Australia

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Basic Country Information

Region: East & South Asia & Pacific
Income Group: High Income
Population: 27.2 million
GNI per Capita: 64407 USD
Urban population: 87% of total
Life expectancy at birth: 84 years
Human Development Index (HDI): 0.96

How does Australia control corruption?

Forecasted trend:

Stationary

	Integrity	Transparency
Country’s Score	8.23/10	15.5/20
World Rank	15/119	38/143
Regional Rank	2/23	4/23
Income group Rank	15/53	26/53

Index of Public Integrity

IPI Score: 8.23 / 10

The IPI score is the mean of the six components scores, which result from the standardization and normalization of original source data to range between 1 and 10 using a min-max-transformation, with higher values representing better performance.

Components	Component Score (max=10)	World Rank	Income Group Rank	Regional Rank
Opportunities for Corruption
Administrative Burden	0	/119	/53	/23
Trade Openness	0	/119	/53	/23
Administrative Transparency	7	31/119	21/53	3/23
Online Services	9.19	11/119	9/53	4/23
Budget Transparency	9.57	7/119	5/53	1/23
Constraints on Corruption
Judicial Independence	7.05	23/119	20/53	3/23
Freedom of the Press	7.87	26/119	23/53	2/23
E-Citizenship	8.71	20/119	20/53	3/23

Opportunities are permanent enabling circumstances for corruption. Empirical evidence exists that administrative discretion (lack of administrative transparency and poor regulation) combined with unaccountable resources (non-transparent public finance, both from domestic sources and international aid) create opportunities for corruption.

Constraints are permanent disabling circumstances of corruption. They encompass the legal response of authorities as well as the response by society (a free press and digitally enabled citizens organized as civil society or as individual voters).

Societies manage to control corruption if they find the right balance between opportunities and constraints.

Transparency in Australia

T-Index Score: 15.5 / 20 (20 = 100%)

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T-Index

World
Average

Income Group
Average

Regional
Average

The total fulfillment of items on De Jure and De Facto adds up to 100%
on the basis of which we calculate the individual performance of a country

De Facto Transparency: 9.5 / 14

De Facto Components ↓ Live, online, and freely accessible sources of public data. These data sources were assessed as complete and freely available (1 point), partial and/or paid access (0.5 point), or missing (0 points).
Past expenditures (last fiscal year)	Partial
Current expenditures (budget tracker)	No
Public Procurement Portal	Yes
Land cadaster	Partial
Register of commerce	Partial
Auditor General's report	Yes
Supreme Court's hearings schedule	Partial
Supreme Court's rulings	Yes
Financial disclosures for public officials	Partial
Conflict of interest disclosures	Partial
Official Development Assistance (ODA)	Yes
Mining concessions	Partial
Building permits in the capital city	Yes
Official gazette	Yes

De Jure Transparency: 6 / 6

De Jure Components ↓ Formal transparency commitments by governments. Formal agreements that met category criteria (see Methodology) were assessed as existing (1 point) or not (0 points).
Freedom of Information Acts (FOIA)	Yes
Open Government Partnership (OGP)	Yes
United Nations Conventions Against Corruption (UNCAC)	Yes
Financial Action Task Force Against Money Laundering (or equivalent)	Yes
Plurinational transparency agreement (EITI, OECD, WTO GPA, or CPTPP)	Yes
Beneficial Ownership	Yes

Give us feedback on our sources
Please download our full dataset here
Note: Links last accessed in December 2024.

Australia's Corruption Forecast

Forecasted trend:

Stationary

Australia ranks very well in the Index for Public Integrity. It has low opportunities for corruption due to low administrative burden and high constraints in the form of independent courts, e-citizens and strong freedom of the press. Its performance has been achieved through broad reforms, including good quality education, meritocracy and gradual administrative reform which has resulted in accountable and effective government. In light of Australia’s beginnings as a penal colony, its long-term, successful historical transformation yields many worthy lessons for developing countries. The last ten years show however some backsliding in Courts’ performance and e-government. Significant concern persists regarding the undue foreign influence, as well as influence of extractive industries, and more transparency is needed about mining concessions and officials’ conflicts of interest and assets. Owing to the high freedom of the press and level of e-citizenship guaranteeing effective civil society oversight the forecast remains stationary.

Components	2015	2025	Trendline
Budget Transparency	8.29	9.08		0
Judicial Independence	8.33	7.05		-1
Press Freedom	8.58	8.01		0
E-Citizenship	6.09	8.72		1
Online Services	9.58	9.19		0

positive change; negative change; change not statically significant.

For Budget Transparency, period considered is 2015-2019. For Judicial Independence, last value available is for 2019. For Press Freedom, period considered is 2007-2017. Due to insufficient data on Facebook users, E-citizenship was computed as the mean of the remaining two sub-indicators (fixed broadband subscriptions and Internet users). Missing values for 2020 in either of the sub-indicators were replaced with the latest available data point.