Mark Dreyfus (Isaacs, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Attorney General) Share this | Hansard source

I have a few questions for the government under the general heading of 'Why is it that the Morrison government is doing all it can to prevent the establishment of a powerful, independent and properly resourced national anticorruption commission?' Is it correct that the previous Attorney-General, Mr Porter, before he was removed from his role, failed to deliver a national anticorruption commission, despite promising to establish such a body almost three years ago? Is it correct that nothing will change with the new Attorney-General because the Morrison government is terrified of what an independent anticorruption commission would reveal about this government's conduct over the eight long years that it has been in power? Is it correct that nothing will change with the new Attorney-General because the Morrison government, and the Prime Minister in particular, hate accountability? Is it correct that the Morrison government has spent almost three years finding excuses to delay the establishment of a national anticorruption commission and that these excuses will now continue until after the next election?

Can the minister, as the representative of the Attorney-General, confirm the evidence provided in estimates hearings by the Attorney-General's Department two weeks ago which made clear that there is now no possibility of a national anticorruption commission commencing operation in this term of government?

Can the minister confirm that the failure to establish a national anticorruption commission in this term is yet another example of the Morrison government being all announcement and zero delivery? Is it correct that the new Attorney-General, Senator Cash, is concerned that a national anticorruption commission could investigate her own conduct in relation to the illegal tip-off of a police raid on a union office that occurred from within her own office, and her subsequent refusal to cooperate with an Australian Federal Police investigation into that criminal activity?

Will the new Attorney-General continue to delay the establishment of a national anticorruption commission because she and the Morrison government are terrified of the many, many scandals that have occurred on their watch being investigated by such an independent body? Perhaps I can assist the minister in answering that question, with a few examples of the corruption and scandals that have occurred in recent years and that Mr Morrison has tried to sweep under the carpet.

We could start with the sports rorts saga, in which the Auditor-General discovered that over $100 million of taxpayer funds had been unlawfully diverted into a slush fund for the Liberal Party's re-election campaign. This was a scandal with an email trail that led directly to the Prime Minister's office, so perhaps we shouldn't be surprised that the Prime Minister has desperately sought to bury the scandal with a secret inquiry by his own former chief of staff, who now heads his department.

We could mention the Leppington Triangle land scandal, in which the Morrison government paid a Liberal Party donor some $33 million for land that was worth only around $3 million, which the Acting Prime Minister still inexplicably thinks was a bargain. With that kind of economic brilliance around the cabinet table is it any wonder that the Morrison government has driven Australia into a trillion dollars of debt with very little to show for it? This is something that the minister at the table might be able to provide particular advice on, given his role in that obscene waste of taxpayers' money. And who could forget the minister for energy's imbecilic attempt to embarrass the Lord Mayor of Sydney by using a forged document with falsified City of Sydney travel expenditure figures?

I don't really have time today to go on listing all of the scandals that the Morrison government has been involved in. I note that these examples are only drawn from the scandals that we know about from the work of the independent but sadly underfunded Auditor-General and the work of investigative journalists. We have no doubt that there are other scandals that a powerful and independent anticorruption commission would uncover.

Now that the government has been dragged kicking and screaming to admit that a national anticorruption commission is needed and has at last, years late, released draft legislation for such a body, can the minister, as the representative of the Attorney-General, explain why the model proposed by the Morrison government has been excoriated by virtually every integrity expert and legal authority in the country as a sham that fails virtually every test for an effective anticorruption commission? Does the Attorney-General agree with Anthony Whealy QC, former judge of the New South Wales Supreme Court?

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