The Minister for Home Affairs has released a public consultation paper on possible changes to Australia’s anti‑foreign bribery laws.

The Criminal Code (Cth) provides an offence for bribing foreign public officials.

The facilitation payment defence provides a defence to the offence of foreign bribery if:

• the value of the benefit was of a minor nature; and
• the person’s conduct was engaged in for the sole or dominant purpose of expediting or securing the performance of a routine government action of a minor nature; and
• as soon as practicable after the conduct occurred, the person made a record of the conduct.

The Government is reviewing:

•the treatment of ‘facilitation payments’ under Australian law
•the factors that influence whether a benefit is ‘legitimately due’ to the recipient
•the current requirement to identify a particular foreign public official in order to establish an offence, and
•the role of dishonesty in domestic corruption offences.