A rise of nearly 20 per cent in corruption complaints last year, not counting those related to district council and village elections, appears to warrant serious reflection in a city with a reputation for a largely clean government and business environment. Possible explanations include a surge in graft in the public or private sectors or both, abuse of a system that makes it easy to lodge complaints, greater community awareness of corrupt conduct and the harm that it does, or greater willingness to complain about it or report it to the Independent Commission Against Corruption.

Hopefully, the first two options can be largely discounted and the rise attributed to a combination of the other two. This would accord with the view from the ICAC, which attributes the surge to greater public trust in the anti-graft body and more publicity.

To put the rise into perspective, it follows significant falls in complaints in the three previous years – including by 11 per cent in 2014. This covers a period when public confidence and trust in the highest echelons of the government, business and the graft fighter itself was tested by a series of high-profile scandals. It is nearly three years since the ICAC began a criminal investigation into excessive spending of public money by its former boss, Timothy Tong Hin-ming, which remains uncompleted.

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The jailing of a former chief secretary and a property tycoon and other cases involving top officials left the public wondering whether the city had more corruption and whether its cherished reputation was still protected by a robust anti-graft regime. This was reflected by an ICAC survey of public perceptions of corruption, based on 1,500 face-to-face interviews, which revealed that while corruption was expected to worsen last year, willingness to report suspected graft was the lowest since the surveys began in 2011.