The head of Australia's corruption watchdog has decided to stop investigating Paul Brereton, the agency's first commissioner. Gail Furness, who oversees the watchdog itself, said it would cost too much to finish the inquiries now that Brereton has left the job The Guardian.

Brereton was supposed to run the National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC) for five years. He quit after three, announcing it in May 2026, and left on 6 July The Guardian.

Two different problems were being looked into. The first was about Brereton not properly declaring conflicts of interest. While he was overseeing corruption complaints about defence matters, he also held another job connected to defence. Between July 2023 and October 2025, the watchdog received 98 defence complaints. Brereton didn't tell anyone about his other job until much later. When Furness decided to stop investigating, she hadn't finished checking those 98 complaints The Guardian.

The second investigation was about specific behaviour by Brereton involving two separate corruption cases. That complaint came in December 2025. Details are kept secret for safety reasons. Brereton's lawyers said he'd done nothing wrong in both cases.

Furness said the investigations cost too much to finish now that Brereton has left. She also said the NACC has fixed how it handles conflicts of interest, so the problems won't happen again.

But here's the tension. The NACC exists because politicians decided that catching corruption was more important than the cost and hassle of checking people. That's why it was created in the first place. Yet now the watchdog is saying it costs too much to check on its own former boss. That's a reasonable money argument. It's also exactly the sort of thing a corruption watchdog is supposed to avoid doing when powerful people are involved.

Furness's job is to check the NACC when the NACC can't check itself — she's the watchdog's watchdog. She stays in the job until 2030, well after Brereton left NACC Inspector. That closing these two investigations without any findings — rather than reaching conclusions about what happened — will worry people who expected her to hold the NACC to the same standard it holds others.

Brereton hasn't completely escaped notice. Those 98 defence complaints still exist in the NACC's files. His replacement will have to deal with whatever they involve. But officially, the story closes with two unfinished files instead of two answers — and that matters.