Andrew L. Urban.
Bruce Lehrmann is no longer under investigation by the National Anti-Corruption Commission NACC for allegedly using secrets about French submarines for his own ends, reports the ABC.
“The former commissioner (Paul Brereton) decided to take no further action concerning the investigation in Operation Ivanhoe,” writes the corruption watchdog.
The notification delivered on Monday October 12, 2026, closes a saga that began with raids of the 31-year-old’s home in June 2024 over allegations he took secret documents from the office of former defence minister Linda Reynolds five years earlier.
“The NACC has been a colossal waste of taxpayer money,” Lehrmann said in response to the watchdog’s letter on Monday. “Over two years the former commissioner used his powers to personally advance a conspiracy that I was a spy and traitor to the nation, selling defence secrets to foreign countries.”
A coupla things: Paul Brereton resigned as National Anti-Corruption Commissioner five months ago, departing 6 July 2026. He announced his resignation on 25 May 2026 (after serving as the inaugural Commissioner since 1 July 2023). He cited ongoing personal scrutiny as a distraction from the Commission’s work.
Current Acting Commissioner is Kylie Kilgour. She has held the role of Acting Commissioner since 6 July 2026 (she was previously a Deputy Commissioner of the NACC). A permanent appointment process is underway. (Brereton resigned on May 25, almost five months ago. Doesn’t anyone want this job? Or is the organisation plain incompetent?)
The notification to Lehrmann attributes the decision to abandon the investigation to Brereton. So why wait three months or more after Brereton leaves to notify Lehrmann? When did Brereton make the decision? And the NACC is silent on why it abandoned this investigation (as usual) – or what has been the cost of it?
Just to complete the reference to L Reynolds 2023 Referral to NACC in the earlier post, NACC published what it termed a “Preliminary” Report in June 2025 – so about 2 years after the referral, and a year after the raid on Bruce’s home. The Report includes:
“The preliminary investigation was concerned with the probity and integrity of the process by which the Settlement was reached, and does not involve any conclusion about the validity or otherwise of Ms Higgins’ claims. As has been noted, the Settlement was on the basis of no admission of liability.
Whether Ms Higgins made misrepresentations during the negotiations is not within the scope of the Commission’s jurisdiction, as at the relevant time she was not a Commonwealth public official. That question therefore was not and could not be covered by this preliminary investigation.”
Thank you Andrew and Steven for this information.
It appears that recruitment for a new NACC Commissioner and Deputy Commissioner may be finalised soon, as applications opened on 22 June and closed on 13 July (https://ministers.ag.gov.au/media-centre/applications-open-commissioner-and-deputy-commissioner-national-anti-corruption-commission-22-06-2026).
It seems that NACC has been dealing with a number of referrals relating to Higgins/Lehrmann matters over the last 3 years.
In October 2023, Senator Linda Reynolds referred Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus’s December 2022 decision—which approved the $2.4 million settlement for Higgins while excluding Reynolds from the mediation process— NACC. Reynolds argued the payout lacked transparency and proper defensive opportunity.
In June 2024 NACC raided Bruce Lehrmann’s home and took his diary in relation to the submarine matters. It is unclear who made this referral to NACC. One would think that there would have been enough information publicly available in the thousands of exhibits on the Federal Court Lehrmann Sydney Defamation case in December 2023 to scrutinise Lehrmann’s movements for the 36 hours following the alleged incident in Parliament House. Who made the referral to NACC, how much did the 2 year probe cost, what were the ramifications for Lehrmann (eg was he under surveillance, could he speak publicly about his case, was he denied his “freedom of political communication?) and why was this recent announcement made so late after Brereton’s Departure? Also, why did the probe take so long? In this current cost of living crisis, and calls for increased productivity, tax payers would hope NACC matters are being resolved as quickly as possible!
In terms of financial matters – there were reports in July 2026 of Fiona Brown receiving a financial settlement of $1.48 million but it appears Linda Reynolds financial claims are ongoing (AFR Aug 2026: ““In my view, after five-and-a-half years, the mediation was an opportunity for the Commonwealth and HWLE to finally resolve the damage caused to the last outstanding victim of Brittany Higgins’ lies,” she said.” Again, how much does this cost the tax payer?
