Adam Bandt (Melbourne, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

The amendments being considered here are good amendments. They are amendments the Greens put that will ensure there are significant additional powers given to the inspector of the commission to provide real-time auditing and monitoring of the NACC's workings, and to guard against potential overreach and maladministration. They're going to be especially important because, although we're passing a good bill, we did miss an opportunity to make it better. Those amendments are going to be especially important because, unfortunately, we don't have a situation—as they have in New Zealand, and as I understand they have in the ACT—where the government has to get the support of others in order to appoint the commissioner, not in a way that would give a recalcitrant opposition a veto but that would ensure that investigation of corruption by a government is not wholly in the hands of somebody appointed by the government. It would have been good if that amendment had got up because, when we're making bills and passing amendments, we have to think not just about this current government that obviously wants to establish a corruption commission—and I again thank them for that—but also about what happens in five or 10 years time. What happens when you have a party in power that has fought tooth and nail against the establishment of a corruption watchdog—do we want them to have unfettered power over who the commissioner is going to be? It's especially important in the context where there is a missed opportunity to ensure there are public hearings into politicians. It is disappointing that there won't be public hearings into politicians as a matter of course. That is something that should have been addressed, and I hope it is something that we can come back to and consider in the future.

I conclude by saying this is a very good day for democracy, and I hope that this NACC now gets its doors open for business as quickly as possible. When we look back over the last 10 years, there's a fair bit of work that it's going to have to do. To get this organisation up and running, there is going to be a long line of cases queueing up for investigation.

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