An international comparison of the perceived level of corruption among public officials and politicians in 159 countries has found that Australia is in the top 10 countries least likely to exhibit this type of corruption. Transparency International and the University of Passau compile the annual Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) from expert surveys of business people and analysts from around the world, including local country experts. Scores can range from 10 ('highly clean') to 0 ('highly corrupt'). This year the scores ranged from 9.7 for Iceland to 1.7 for Chad and Bangladesh. At ninth, Australia is ranked below New Zealand, but better than regional and trading partners United Kingdom (11th), Canada (14th), United States (17th), Japan (21st), Taiwan (32nd), Malaysia (39th), South Korea (40th), China (78th), India (88th), Papua New Guinea (130th) and Indonesia (137th). Australia's CPI score this year of 8.8 was consistent with its score last year. Australia's score was based on 13 surveys, with only ten countries using more than ten surveys.
CPI 2005: 10 least corrupt countries [see attached PDF for graph]
Source
- Transparency International and University of Passau. Corruption perceptions index 2005: list of all countries [spreadsheet]
- Full report available on the Internet Center for Corruption Research website http://www.icgg.org/corruption.index.html(viewed 21 October 2005)