Kate Thwaites (Jagajaga, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

[by video link] Last week, I held a community forum, together with the member for Isaacs, about the need for a federal anticorruption commission and Labor's commitment to establish a genuinely independent commission. Despite members of my community being way beyond the point of jumping on a Zoom meeting just for idle curiosity during our sixth lockdown, more than 70 locals participated in our forum. They engaged in questions about how a national anticorruption commission should be set up so that it genuinely helps to end corruption. Above all, they expressed the desire for a government without the rorts and for a government that wasn't just governing in its own interests and in the interests of the powerful people close to it—in other words, a government doing precisely the opposite of what this Morrison-Joyce government does every day.

A fish rots from the head down, and that describes this Morrison-Joyce government. Let's start with the sports rorts and the colour-coded spreadsheet—the $100 million Community Sport Infrastructure Grant Program, where the Auditor-General found the Morrison government gave out grants with a focus on marginal electorates held by the coalition, and money was pumped into projects in the seats the government needed to win at the 2019 election, instead of allocating grants to clubs based on merit. That meant clubs that were rated by the department as deserving support, including the Greensborough Hockey Club, right here in Jagajaga, missed out. My community is still angry about this.

Then there were the Safer Communities rorts where the member for Dickson directed 91 per cent of the funds from the Safer Communities Fund to coalition and marginal seats. Freedom-of-information documents show the member for Dickson announced the grants for two councils in the Braddon electorate in July 2018, a month before the rules for the third round of Safer Communities were published and applications opened, and against the expressed advice of community safety experts in his own department. And there was the Leppington Triangle, where the government managed a $26.7 million overspend on a piece of land valued at only $3 million. Coincidentally, the Leppington Pastoral Company had previously donated to the Liberal Party. Most recently, there were the car park rorts, where the Morrison government manipulated the $660 million Commuter Car Park Fund. The Prime Minister approved 81 per cent of the car park projects. Almost 90 per cent of car parks approved were to be built in Liberal seats or seats they wanted to win at the 2019 election.

Rorting and corruption are so endemic in this government. I'm not sure they even notice they're doing it. Certainly the response from ministers in this place makes it clear that they don't intend to change their behaviour. When asked about these rorts at question time after question time, the response of every minister is essentially: 'Well, everyone does it, and I'm the minister, so I get to do what I want.' It's not good enough. That is not how good government works and it is not how the government in this country should work. There are obvious real-world consequences of the Morrison government's rorts and corruption.

There are economic costs. The Australia Institute has estimated that the rising perception of corruption in Australia could have reduced Australia's GDP by $72.3 billion, or four per cent, since 2012. And there are costs to our health and to our community cohesion. In the middle of a global pandemic, when our communities are suffering so much, this is particularly concerning. There are costs to public trust. We already know that people lack trust in government. Corruption and rorts feed that lack of trust, and that lack of trust contributes to the environment where dangerous conspiracy theories flourish—conspiracy theories that are convincing people to not get vaccinated or not wear a mask; conspiracy theories similar to those being put by the member for Hughes and the member for Dawson, which the Prime Minister has still failed to shut down. It's real-world, dangerous behaviour. It's appalling conduct by the Morrison government, and the Prime Minister fails to do anything to address it. The role of government should be taken seriously. The Australian people rightly deserve a Prime Minister who takes responsibility for the direction of the country. We can't have another three years of corrupt behaviour, rorts and spin.