Robert Jones reviews Bernie Dowling's 'Maaate! Bribe-proofing the public purse against good blokes' — a harrowing tale of institutionalized corruption. 

WHEN amounts of money in the order of $100 million can be attained by the flick of a pen, it can be expected that there will be some competition for that pen.

The pens that hold this power are wielded by the duly elected representatives of local governance in most Australian States. This combination of power and vast amounts of money are a known magnet for corruption.

Maaate! is not an easy book to read. It details in some depth the 2017 investigation into political donations in Queensland’s 2016 local government election, known as "Operation Belcarra". The author, Bernie Dowling, draws on around 17 years of experience as a reporter in the Moreton Bay region of South-East Queensland and exposes a series of maneuvers that – although not exactly illegal in most cases – are designed to circumvent the actual intent of Queensland’s political donation laws.

Maaate! draws heavily on witness transcripts from Operation Belcarra that detail a shifty set of financial transfers from individuals into trust funds, which were then dispensed to preferred candidates. It also exposes weaknesses and inconsistencies within Queensland’s electoral laws and, finally, provides recommendations for ways in which those laws can be improved.

One reason that Maaate! is not an easy book to read is that it tells a sad story of institutionalized corruption within the bodies created to police political donations in Queensland. Another is the legal nature of the transcripts and arguments regularly presented to the reader. A third is the depth of the information contained in the regular annotations provided by Dowling through both the preface to the transcripts and also the transcripts themselves.