According to a 20 September 2026 story in The Canberra Times, many senior NACC staff are acting in higher positions: “NACC acting commissioner Kylie Kilgour, acting chief executive George-Philip De Wet, and acting deputy commissioners Jamie Lowe and Penny Shakespeare, among others, appeared before the inquiry on Friday, September 18. The inquiry heard that staff attrition at the NACC was about 15 per cent in 2025-26, down from 20.8 per cent in 2023-24, but still above the APS average.”
An August 2026 story in The Point reveals that there is still a lack of transparency regarding the upcoming senior appointment processes. Some extracts here just for background information: “The current attorney-general, Michelle Rowland, appears to have led members of the NACC oversight committee and respected integrity advocates to believe that the latest recruitment process is a marked improvement – because there will be an “eminent” independent person included on the government-controlled selection panel…
…Yet we can reveal that the first recruitment process also featured an eminent independent member on the selection panel. Not only was this information kept from the public, it was also withheld from the PJC-NACC. “It’s extraordinary as a member of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on the NACC to be finding this out three years after the event and only through an FOI,” Greens Senator David Shoebridge told us. Despite Rowland’s promises of increased transparency, the government has refused to disclose – even to members of the PJC-NACC, which is bound by confidentiality – the names of the people it has appointed to the selection panel. Attorney-general Dreyfus intervened in previous two NACC recruitment processes. Two recruitment processes were required to fill the positions of Commissioner and three deputy commissioners (DCs) because of an intervention by then attorney-general Mark Dreyfus. The FOI documents show that Dreyfus initially directed that three permanent DCs be appointed, but after the selection panel had recommended three suitable candidates, Dreyfus changed course and instead hired two permanent DCs – Nicole Rose and Ben Gauntlett – and a temporary ‘acting’ DC – Jaala Hinchcliffe, former head of the Australian Commission for Law Enforcement Integrity. An additional recruitment process was later required to hire a third permanent DC. The first recruitment process began in October 2022. Some 17 people applied for commissioner while 94 people applied for one of the three DC roles.”
In terms of management and oversight of NACC, the CEO is Philip Reed (who was CEO of the 2012 – 2018 Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse) and the Inspector is Gail Furness (who was Counsel Assisting in the 2012 – 2018 Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse).
There is a Parliamentary Joint Committee: https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Joint/National_Anti-Corruption_Commission/Committee_Membership.
According to a 13 Oct 2026 story in the Canberra Times, The independent watchdog overseeing NACC made no recommendations in a draft report about its chief’s defence ties, months before he resigned over the same concerns. It has raised questions about how the watchdog’s independence from the Commission is protected.. Mr Reed’s letter to the Attorney-General was published on Friday, October 9, under freedom-of-information provisions, with a heavily redacted paragraph on the contents of the draft investigation report. Ms Furness launched an investigation into Mr Brereton in February because of complaints about his dual role overseeing the corruption watchdog and, earlier, advising senior defence officials.
Apparently NACC has a $60 million+ annual budget and more than 200 employees, but there are many questions still be to answered…
There is something unsatisfactory about an investigation ending without the public being able to establish quite when the decision was made, why notification took so long, or how much the exercise cost. Apparently, investigations can be easier to start than to explain.
The NACC has considerable investigative powers. Such powers may be necessary, but they come with an obligation to account for their use. Secrecy during an investigation is one thing; secrecy after it ends is quite another. Otherwise, transparency risks becoming a bit like the office Christmas party: much discussed, rarely witnessed.
The questions raised here are straightforward. When was the decision to take no further action in Operation Ivanhoe actually made? Why was Lehrmann notified only after Paul Brereton had left office? And what was the final bill to the taxpayer? These are not requests for the secret files, the witnesses’ addresses or the combination to the evidence-room safe. They are basic questions about the administration of a public investigation.
Nor does closing an investigation establish that everything done during it was proper. Equally, the existence of legal proceedings challenging the NACC’s conduct does not establish that the challenge will succeed. That is precisely why independent scrutiny matters.
The public cannot reasonably expect every investigative detail to be disclosed. But it can expect a coherent account of major decisions, within the limits of legitimate confidentiality.
A watchdog must sometimes work in private. But if it can investigate others while leaving its own decisions unexplained, one is entitled to ask who watches the watchdog.
And if the answer is “nobody, because the investigation is over”, that would be a remarkably convenient administrative arrangement.
That’s good. Bruce gets a break at last!