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

If Rotten Tomatoes reviewed anticorruption bodies, the Morrison government's integrity commission would be certified rotten, with a score of zero. It's got worse reviews than Cats. The Centre for Public Integrity says the Attorney-General's integrity commission 'would be the weakest watchdog in the country'. Former judge of the Victorian Court of Appeals Stephen Charles says that, instead of tackling corruption, 'It's an attempt to protect ministers, politicians and senior public servants from investigations into serious corruption.' And Geoffrey Watson SC, former counsel assisting the New South Wales ICAC, says, 'It is designed to cover up corruption, not expose it.'

Here are just a few of the scandals that could not—I repeat: could not—be investigated by this weak, ineffective and compromised integrity commission: the robodebt scandal, sports rorts, the energy minister's fake City of Sydney travel figures, the Western Sydney airport land rort and the Minister for Home Affairs' au pairs. In fact, any scandal that occurred before this legislation is passed could not be investigated by this toothless commission, because it's not retrospective, and neither could any scandal the government wants to cover up, because it could only investigate government scandals the government asks it to investigate. This isn't an integrity commission; it's a cover-up commission.