Anthony Albanese could spark many inquiries into the Coalition thanks to Tony Abbott

One example of how he had come to this conclusion involved the roof insulation scheme. Treasury proposed it as a good way of getting cash quickly into hundreds of communities when the 2008 global financial crisis threatened to seize up the money supply. A similar scheme involved pouring money into an instant program of building libraries and other facilities in primary and secondary schools. From the Rudd government's point of view the proposals had a double advantage: they kept people, particularly in the building trades in work and kept cash circulating in communities. But they also achieved a lasting public good in themselves, in a way that was objectively desirable but would have struggled for priority against competing calls on government. They were not make-work programs with no lasting footprints.

Of course, there were criticisms, and some were justified. Both schemes, and some others as well, were conceived and put into action very quickly, because the need to keep cash in circulation was urgent. Not enough time was spent dotting i's and crossing t's. PM&C, Treasury and Finance were impatient with any delay and inclined to see caution and deliberation by line departments as pettifogging, resistant and time-wasting. The schemes were highly effective in getting the cash out, insulated many thousands of homes to the great benefit of the environment and reduced energy consumption. But they might have been twice as efficient had bureaucrats had months to work out a scheme of administration.

It is doubtful that even the most elaborate preparation would have conceived the need for telling builders to take care not to hammer nails into live electrical wires. Governments, as commissioning agents for building and construction, or as refunders of building projects theoretically commissioned by householders, do not usually descend to that level of detail, which were, in any event, a matter for state building codes, building licensing arrangements, and broad occupational health and safety legislation. And common sense.

The take-up of the scheme was an enormous success, which created its own problems. Beyond hard-working tradesmen, every spiv, wide-boy, rent-seeker and smarty realised quickly that there were virtually unlimited sums of money available for roof insulation schemes, provided one had house-owning clients with empty roof spaces. Touts combed neighbourhoods and knocked on doors making offers to do the work for nothing. Some used call centres. PM&C gave itself brownie points for inventing a system of payment with minimal bureaucracy through neighbourhood pharmacies.

Some installers were not well-qualified to be installing. Some were hiring inexperienced youth and giving them little or no training in what to do. A few, tragically, electrocuted themselves. The employers were small businessmen - much loved by everyone, salt of the earth, etc etc. The Coalition was soon alleging that deaths were not because of the fecklessness, negligence and incompetence of those on the gravy train. It was instead somehow the fault of the government, and its failure to warn of the dangers of electricity. Soon Abbott, as leader of the opposition was almost implying that it was the personal fault of Rudd, and of the minister for the environment, Peter Garrett, each of whom should be before the courts, perhaps the gallows.

Another of Abbott's obsessions, with Murdoch media assistance, involved the idea that the deputy prime minister, Julia Gillard (soon to be prime minister) had been guilty of aiding and abetting some sort of criminal fraud committed by a trade union boss at a time, before she had gone into politics, when she was both the union's lawyer and the fraudster's girlfriend. The facts were murky and complicated, and perhaps Gillard acted unwisely. But there was little evidence establishing that she was a knowing party to the fraud. Even so, Gillard became politically handicapped by the non-stop innuendo and allegation, almost all privileged.

The Labor government did not lose office because of these "scandals" and personal attacks. But both undermined its reputation for competence and judgment. In that sense, Rudd and Gillard paid a political price at the ballot box for anything they had done wrong. The big price was less for their culpability than for their hopelessness in properly defending their actions, albeit in the face of a Murdoch newspaper crusade. They seemed to think that shrinking from direct battle under continual artillery fire was wiser than confronting the critics. When the politicians themselves are making a balls-up of defending themselves, who could be surprised that journalists were not volunteering support?

But Abbott came to government wanting more than his victory at the polls. He wanted his condemnation of those involved formally confirmed. He determined on inquiries with the powers of royal commissioners to probe everything that had occurred in a search for sticks with which he could beat Labor. The departure of Rudd and Gillard from politics did not slow him. He decided that the commission should have unlimited access to all the papers of the previous administrations.

Public servants warned him that this was in breach of a long-established convention that incoming governments did not have access to such papers. This convention did not have the force of law, but it had a commonsense base. If such papers were available, for example, politicians might not speak frankly in cabinet, instead preparing alibis in advance.

Perhaps Abbott did not understand the convention. Or he did not care, because, as he saw it, there was immediate political advantage to be had. He often said it was better to act first and apologise later.

The commission of inquiry into the wheat-for-oil scandal under the Howard government, had been politically exploited by Rudd with great success while he was in opposition. Despite the constrained terms of reference, designed to steer the inquiry away from ministerial involvement, Rudd's suggestions that ministers and senior bureaucrats knew a lot more than they pretended gained traction. In the tradition of a highly politicised AFP, senior officers frustrated, then closed down, a decent investigation, and even implementation of recommendations of prosecutions of wheat board officials. In the election campaign Rudd made much of the cover-up.

But once Rudd was in power, he respected the conventions. As prime minister, he dropped the idea of any further inquiry, even into matters Howard had deliberately left out of the terms of reference. It was past business: it was not proper for the new government to call for such papers (or such as had not already been shredded, including by the department, soon after the inquiry was mooted).

Abbott also had an inquiry into corruption within the trade union movement, confidently expecting that close questioning would inculpate the new leader of the opposition, Bill Shorten, a former AWU official, in all manner of improper use of union funds and power, as well as Gillard. The mission was accepted with enthusiasm by the retired High Court judge asked to conduct the inquiry, but, alas, the most extensive and zealous investigations could not hit the intended targets. As it happened, the commissioner found later disgrace as a sexual harasser.

