“But I think we do need to be, as a community, satisfied that all the decisions that are made by government departments and government agencies and local councils are made for the right reasons and not because someone’s got a bit of a backhander or favour … and we need an ICAC. Queensland has one, New South Wales has one, WA has one, Tasmania has now introduced the legislation for one, it’s time we had one in this state.”

Attorney-General Michael Atkinson disagrees. “An ICAC is a very, very expensive option and no adequate case has yet been made for us to do so,” he says. He says SA already has sufficient other bodies to do the job.

But Mr Rann and Mr Atkinson are becoming increasingly isolated in their hard line against an ICAC.

“Any jurisdiction that doesn’t have its own ICAC-type body is just crazy,” said former NSW Premier Morris Iemma. “If you don’t have one, you have either discovered a secret to human nature that has eluded the rest of us, or – as is more likely to be the case – you are kidding yourselves.”

Peter Beattie, a former Queensland Premier whose own Labor Party has felt the lash of an ICAC’s whip, still has no hesitation in supporting one. “All states need a watchdog beyond government control to maintain honesty and integrity in public administration,” he said.

The director of public prosecutions, Stephen Pallaras, also spoke in its favour. “It’s essential that we have one,” he said

“I would have thought a government wanting to be tough on law and order would welcome another tool against crime – and corruption is a crime,” said Adelaide lawyer Craig Caldicott.

There is support for an ICAC on the Labor side too. “I’ve always said there should be an ICAC equivalent in SA,” former Labor senator Chris Schacht maintains.

Like other newspapers which have investigated allegations of official corruption – Brisbane’s Courier Mail, The Sydney Morning Herald and Melbourne’s The Age – The Independent Weekly has dossiers which suggest there is, at the very least, a case to be answered over instances of alleged corruption.

“Corruption will never be eliminated, no it won’t,” Mr Cripps says. “The most you can hope for is that it will be reduced.”

He said the risks of corruption were possibly greatest at a local council level, when developers wanted particular projects to go ahead.

“This is because in the planning and approval process there is a lot of discretion to be exercised. It might mean millions (of dollars) to someone who wants a particular result.”

He says the anti-corruption commission not only investigates official corruption, but simply having such a body reduces the level of corruption that would otherwise exist.

“A classic example is bribery to get a result from a public official,” he said.

Mr Cripps has previously acknowledged that the issue of developers being able to donate to political parties or candidates may never be resolved.

“Governments resent and resist any limit on the rules on political donations,” he said.

But most political donations in SA are totally secret and anonymous.

“There is a murky river of gold flowing into political parties that the SA people simply do not know about,” Greens MLC Mark Parnell said, studying the returns.

“SA has the worst political donations laws in the nation. Because of our slack laws millions of dollars are flowing into the Labor and Liberal parties that do not need to be declared.

“There is the huge gap between the total amount received by parties, and how much has been declared to the Electoral Commission. In the case of Labor and Liberal, there is over $3 million that remains unaccounted for.

“We simply do not know who has given the money and what they expect in return,” Mr Parnell said.

“A New South Wales ICAC report found that “political donations at both local and state level can create conflicts of interest for decisionmakers”.

“Donations increase the likelihood that some inappropriate re-zonings or development consents will be obtained,” the report found.

So on January 5 this year, after repeatedly denying there were any problems with corruption in South Australia, the Attorney-General finally revealed what most South Australians had already acknowledged.

Corruption does exist in this state.

But an ICAC does not.

A FUTURE ICAC COULD INVESTIGATE:

- The relationship and money trail between developers, donors and political parties.

- Government misuse of taxpayers’ money, government authority and government power.

- Suspicious land re-zonings, government contracts or property deals which benefit political parties or individuals, rather than the public.

- Incidents like the dodgy documents forgery. Police gave up trying to track down criminals who concocted the email which falsely implicated senior political figures in an electoral donation scandal. An ICAC will have the power to compel witnesses to answer questions.

- The Easling affair. Witnesses in the Tom Easling case were offered inducements to testify against him. His name was released to the media before his arrest, an offence under the Act.

-The Randall Ashbourne affair. The Premier’s then senior adviser was tried and acquitted after it was alleged he offered an inducement to stop a defamation action against the Attorney-General. The former acting director of public prosecutions later told parliament delays in proper investigation tainted the capacity for effective prosecution of the case.

- The Stashed Cash Affair, which involves the Attorney-General and the Crown Solicitor’s Trust Account, where politics and personality may have clouded proper investigation.