Peta Murphy (Dunkley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It's more than a thousand days since Prime Minister Morrison and the former Attorney-General promised Australians a federal anticorruption commission, but, like so much else, the Morrison government has failed to deliver it. It has stopped debate in this parliament when we've tried to talk about establishing a federal anticorruption commission. The Prime Minister hasn't even bothered to introduce legislation into the parliament to try to establish an ICAC. All the Morrison government has is a draft for a model that has no supporters, no friends at all, apart from within the Morrison government—a model which just would not properly hold federal politicians to account.

What have we seen under this Morrison government? Today we've heard reports that two of the Prime Minister's close friends were hand-picked to receive $80,000 from Home Affairs to set up their own quarantine business, but apparently no-one in the Morrison government knows anything about it. And that's just the latest scandal. There are some other legacies of this tired Morrison government. We've seen sport rorts. We've seen car park rorts. Kananook and Seaford were promised commuter car parks. The money has been taken away. Where's the promised car park for Frankston?

There were secret million-dollar donations; tipping off the media about AFP raids; robodebt. We've had 'grassgate', where there was a failure to declare a meeting with officials about critically endangered grasslands, when the minister apparently had a financial interest in a company that was under investigation for poisoning them. There was 'watergate'; using forged documents to attack political arrivals; the sale of the Leppington Triangle land, near Western Sydney Airport, for $30 million, although it was only worth $3 million; visas for au pairs for mates. There was 'reefgate'—$44 million of taxpayers' money going to a small foundation, without a competitive tender process or any applications for the money, for our critically endangered Great Barrier Reef. There was a $38,000 home internet bill a minister had to pay back for excessive data use. A company once registered to a beach shack on Kangaroo Island got awarded a $532 million contract—the Paladin affair—without a tender, to provide services on Manus Island.

There were jobs for mates—an Administrative Appeals Tribunal with 65 former Liberal staffers, former Liberal or National politicians, party donors, party members, unsuccessful Liberal candidates or Liberal government employees. There were safer seats rorts, round 3 of the Safer Communities Fund, with 90 per cent of funding ending up in government held, independent or marginal Labor seats, rejecting advice from government community safety experts and reducing funding for 19 safety projects across Australia.

Despite the Prime Minister's pretence and efforts to say that it's the opposition's fault that there's no ICAC, it is this government's failure to deliver a proper anticorruption commission that will be its legacy. You want to hold politicians to account, vote Labor.