Stephen Jones (Whitlam, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Regional Services, Territories and Local Government) Share this | Hansard source

and I hear the member for Franklin, who is here with me today, saying they were in her electorate as well—'This practice will no longer be bulk-billing, because of the government's GP Medicare rebate freeze,' still they said it was a lie. When it was discovered there was a secret process in train to privatise some of the billing functions, some of the IT functions and claim processing systems, and we brought this to the attention of the Australian people, still they said it was a lie. What the member for Fairfax, the minister and the member for Bradfield are trying to do today is use this elaborate legislative and parliamentary process to tell the people of Australia that they are mugs, that they cannot see the truth when it is clearly presented to them. That's what the member for Fairfax is saying: the people of Australia are mugs. We do not think the people of Australia are mugs. We think they know that they see in the Australian Labor Party a friend of Medicare and they see in the coalition a party which, since 1972, has taken every single opportunity available to it to try to dismantle and undermine the universality of Medicare. Australian people are not mugs, Sunshine; they get it and they found you out.

The coalition are attempting, by the introduction of this bill today, to detract attention from the fact that they do not have a plausible, credible, cohesive policy agenda when it comes to fighting corruption in government and in politics. Last week the Leader of the Opposition took the opportunity of an address to the National Press Club to announce that a future Shorten Labor government would introduce a National Integrity Commission. He made the observation that at every state level there is a broad based anti-corruption investigative body which is charged with the responsibility of weeding out and preventing corruption in public life, whether that be within the elected arm of government, the executive and administrative arm of government or even the judiciary. He made the observation that, in recent surveys of Commonwealth public servants, too many had said that they had seen misconduct, cronyism and nepotism within the administration of the Public Service: five per cent. Some might say that, compared to other countries around the world, five per cent is a pretty good result. I'm sure that any right-thinking member of this place would say five per cent is five per cent too many. Is there any surprise that, when you look at Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index, Australia ranks 13th of 176 countries, but has dropped six places in six years?

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