Peta Murphy (Dunkley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Bruce for moving this important motion. I was elected to represent the people of Dunkley with vigour and integrity. I'm proud to be a parliamentarian and I'm proud to represent the people of Dunkley. But like many, many people in my community, and I must say many people who are also privileged to be members of this parliament, I am deeply concerned about the state of politics and the way that politics has been played, eroding and corroding the community's trust in democracy and government.

Before this pandemic, fewer than half of all Australians were satisfied with the way democracy worked, and trust in government had suffered a 20-year slide from 48 per cent to 26 per cent. While it is true that some of that decline has been halted during the pandemic because of the way the opposition and the government have, in many instances, put cudgels aside and worked together for public health matters, we are only seeing green shoots.

Sadly, some of the growing belief in the public that perhaps politicians can work together for the greater good has been undermined over and over again because we have a Prime Minister and a government that not only continue to be embroiled in scandal after scandal but refuse to take responsibility for those scandals. We have a Prime Minister who has constantly denigrated and undermined this national parliament by calling it 'a bubble', who shuts down debate on topics he doesn't like, who refuses to release reports or answer questions that don't suit his agenda and who ignores long-held conventions and protocols. This is a government which has undermined the trust of the Australian people by treating the privilege of being elected to parliament and forming a government as a political plaything, where the interests that they serve are too often their own and not those of the Australian people.

Before the budget, the Auditor-General wrote to the government requesting $6.3 million in new funding so he could continue to undertake his essential role in scrutiny of government spending and programs. There are accumulated budget pressures and spending because of COVID-19, there is a trillion dollars in debt and this is one of the highest spending governments in history. We have seen the Auditor-General's work firsthand uncover the way this government has treated public money as its plaything. We have seen the sports rorts scandal, which is not over. We have seen the Leppington triangle. We know what allegations have been made about water buybacks on the Murray-Darling Basin. We know how important the Auditor-General is but, despite the fact that the ANAO has been in structural deficit for years because of the government's cuts and the Auditor-General has asked for more money, this Prime Minister, this Treasurer, this government have failed to deliver.

We also know that we have a government that has wanted to talk the talk about integrity but just simply hasn't delivered. The Australian public have been waiting for years for the Prime Minister's announcement about a national integrity commission to turn into delivery. We must have a national integrity commission, one with teeth, one which has the power to investigate sitting members of parliament, government agencies and government departments, if we are to even come close to restoring that 20-year decline in faith in the public sector. We have a government that apparently has decided that the Westminster system of responsibility doesn't apply to it anymore. Robodebt must be one of the greatest public policy failings ever seen in Australia, where, in order to fix the budget deficit, a government has preyed on the vulnerable in society that it is here to represent. In most other Western democracies that purport to follow the Westminster system, the government would have fallen over robodebt. But we don't even have one minister willing to put up his—because they are men—hand to take responsibility, including the Prime Minister, who started this entire shameful chapter in Australia's public policy history. We need integrity. We need it now more than ever, and the government needs to step up and deliver.

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