Corruption in The Truth Teller and Last Drinks.

The article discusses two novels about the Queensland Fitzgerald Inquiry, Margaret Simon's "The Truth Teller" and Andrew McGahan's "Last Drinks" and analyses the manner in which they illuminate that phenomenon. The two novels discussed here take a somewhat different slant, and purport to explore the whole and apparently previously unrevealed truth of the Fitzgerald era through the particularising explication of individual circumstances, decisions and experiences of fictionalised participants. Thus, both novels present individual quests for self-knowledge via an understanding of the events through which these characters have lived. They depict individual situations and motivations that both support and challenge systemic corruption. In the process, they explore not only the institutional and structural factors enabling that corruption, but also philosophical and emotional factors, as they depict the moral choices and dilemmas surrounding and arising from the pursuit of political values. They ascribe corruption primarily to uncritical approaches to power. This is a key issue in both texts as characters become involved in corruption and illegal activity through ignorance and complacency, accepting prevailing cliques and cultural codes of conduct for intrinsically selfish reasons.