Matt Thistlethwaite (Kingsford Smith, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Financial Services) Share this | Hansard source

First there was sports rorts. The Auditor-General uncovered that this government's ministers had pork-barrelled millions of dollars of taxpayers funds into projects in coalition electorates against the advice of Sport Australia and with the approval of the Prime Minister's office. Then we had water rorts, where the government paid almost double the independent valuation for water licences to a company that was established by the Minister for Energy and Emissions Reduction and based in the Cayman Islands. Then there was grass rorts where—guess who?—the minister for energy, again, lobbied the then minister for the environment to have environmental laws watered down after a company that he was a shareholder in was investigated for breaches of land-clearing laws. Then, of course, we had airport rorts, where the Morrison government paid 10 times the land value for a plot of land at Badgerys Creek to—guess who?—a Liberal party donor. It is unbelievable. The latest snout-in-the-trough revelations came today when it was revealed that an independent investigation into the alleged misuse of taxpayer funds in the electorate office of the Assistant Treasurer was conducted by—wait for it—the law firm that he used to work for.

You could not make this stuff up. The list of the dodgy dealings of the Morrison government just goes on and on and on. The Australian people deserve better. They deserve proper independent investigation of these dodgy dealings by a national independent corruption commission. Labor supports a national ICAC. Why don't those opposite? (Time expired)

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