to Tasmania's past as well as to several other Australian states past and present. Australia was ab initio an extremely bureaucratic and highly regulated society. Political corruption presupposes a degree of both. Bribery is sometimes characterised as Australia's corruption of last resort: by contrast more typical and prevalent were favouritism, nepotism, patronage and more or less secret commissions. The denial of the most directly monetary form may be an exaggeration, a wish to stress the modernity of Australian politics.
