Andrew Wilkie (Clark, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

[by video link] My question is to the Prime Minister. Prime Minister, the community has had a gut full of the lack of integrity in politics. Your government in particular has been beset with scandals, rorts and lies, and trust in politicians is at an all-time low. Of course, the crossbench has been leading the charge to fix this, for example, with members yesterday moving bills to establish an effective anticorruption commission, bring honesty and transparency to political donations and to clean up the filth in political advertising. Prime Minister, why aren't you responding to this concern, and, in these last weeks of the 46th Parliament, will you actually do something tangible to restore public faith in the political process?

Paul Fletcher (Bradfield, Liberal Party, Minister for Communications, Urban Infrastructure, Cities and the Arts) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Clark for his question. I know he has a long-standing interest in these issues and the question of integrity in politics. Of course, it's an interest that the coalition government, the Morrison government, very strongly shares. That is why we are proceeding with our commitment to establish a Commonwealth Integrity Commission, designed to be the lead body in Australia's successful multi-agency anticorruption framework and designed to enhance accountability across the public sector.

We've been going through a national consultation process—some 330 written submissions received, 46 consultations. We are now carefully considering that feedback as a necessary step to finalising and introducing the legislation. But of course we're doing more than preparing the legislation. What we're also doing is providing very significant funding, indeed almost $150 million is committed to the Commonwealth Integrity Commission, and at full capacity the commission will have around 172 staff.

I want to be clear that the Commonwealth Integrity Commission will have significant powers. It will be able to investigate past conduct in matters that occurred prior to its commencement, and it will be able to look into past conduct that falls into the scope of its jurisdiction, which includes some 145 criminal offences currently existing in legislation, for example, offences in the Criminal Code Act. And of course the government has also indicated that we intend to create new offences relating to criminal corrupt conduct, including concealing corruption and repeated public sector corruption.

So, I say to the member for Clark, I say to the House: our government is working through, in a methodical and thorough fashion, a very comprehensive model here. And I say to the member, and indeed I say to the opposition: If you are ready to back us, then say so. Join us on this journey to get this legislation passed in a significant step to further introduce powerful measures to be able to uphold integrity and to deal with the threat of criminally corrupt conduct at the Commonwealth level.