All this is now ancient history. No one, not even Bill Shorten, the last one left in active politics, has any interest in vengeance. Not against Abbott, or others, such as George Brandis who lent themselves to the inquiry path, including a relentless search for relevant cabinet documents. Nor against deputy Liberal leader, Julie Bishop, whose remarks about Gillard had been particularly vicious. It's all water under the bridge.

But the precedent is not. And the convention is dead. Murdered. Strangled by Tony Abbott, if without his hopes for great partisan advantage being realised.

Because of the Abbott precedents, the Albanese government can, if it wants, set up as many inquiries as it wishes into aspects of Coalition government administration, and, in the cause of doing as much political damage as possible, demand of its public servants complete access to any relevant cabinet documents of the Abbott, Turnbull or Morrison administrations. It need not stack the inquiry, or play it simply for politics. We could all stand to learn lessons from the corruption of purpose, the subversion of public interest and the mismanagement of 10 years of Coalition government. Ten years from now, I expect, we will be able to say the same of the late Labor government.

Abbott's breaches of convention in using papers of previous governments are a standing invitation for wide inquiries into the mishaps of past governments. Access to such materials would be novel for Australia, but would not much surprise the Americans, where most materials become available even before the fall of an administration. US cabinet documents, even on defence matters, do not enjoy the protections they do in Australia.

Any properly authorised judicial, executive or legislative inquiry could demand access to cabinet papers in investigating events, and any relevant documents of the prime minister's office, or of any minister.

If I am correct in my view about the right of access to materials that relate to practical matters of policy, programs and administration (as opposed to pure politics) there are other uncomfortable prospect for the former government.

First, such documents would be being sorted by professional public servants, not by people who were themselves minders, or who had a courtier-like role with the last administration. In the modern public service, for example, an incoming prime minister seems to have the right of the departmental secretary of choice. Such a person, even if detached and independent, might not necessarily have the instinct to resist to the death production of any embarrassing document.

Some public servants think they get brownie points from their present ministers or their colleagues for providing minimal information to parliamentary committees. But if there is a principle of access to such materials, if they are relevant to current issues, the perceptions of the rewards and benefits of playing a dead bat may not be so clear. Indeed, public servants contemplating potential medium-term reputational damage to themselves should they stray from independence, frankness, integrity and objectivity may change that delicate balance between protecting current ministers at all costs and serving the public interest. That, no doubt, will be an impulse sharpened once the national integrity commission begins asking questions about the complicity of advisers in bad decisions.

Freedom-of-information legislation has never contained any provision exempting documents from a previous administration from disclosure. But in practice, agencies have acted as though they did, bringing the "convention" into play as a public interest consideration, or pretending that since the relevant minister's office no longer exists, there are no relevant documents available. This is as if ministerial office records are not, generally, public records which cannot be destroyed or removed without the approval of Archives.

The general impulse of many senior public servants and police is to resist FOI requests. They rely on very long delays before appeals to the Information Commissioner are resolved.

Yet delay itself can cause problems in a cover-up, at least if applicants see their appeals through. Many of the cut-and-paste claims of a public interest against disclosure are focused on the idea that allowing access to records may compromise current decision making. An FOI decisionmaker must be focused on where the public interest lies now, not where it lay at the time a document was created.

In 1980, Justice Tony Mason of the High Court distinguished between the rights of a citizen and the rights of government when it came to confidentiality: "It is unacceptable in our democratic society that there should be a restraint on the publication of information relating to government when the only vice of that information is that it enables the public to discuss, review and criticise government action."

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Labor and independents supporting an anti-corruption commission hope it will investigate the rorting of grants schemes, abuses of the patronage system, and deliberate structural weaknesses of payback and accountability with schemes such as JobSeeker and JobKeeper. It will be for the commission, not the government, to decide what to investigate. But the commission should have no problems of access to documents.

Separately, there is to be an inquiry into the robodebt fiascos. And government is considering a formal external and independent inquiry, perhaps two, into the management of the pandemic and of the economic crisis it has caused.

If the government has any sense - this inquiry will also look into the responses of individual states. And at the strange situation of the moment, where health ministers and officials seem paralysed in the face of the pandemic's most dangerous moments.

There ought to be a searching independent inquiry into the bugging of the Timor-Leste cabinet, and the conduct of the Collaery prosecution, even if parts of it must be behind the veil. Shrinking from such inquiries will only exacerbate cancers in government.

Some other matters, such as the decision to give $500 million to a business lobby to do work to save the Great Barrier Reef, the need for dams, and the wrapping up of sexual harassment matters, could be the subject of Senate inquiries. I could think of half-a-dozen further matters deserving of review.

But such inquiries would raise anew the issue of whether ministerial staff are to be exempt from examination, and whether the results of inquiries by officials, such as Phil Gaetjens, former head of PM&C, can be withheld from public view. Successive Senates have asserted their rights to demand answers to questions but hesitated to press their demands.

While Morrison was in charge, Gaetjens was shielded. It will be the Senate as a whole, as much as the government, which will decide whether he, or the former head of the prime minister's office, can refuse to appear, or refuse to answer questions and produce documents.

There is no reason in principle why such officials should be exempt. Or, post-Senate authorisation or orders, claim a right to refuse answers based on the way things were done before. All the more so given the precedents established by Tony Abbott. Such serendipity illustrates how these things do have a way of coming back to bite one on the bum.