This sketch is written in the tradition of John Clarke and Bryan Dawe, whose weekly interviews, first on A Current Affair and then for many years on the ABC’s 7.30, set the standard for Australian political satire. It is offered as homage, not impersonation. John Clarke died in April 2017, walking in the bush he loved. Bryan Dawe continues to work as a writer and performer. Neither has any association with this piece beyond the debt every Australian satirist owes them. Copyright in the original Clarke and Dawe works belongs to Roderick Willows Pty Ltd and Bryan Dawe.
Clarke plays the Commissioner of a federal integrity body. Dawe interviews.
DAWE: Commissioner. Thanks for joining us.
CLARKE: Not at all, Bryan. Good to be here.
DAWE: You’ve handed down a finding on the community infrastructure grants. Three years in the making.
CLARKE: A thorough assessment, yes.
DAWE: And you found there is a corruption issue.
CLARKE: We did. Serious and possibly systemic, we concluded. The language doesn’t get much stronger in our line of work.
DAWE: So you’re launching an investigation.
CLARKE: No.
DAWE: No?
CLARKE: We’re not investigating. We decided against it.
DAWE: Why not?
CLARKE: Proportionality, Bryan. We have to be proportional. We only have so many staff, so many hours in the day. We can’t go chasing every multi-billion-dollar admission of serious possibly systemic corruption that wanders through the door.
DAWE: Isn’t that your mandate?
CLARKE: We prefer to think of ourselves as existing for the prevention of corruption. And prevention, as they say, is better than cure.
DAWE: How do you prevent corruption you’ve already found but won’t investigate?
CLARKE: Education.
DAWE: Education.
CLARKE: We’re developing a comprehensive case study module. PowerPoints, mostly. Some handouts for the regions. It’s quite ambitious.
DAWE: Won’t that require knowing what happened?
CLARKE: We know what happened. We wrote it all down. Six pages, single spaced. There’s a timeline, a cast of characters, one of those flowcharts with the boxes and arrows. Very professional.
DAWE: Have you spoken to anyone involved?
CLARKE: We haven’t needed to. The documentation was extensive.
DAWE: Supplied by whom?
CLARKE: The people concerned. Self-reporting is very big now, Bryan. We’re encouraging a culture of transparency.
DAWE: So the people who steered grants to golf clubs in their own electorates have transparently reported that they steered grants to golf clubs in their own electorates.
CLARKE: And we’ve transparently reported that we’ve read their reports. Everyone’s being terrifically open.
DAWE: The golf clubs keep the money?
CLARKE: Twenty-two million, yes. Much of it has gone on new irrigation. Very green, actually. Environmental.
DAWE: And the public gets?
CLARKE: Our letter. And the PowerPoint, eventually. We’re calling it Lessons in Governance: A Case Study in Proportionality.
DAWE: Right. A Mr O’Grady spent three years of his own time, unpaid, compiling the evidence. Documents, witness statements, financial records. He brought it all to you at considerable personal expense.
CLARKE: Extraordinary effort. Genuine public spiritedness.
DAWE: What does he get?
CLARKE: He gets to be a case study, Bryan. Not everyone gets to be a teaching moment. We’re acknowledging his contribution to the educational literature.
DAWE: He wanted justice.
CLARKE: Yes, well, justice is expensive. Education is cost-effective. It’s the difference between a royal commission and a workshop. We’re workshop people.
DAWE: Does your letter to him say his evidence was credible?
CLARKE: It says his submission was comprehensive.
DAWE: Not that it was true.
CLARKE: We haven’t investigated, so we can’t verify. Verifying would require investigating, and we’ve ruled that out. On grounds of proportionality.
DAWE: I see.
CLARKE: We do take enormous care with the tone, Bryan. Warm but inconclusive. Empathetic yet non-committal. It’s an art form.
DAWE: The New South Wales ICAC found pork-barrelling can constitute corrupt conduct. They investigate. They refer. There are consequences.
CLARKE: They’re a state body, Bryan. Different animal entirely. Different resources, different appetite. Different stomach.
DAWE: So the bar is lower federally.
CLARKE: The bar is precisely where we’ve decided to leave it. That’s rather the advantage of being the ones who hold the bar.
DAWE: What happens when the next Mr O’Grady arrives? With evidence of a fifty million dollar fraud. A hundred million.
CLARKE: Then we’d develop a multi-module curriculum. Possibly a webinar series. Integrity in Practice: Lessons from the Field. We might bring in a facilitator. Catered morning tea.
DAWE: But no investigation.
CLARKE: Investigate what? We’ll have already written the case study. The facts won’t have changed. Just the font size.
DAWE: Last question. If someone watching has evidence of federal corruption, serious, systemic, documented, what should they do with it?
CLARKE: Send it to the states. New South Wales has ICAC. Victoria has IBAC. They’ve kept their appetites. We’re on a special diet here at the Commonwealth. All presentation, no substance. Very light. Won’t trouble the digestion at all.
DAWE: Thanks for your time.
CLARKE: Good to be with you, Bryan.
Based, largely, on real events. In July 2026 the National Anti-Corruption Commission told citizen investigator Vince O’Grady that his grants referral raised a corruption issue that could involve serious or systemic corrupt conduct, then declined to investigate it, opting instead for prevention and education work and a case study. The real correspondence, reported by Michael Pascoe at Michael West Media, is more damning than anything invented above.
Urban Wronski Writes 
Their spirit endures to haunt the grifter class, had they souls that could be troubled.
Esp. like “DAWE: And the public gets? CLARKE: Our letter.” which recalls, from a decade+ ago, an insurance industry spokesBot explaining why so few received a zac after flood/fire/cyclone et al – Brian “What do customers receive for their premiums?” Ans “A receipt, Brian, they get a receipt.”
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