Anne Aly (Cowan, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

[by video link] One thousand one hundred and sixty-one days is just over three years, and in the last 1,161 days around 900,000 children were born in Australia and around 600,000 Australians died. Fifty-one people were killed by a terrorist in Christchurch. Ash Barty won Wimbledon and the Australian Open. The Notre Dame cathedral burned down. Australia lifted itself from the charred remains of our devastating fires. A royal baby was born and a royal prince passed away. Armenia and Azerbaijan declared a ceasefire. Kabul fell to the Taliban. A US president was defeated. A British prime minister resigned. Astronomers released the first ever image of a black hole. And the Morrison-Joyce government broke its promise of an anticorruption commission to the Australian people. On 13 December 2018, this government promised that it would deliver an anticorruption commission, and yesterday the Attorney-General confirmed that that promise has been relegated to the black hole of broken promises by this government.

This year Australia recorded its worst ever anticorruption score according to Transparency International. Since 2012, it has dropped 12 points on the anticorruption index. Let me put that into context. That puts us on par with countries like Cyprus, Lebanon and Syria. Make no mistake: this is a direct result of the government 's failure to bring about a national anticorruption commission. It is not just a backflip or a change of heart but a deliberate deception and a deliberate misleading of the Australian people for over three years. All of that is because this Morrison-Joyce government is scared to death of being held to account for its numerous scandals: the car park rorts, the sports rorts, the Western Sydney airport land rip-off—$30 million of taxpayer money—robodebt, the appointment of dozens of former Liberal party members and staffers to highly paid government jobs without due process, and the Minister for Defence's community safety grants program—that rort.

Those on the other side might shrug their shoulders to all of this and claim that these don't really impact your lives. It doesn't affect the price of a loaf of bread, for example. But they do impact real lives—first and foremost, because this kind of behaviour undermines our democracy. When the Australian public see corruption, they don't attribute it to one party or another; it taints us all. It taints all of us. Secondly, these things do have a direct impact. They have a direct impact when people in Noranda miss out on netball courts because they don't live in a Liberal-held seat; when worshippers at mosques in Labor-held seats don't get the security upgrades they need; when commuters in Cowan can't get a parking spot at the train station because their electorate didn't make it onto the minister 's spreadsheet; and when individuals take their own lives because of a cruel and callous robodebt system that wrongly targeted them. Yes, corruption can mean life or death, and what goes on in this House does have a direct impact on the people we are here to represent.

As the member for Isaacs said, the only politicians preventing a national anticorruption commission are the Prime Minister and the Liberal-National coalition, who instead try to pretend that they give a hoot with this weak, secretive and ineffective model that's been described as a sham and a toothless tiger. Even the AFP Association can't support it, because members have to refer themselves. Yes, I can see them all standing in line saying, 'Investigate me; I'm corrupt!'

We are not afraid to bring it on, and Labor will do it because we understand that corruption has real impacts on real people's lives and on our democracy. We listen to our constituents. The only way to get an anticorruption commission is to vote in an Albanese Labor government at the next election.

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