The NT’s anti-corruption commissioner Michael Riches was widely expected to make a public comment on his office’s recent hiring of a CLP operative on Monday, but said because his extraordinary letter to the Chief Minister on Saturday was reported by the NT Independent, he has “decided not to make a further statement”.

It remains unclear if former CLP executive council member and party campaigner Cormac MacCarthy is still employed with the Office of the Independent Commissioner Against Corruption, whose hiring as an investigator was revealed last week by the NT Independent.

Instead of providing clarity on that matter for the public, Mr Riches announced a voluntary education program in a statement on Monday that would see public servants complete assignments and attend classes about integrity in government, ultimately being provided a certificate signed by Mr Riches upon completion, with “success stories” highlighted in a “published report”.

Mr Riches appeared not to be aware of Mr MacCarthy’s political affiliations when first contacted by this publication last week, stating that they were “serious matters”, but later defended the hiring, suggesting Mr MacCarthy would not have access to politically sensitive investigations in his role as “operations officer”.

However, following criticism from Sky News’ NT correspondent in a column over the weekend, Mr Riches wrote a surprise letter to Chief Minister Natasha Fyles on Saturday, in which he admitted “greater attention ought to have been paid to the applicant’s prior political affiliation” and that he accepts “responsibility for this [hiring] decision”.

He also said in the letter to Ms Fyles that he would provide “further comment” on Monday after discussing the issue with “the individual involved”, adding that he had been “performing to a high standard”.

However, that comment was not forthcoming in the Monday statement, in which Mr Riches instead announced the education program for public servants he called the “ICAC Integrity Advocates Program” that will encourage public servants to act as friends of the ICAC and attend workshops, seminars and complete “a number of assignments” before attaining a “certificate signed by the ICAC” which would be “highlighted in a media release about the program” and in a published report.

The program would run for 12 months and comprise “two phases, followed by a 3-day intensive workshop” and focus on developing an integrity training program, “embedding code of conduct and other ethical guidelines into daily decision making”, identifying risks to agencies, improving conflict of interest disclosures and management, as well as “implementing culturally appropriate systems for supporting ethical decision making in a public body”.

It was unclear why the new program was announced today in place of a public statement on his office’s hiring practices.

When contacted, Mr Riches would not say whether Mr MacCarthy was still in an investigations and assessment role in his office.

In the letter to Ms Fyles on Saturday, Mr Riches also called for changes to the ICAC Act that would impose a “statutory bar to the appointment of any person” who has been an MLA or a member of a political party in the past five years, “unless both the Commissioner and the Independent Inspector are satisfied that the individual’s political affiliations are sufficiently minor or remote as to not affect the individual’s suitability for appointment”.

He also blamed his office’s inability to hire quality candidates on the Fyles Government rejecting multiple additional funding requests to attract interstate candidates.

“While there are likely many reasons for the difficulties we have, and are, experiencing in respect of the recruitment of suitable employees, it would be naive to suggest that the capacity to offer an attractive remuneration package is not a significant barrier,” he wrote.

He added that he would like to see amendments to the ICAC Act to provide him with the ability to “authorise the payment of an attraction and retention allowance of an amount that I consider appropriate and reasonable, to a member of staff, or to a category of staff, in order to ensure I am in a position to attract and retain those individuals.”

However, on Monday he made no further comment about those requests and said his full letter to Ms Fyles could be read on his website.

Mr Riches added in his Monday statement that he will publish a “research report” on Tuesday that would provide a “statistical breakdown of action taken by my office on reports received” between November 2018 and December 31, 2022.

He has previously released those statistics but has not included how many complaints or investigations had been sent to police or the Director of Public Prosecutions for further action.

Mr Riches was appointed to the role in July 2021, with former head public servant Jodie Ryan sitting on the hiring panel that selected him for the role that had raised questions.