James Stevens (Sturt, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I want to make it clear that I am a strong supporter of establishing a Commonwealth integrity commission. I look forward to the legislation imminently coming before this chamber, another excellent reform of the Morrison government. In the last week, we've seen one of the most prominent leaders of the opposition in Russia having to be evacuated from that nation and taken to Germany on suspicion of being poisoned, potentially for politically motivated reasons. There are certainly some countries in the world that don't get to do what the opposition in this country can do, which is come into this chamber, under the protection of parliamentary privilege, and assassinate the character of a member of the government, cast all sorts of aspersions against a person that they're too cowardly to do outside of this chamber, because they know it would be defamatory. In this great country of ours, our opposition can do that. That's one of the great fundamentals of our democracy—a democracy that's been in place since Federation. In the great traditions of the Westminster system, governments are held to account by the peoples' House of Representatives. That's a great thing that we celebrate.

The suggestion from Labor that there are some worst-in-the-world examples of corruption in this great country is complete and utter rubbish. I totally and fundamentally reject that assertion that's come across in the petty contributions that have been put forward by the Labor Party in this politically-motivated debate on a Thursday afternoon before we rise for the weekend.

We have committed to introducing a Commonwealth integrity commission, which we will be doing very shortly. It will be far superior to what we can glean was the intention of the Labor Party in what they said they would institute when they went to the last election. We're putting a further $89 million more into our integrity commission than what Labor intended to. That doesn't really come as much of a surprise to me, because, of course, a Shorten government would have wanted an underfunded and under-resourced corruption and integrity commission—what a great bullet we and the Australian people dodged there.

There's also the suggestion that the Labor Party have suddenly come up with the concept of having an integrity commission in this country. The concept has been around for a very long time. The Rudd government and the Gillard governments could have established a Commonwealth integrity commission but didn't. The Hawke government and the Keating government could have done that but, of course, they didn't. The Whitlam government could have done it. Imagine if the Whitlam government had established an ICAC. There would be a lot more people in jail, had the Whitlam government established a corruption body to oversee the performance of that government and what some of those ministers got up to in their three brief years of power.

We are taking the time to make sure that we bring forward legislation that is worthy of the very important task this new integrity body will have. We are resourcing this new integrity body to the standard that it should be resourced to, to ensure that, yes, we are identifying and catching and prosecuting people who are engaging in any form of corruption at a Commonwealth level. That's not to suggest that that isn't already occurring in this country. If there's evidence of corruption, there are a number of avenues that people have to raise with other integrity bodies and to, when evidence justifies, prosecute.

People have been convicted in this country many, many times in our history for corruption, but it is sensible and worthy of having a dedicated body, which most state jurisdictions now have in this country, which is why we made it very clear that we were supportive of establishing a Commonwealth integrity commission. But we will do it, like everything that this government does, sensibly. We will do it thoroughly and we will resource it properly. It won't be populist. It won't be about cheap headlines. It will be about making sure that we continue to increase the standards of integrity that we have in our government in this country, in our parliament and in our publicly-elected officials.

I am very proud, unlike the Labor Party, of the history in this country of transparency and of democracy. We are world leaders, and we are looked up to around the world for the standards that we have in this system. I concede, under both Labor and Liberal governments, I'd much rather be living in this country than any other comparable country around the world when it comes to our high standards of integrity. Those standards will be that little bit higher when we bring in the Commonwealth Integrity Commission. I look forward to supporting that legislation and being part of a government that leaves that lasting legacy in this country.

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