Corruption in the security industry
Last week, the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) has made corrupt conduct findings against 10 individuals and recommended that the NSW Police Commissioner assume ultimate responsibility for security industry integrity-related functions.
In its Report on corruption in the provision and certification of security industry training, the Commission found that the industry’s licence upgrade process failed in its objective to weed out incompetent and undesirable registered training organisations (RTOs) and security officers.
The report makes corrupt findings against 10 individuals in relation to their creation and use of competency certificates, which falsely represented that prescribed competencies relating to the security courses, had been demonstrated.
According to the report, between 1 September 2007 and 9 March 2009, 28 RTOs issued nearly 45,000 training certificates. One of those RTOs, Roger Training Academy, issued around 26 per cent of these certificates. The Commission found that some candidates enrolled in Roger security training courses were provided answers in advance to written tests to assess their competency in security-related activities, and were then issued certificates that falsely represented the prescribed competencies had been demonstrated.
The Commission is also of the opinion that consideration should be given to obtaining the advice of the Director of Public Prosecutions with respect to the prosecution of eight of those individuals for various criminal offences.
The security licence upgrade process has failed in its objective to weed out incompetent and undesirable RTOs and security officers. The evidence of corrupt conduct and poor quality RPL (Recognition of Prior Learning) assessments uncovered by the ICAC investigation raises severe doubts about the legitimacy of all current security licenses in NSW and the integrity and competence of all security training providers. There have also been large numbers of First Aid, RSA (Responsible Service of Alcohol) and RCG (Responsible Conduct of Gaming) certificates issued by Roger Training Academy in the absence of any training.
The Commission has made 16 corruption prevention recommendations to address fundamental regulatory problems besetting the industry. The Commissioner made a damning assessment stating: “The current regulatory system is fragmented and confused, without any real accountability for the integrity and ethical conduct of security training and certification.”
In an industry with a long history of crime and corruption, too much control over the process has been surrendered to private sector RTOs. In this context, it is difficult to be confident that the present regulatory regime has any processes in place capable of conclusively identifying which current security qualifications are legitimate, which RTOs are corrupt, incompetent or lazy, and which are ethical and legitimate security training providers.
The evidence suggests that, even if the regulators could wipe the current state clean by identifying and eliminating all incompetent and undesirable security licenses and RTOs, it would only be a matter of time before similar problems emerged unless the fundamental regulatory problems are addressed.
The corruption uncovered by this investigation has serious implications for the security industry across New South Wales. The poor practices could be symptoms of a wider problem in the industry. Crime and corruption have been associated with the security industry for decades and unless the New South Wales Government finally takes corrective action that is well considered and well resourced, such behaviour will continue.
