Helen Haines (Indi, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Last Tuesday, 200 people from across Indi packed Beechworth Courthouse to launch the Beechworth Principles. The Beechworth Principles call on the government to introduce an integrity commission with broad jurisdiction to investigate the people it needs to, common rules so that everyone is held to the same standard of behaviour, appropriate powers so that it can actually do its job, fair hearings so that investigations are done openly when it's in the public interest, and accountability to the people so that the commission answers to the public, not political interests. These five principles give shape to what I've been hearing loud and clear from across Indi since the day I ran for parliament: we need a proper and robust federal integrity commission in this country.

The government has missed its own deadlines to introduce this bill. Instead of an integrity commission, it has given us bountiful examples of why we need one. These principles stand not as an ultimatum but as an invitation. When Indigo Walker-Stelling, a young man from Beechworth Secondary College, read out the Beechworth declaration last week, the packed courthouse broke into several minutes of deafening applause. The truth is Australians are not quiet about this; the truth is our leaders are not listening; and the truth is the Beechworth Principles are a call to listen and a call to act.