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

Before you second it, you might want to determine whether or not you want to go to jail for corruption.

Opposition members interjecting—

If you don't think this is a real issue, just consider this. Andrew Probyn described the member for Warringah in that way. A complaint was made to ACMA and ACMA found that Andrew Probyn had breached standard 4.1 of the ABC Code of Practice due to impartiality. Under this bill before the House—no ifs, ands or buts—Andrew Probyn would be found to have committed corruption.

Opposition members interjecting—

Read the bill. With absolute clarity, that's what would occur under the terms of the bill that is now before the House. If anything demonstrated the need for enormous caution in pursuing this type of issue, it would be the fact that misdrafting can have such a massive overreach in this area. Any ABC journalist or SBS journalist, as a public servant and public official, who criticised the government in a way that demonstrated impartiality, that breached a code of conduct, that was perhaps found to have constituted contempt or defamation and attracted a civil penalty—under this bill, the very definition of 'corruption' transforms matters of civil import, such as defamation, such as a breach of a code of conduct, into a finding of corrupt conduct.

That's what the bill before us does, and that demonstrates why, in an area like this, an abundance of caution is absolutely necessary. For instance, last year at the AFP there were 922 conduct breaches that were finalised—922 conduct breaches—and 45, under present definitions, were found to be corruption. All of the remainder of those conduct breaches are highly liable to be referred under a model like this for a finding of corrupt conduct. These are matters that are dealt with in an employment based context, sensibly and soberly, at the moment.

There are eight codes of conduct across the public sector for a variety of departments and agencies. If you transform breaches of those codes of conduct that impair public confidence in the Commonwealth, which frankly could be just about everything—

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