It was only a matter of time

Some might say that Australia tends to run behind global leaders when it comes to better practice.

In respect of anti-bribery laws, Australia was 14 years behind the UK, and even further behind the US. But we're now set to leap ahead with passage of the Crimes Legislation Amendment (Combatting Foreign Bribery) Bill 2023 on 29 February 2024. This comes as a welcome step following the release of the Corruption Perceptions Index ('CPI') report by Transparency International, which shows limited progress or regression in the fight against corruption for a number of countries across the world, and a drop in the rankings by Australia.

Despite this massive legislative catch-up, we are still well behind other jurisdictions in the application of these new stricter anti-bribery laws, which are aimed at enabling the Commonwealth to prosecute foreign bribery and corruption better.