Nick, you started your reporting on this with a question, and that was, "Why is it that Nauru, which is this tiny micronation with no real tourism trade to speak of, maybe a few thousand residents, why does it have an international commercial airline?" Tell me what first intrigued you about Nauru Airlines.

So Nauru, the island formerly known as Nauru, has a population of twelve thousand people.

It's the least visited country in the world.

It's got about two hundred tourists per year.

It has no fresh water, no crops, no distinguishing features at all.

It's not a pretty place.

It's twenty-one square kilometers.

So where did you ultimately land on this question of, of why Nauru Airlines and this state of affairs is allowed to exist?

But before that, I wanna go back to 2016 with the Brereton inquiry into war crimes in Afghanistan, 'cause that's intimately involved, isn't it?

It is.

It's the start of a long story.

So the commissioner of the NAC is Paul Brereton, and he was also conducting the Afghanistan War Crimes Inquiry, started in 2016, ran to 2020.

That was for the Inspector General of the ADF.

Uh, he produced the Brereton report.

He was also a major general in the Army Reserve.

Um, if Brereton is connected with the ADF in some kind of formal way, and there have been photos circulating of him wearing army fatigues, for example, while he was commissioner, the conflict of interest there is what? That there might be some kind of corruption allegation that emerges from the Defense Force itself, and that if so, how big a deal would that be? Could he not just recuse himself, for example, for those sorts of, um, referrals?

So the first question for you, Nick, is what got you interested in this, what you call quite a difficult job, which is investigative long form journalism?

Yeah.

Thanks for having me on.

So I worked as a, as the editor of a magazine which was really the only long form journalism magazine that was in print and national in Australia.

W- so and it always felt quite important as a role for me looking around the media landscape thinking I, it, it often occurred to me that if I didn't cover this issue and decide to run something on this in long form, that no one would.

So it, it...

I think my sort of strong interest, like, I wasn't trained as a journalist, but my strong interest came from that aspect.

Yeah.

In your view, has the NAC delivered on its promise of integrity, honesty, and accountability promised by the government?

To me, it's clear that it hasn't.

When the NAC was announced, I was a huge supporter.

I've always been a supporter of the idea of a National Anti-Corruption Commission.

I know that, that you guys were pushing for it for almost a decade.

Um, I, I was very up front at the very start of saying, by saying that the idea of not having public hearings was a real error.

I thought it was going to be problematic in the long term, and I think that has been core to the problems that the NAC has had.

Um, i- is that, is that what's required here? Do you, uh, do you agree with that?