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

[by video link] The national anticorruption commission the Prime Minister promised Australians two years ago is still nowhere in sight—we don't even have draft legislation—because this Prime Minister has made it clear, by his inaction, that he's okay with corruption and law-breaking, particularly if it's Liberal Party ministers who are doing it. This Prime Minister is okay with conduct by the acting minister for immigration, Mr Tudge, that Federal Court judges described as both 'disgraceful' and 'criminal'. This Prime Minister is okay with the unlawful use of $100 million of sports grant money as if it were a Liberal Party slush fund. What about paying a Liberal Party donor more than $30 million for land that's worth a tenth of that, or the use of forged documents by the minister for energy?

These are the real reasons why, instead of an anticorruption commission that could deal with these scandals, all we have from the Morrison government are delays and desperate excuses. They say COVID stopped them doing it; the fires stopped them doing it; the PM's secret holiday in Hawaii while Australia burned stopped them doing it. The fact is that the Morrison government is terrified of being held to account for the scandals that we know about, and, even more than that, of the other government scandals we don't know about that a national anticorruption commission might uncover. Australians know the reasons why our country needs a national anticorruption commission. But, for the same reasons, this Prime Minister will do everything in his power to prevent one being established.