Regulating Responsively for Oversight Agencies in the Pacific

Abstract

Since independence in the Pacific, the performance of oversight agencies has been mixed. This paper examines the performance of these oversight agencies, focusing on their strengths and impediments. It examines possible ways that oversight can be strengthened in the Pacific. One major finding of this research is that oversight agencies can not be examined in isolation. They must be conceptualised relationally within the law and justice sector as a total package of regulatory institutions. Oversight agencies, with the possible exemption of parliamentary committees (which have a political autonomy), share important linkages with each other and the judiciary, Attorneys General offices, departments of public prosecution, the police and affiliated statutory bodies such as leadership, electoral and human rights commissions. While this paper is concerned with the oversight capacities of the entire law and justice sector it will focus on: · Ombudsmen. · Auditors General. · The Parliamentary committee system. · Financial Intelligence Units (FIUs). These relatively new institutions oversee a different but complementary suite of risks, namely money laundering and terrorist financing. They oversee private as well as public sector activities. In providing tools to monitor flows of funds, FIUs can assist oversight agencies in their supervision of public expenditure and the control of corruption.

This paper is concerned with all member states of the Pacific Islands Forum, except Australia and New Zealand. There is a distinction between countries that have constitutional provisions for extensive oversight functions – namely Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and Fiji – and other member states where specific oversight agencies either do not exist or have developed as part of the regulatory machinery of administrative practice (this is most applicable to Ombudsmen offices).