Hunt was writing a glowing reference for this shonky operator, and friend of the LIBERAL PARTY while his dept was giving AM massive gov contracts. Was there backhanders involved? Hunt can now retire in comfort.

Paul1405,
Don't discount the highly likely sabotage in such matters by opposition supporting bureaudroids to try & give Govt a bad name ! Never mind the cost & unwanted outcome to the Govt & people of Australia.

Graham has already covered some of this, but to add some nuance....

Although SR calls it the "Corruption Index" its actually the Corruption Perception Index". I'm sure SR's leaving the word 'perception' out was a mere oversight. Its not like he's ever tried to fudge data like that before </sarc>.

Despite calling themselves 'transparency.org', the data they use is remarkably untransparent. Indeed its positively opaque. But it seems to be based on a range of assertions from groups within a country about how they FEEL about corruption. So no objective data to speak of, just perceptions of corruption -see above.

When your claims are based on the feelz of others, its becomes vital to know who those others are. But again their transparency is completely untransparent.

Finally, as best I can work out, they run their data (such as it is) through various algorithms to standardise it. Inevitably that means the results have margins of error. But we're never told what those margins of error are. For all we know, the changes in results and therefore positions are merely movements within the error bars.

So all in all, even though the gullible will love these things where highly complex issues are resolved to one number, inappropriate as that may be, the whole concept is fraught and can be safely ignored.

Not corruption mind you, just the notion that it can be resolved to single value

mhaze,

Yes. That single word 'perception' makes a big difference. As for these organisations set up by who-knows-who, for who-knows-what-motives, it is evident that people use the exactly the same information to come up with opposite findings. There is a psychiatric explanation for that.

It is also true that people lacking proof of what they want to say will exaggerate. SteeleRedux, being the highly 'unusual' character that he is, has understated - or left out - information that doesn't back what he wants to believe and wants others to believe.

Dear mhaze,

Well that was a few hundred words of nothing from you wasn't it except the usual shoot the messenger tripe.

People's perceptions and what you so dismissively call feelz are what decide elections so if they are invalid so is every popular vote.

The organisation gives a good explanation of why they use this methodology because of the difficulty of gathering quantifiable data.

As the drop in the rankings is reflective of the growing uncovering of corrupt dealings by the LNP there is little reason to think they have got it wrong.

However for someone like yourself who is so keen to keep the sins of the Coalition hidden this would be concerning and something you would want others to dismiss.

Sorry but the Australian people aren't buying it in the numbers they did last time.

Many Australians can see that Australian politics
is broken. This Liberal-National Government has
had more than a decade to act and implement even basic
measures to clean up corruption. They have chosen not
to do so and simply blame Labor. The same as they are
blaming Labor for everything else. It smacks of desperation.
We have the Treasurer Josh Frydenberg telling people on
his billboards "Keep Australia Secure. Keep Josh."
He's the Treasurer for heavens sake. Is he that scared of
losing his seat? Obviously he is!