Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Before asking my question, can I briefly just associate Labor with the comments of the minister, and join with him in thanking all those officials. This must be a terrible job—you've got to say that—and it must cause a great deal of stress. I thank them and join with the minister in his comments.

My question is to the Prime Minister. In the budget, the government established or announced extra money for more than 30 different grants and fund programs worth at least $5.7 billion. Given the rorting that occurred with sports rorts, Community Development Grants and the Building Better Regions Fund, in the absence of a national integrity commission, what guarantee is there that decisions will be made on merit instead of colour coded spreadsheets designed to target marginal seats?

Christian Porter (Pearce, Liberal Party, Attorney-General) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for his question. The debate around the integrity commission, as evidenced by that question, should be—but never is when the opposition is involved—dealing with facts. They just cannot bring themselves to deal with actual facts, not even in talking about something as important as an integrity commission. The question goes to the time line of the government's development and consultation for an integrity commission, and I can explain that time line for the House.

The first time that this really became an issue was when members opposite were previously in government. The opposition's previous position was stated by the shadow Attorney-General when they were last in government. That was, in his words, 'I am not convinced that there is a need for yet another integrity officer.' That statement can be found in an article entitled 'Expenses critic Mark Dreyfus embarrassed over taxpayers ski trip to—

Tony Smith (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Leader of the Opposition, on a point of order.

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Speaker, the question didn't ask about alternatives. It asked about the national integrity commission, which both sides of parliament say they support.

Tony Smith (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Can I also say, with respect to that, I was listening closely to the Attorney, because, certainly, the question mentioned the concept of a national integrity commission, which the Attorney is addressing, but it had other elements there as well. I call the Attorney.

Christian Porter (Pearce, Liberal Party, Attorney-General) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Mr Speaker. The time line for that commission was such that Labor supported, as the Leader of the Opposition said, the Commonwealth integrity commission before the last election. They said that they would need a 12-month period after that election to ready a bill, so that would have been May of 2020 this year. They further noted—in fact, the shadow AG went on to note—that as well as drafting they'd need time for consultation. Eminently sensible. The shadow AG said:

… we also acknowledge that designing a body as complex and as significant as this is properly the work of government, with all the resources available to government.

So, whether Labor, had they been in government, would have devoted all of the resources of government in May this year at the height of a global pandemic to a complicated, significant, complex, intensive consultation period on an integrity commission, or whether they would have applied all of the resources available to government to dealing with the pandemic, is, thankfully, something we will not find out, but it would have been a very strange decision.

It is also true that the government received its first draft of the bill in December of last year, which I might note is much earlier than their time line of 12 months. One of the things that I have been doing is looking at ways in which you can improve that draft bill, and one thing that I am absolutely convinced that that draft must have is a mechanism to prevent vexatious, baseless, politically motivated time-wasting referrals. And why is that? That's because of the shadow Attorney-General, who has an Australian record of 10 baseless—

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Speaker—

Tony Smith (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Leader of the Opposition will resume his seat. I just say to the Attorney that he needs to confine himself to the question to be directly relevant.

Christian Porter (Pearce, Liberal Party, Attorney-General) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

They're the types of referrals this bill has to deal with. They are the types of referrals that the New South Wales Police commissioner described as 'a great diverter of my time'. Perhaps if I close with the words of the shadow Attorney-General—

Tony Smith (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

No, the Attorney-General needs to resume his seat.

Christian Porter (Pearce, Liberal Party, Attorney-General) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I've completed my answer.

Tony Smith (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That's good. We reached the same position at exactly the same time!

Tanya Plibersek (Sydney, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Education and Training) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister has blamed his refusal to establish a national integrity commission on the COVID crisis. How is it that the government still found time to establish a Higher Education Integrity Unit to look into cheating students in the middle of the pandemic in Melbourne but not a national integrity commission to look into sports rorts, water rorts, airport rorts, forged documents and taxpayer funds being used for Liberal Party branch-stacking?

Christian Porter (Pearce, Liberal Party, Attorney-General) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for her question because it gives me an opportunity to pick up exactly where I left off on the last occasion! And that was on the shadow Attorney-General—whose words I completely agree with—describing the complexity of dealing with an integrity commission. This is what the shadow Attorney-General said about that—

Tony Smith (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

No, the Attorney-General needs to be relevant to the question. It doesn't preclude him, I say, from quoting, where he's relating that material to why the government has taken a certain position. But, where he was crossing the line—where he was ending his previous answer when I was about to sit him down—was where he was moving beyond that. But, if he's quoting someone as explaining the complexity of a government position, that's fine. But I'll listen carefully.

Christian Porter (Pearce, Liberal Party, Attorney-General) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I think words like these, words I would join issue on, are a correct description of the difficulty and complexity of an integrity commission—words such as these:

I think the lesson to be learned is that anti-corruption bodies are difficult to get right and must be very delicately designed.

They are of a quantum akin to examination bodies and people cheating in exams, or matters of that nature.

But the question also went to why the government has chosen not to engage in a consultation period around this very complicated integrity commission and has chosen to do other things. Why have we chosen to do other things? The government chose to focus all of the resources of government on dealing with a global pandemic which threatened hundreds of thousands and millions of Australian jobs. So what types of things were we focusing our time and energy on? We were looking at developing flexibilities inside the industrial relations system to save hundreds of thousands of jobs. We looked at passing privacy legislation so we could establish a COVIDSafe app which would allow states like New South Wales to successfully contact-trace.

Opposition members interjecting—

Tony Smith (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Members on my left!

Christian Porter (Pearce, Liberal Party, Attorney-General) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Obviously, that's something that the members of the opposition would haven't done. They don't think that it's important to use these types of facilities to be able to contact-trace in these jurisdictions. We reformed bankruptcy laws to save hundreds of thousands of businesses and jobs in Australia.

Opposition members interjecting—

Tony Smith (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Members will cease interjecting!

Christian Porter (Pearce, Liberal Party, Attorney-General) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

JobKeeper, JobSeeker—ensuring that all of these things went to saving Australian jobs. Why would we do that? Because it seemed to us that that was completely the right set of priorities during this pandemic.

What I would also note for the member for Sydney is that the work on the Integrity Commission, as I described yesterday, is actually already underway in this budget—in this budget—with the allocation of very substantial increases in funding to the Australian Commission for Law Enforcement Integrity, which will increase its ASL by 38 staff members so that it can be the first part of this Integrity Commission, which has to be designed carefully. When you are looking at something like examinations for tertiary students, that does not involve something as delicate and as important as the extent to which, if any, you have retrospectivity applying around the criminal law of the Commonwealth of Australia to activities that occurred before and to different standards. (Time expired)