Christian Porter (Pearce, Liberal Party, Attorney-General) Share this | Hansard source

you are ensuring that what are minor civil matters and employment matters at the moment in the Commonwealth public sector will move to the realm of corrupt conduct.

All you need to do is read what is before this parliament to understand how excessive and how dangerous it is. Let me note also that the most astonishing thing about this bill is that everything that I have described has retrospective application. A civil servant who had engaged in a minor breach of a code of conduct in their department many years ago that had been dealt with internally but, nevertheless, could be said to have impaired public confidence in the conduct of Commonwealth affairs would, many years later, find themselves potentially referred and possibly the subject of a finding of corruption.

Anyone who has observed this area would have seen, in New South Wales, Western Australia and Queensland, decent, hardworking public servants the subjects of findings of corruption which were not based on fact, which were found to be false due to errors inside the types of bodies that we are now contemplating. Those men and women had their careers utterly ruined based on no good fact and no good process. This is the time for the most sober and sensible process that we can engage in. That, I am very sad to say, is not indicated in the bill that we have before us today.

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