The finding depends on the finder
Hand the same kind of issue to different watchdogs and the verdict diverges. Controlling for what each body examines, royal commissions and auditors grade hardest; independent reviews and the Productivity Commission softest. The intuition that ombudsmen run hot doesn’t survive the control — they sit almost exactly on the baseline.
Hawks and doves, topic held constant
Each body type’s mean stance (1 assurance → 4 systemic) minus the shared baseline of 3.07. Positive = grades a common issue hotter than its peers.
Royal commissions run hottest because they are convened over known scandals — selection, not disposition. The Auditor-General is a stance-hawk once topic mix is removed, but its heat lives in the control-lens framing, not the graded harm.
The same issue, opposite verdicts
Topics where the body types land furthest apart — each dot is one body type’s stance, from assurance to systemic. Computed live from the per-topic body-type perspectives; click a topic to drill in.
In their own words
The clash is not a rounding error; it is two mandates reading the same facts. The auditor sees controls and process; the ombudsman sees lived harm.
Divergence tracks remit, not temperament: auditors see controls, the Commission sees economics, ombudsmen and royal commissions see people. The severity of a finding is partly a fact about administration and partly a fact about who is looking.