Scott Ludlam (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I thank all senators for engaging in the debate in the largely respectful way in which it has been conducted. I want to add my comments to those of others who have spoken. I think it was Senator Fawcett actually who pointed out that this is not the first time that this bill has been before this chamber. In fact, it is unfinished business, in my view, to our institutional architecture that will sit on the table in this place until some form of an entity such as that which we are discussing has been implemented.

I think the positions of the political parties are now reasonably clear. Liberal and Nationals senators have spoken out reasonably clearly. They do not want a national ICAC or some form of national integrity commissioner. They are just not interested in it, and we heard a range of arguments put around this morning as to why. Labor appears to be open to the idea as long as nobody actually proceeds to set one up, which is reasonably consistent, I guess, with the way that they have operated around these issues in the past.

I would like to point out there may be a difficulty for us in here, in this fishbowl, having this argument around political entitlements and our use of them as MPs and how that grades from appropriate use of entitlements—some of them substantial—through to inappropriate or grey area uses through to brazenly inappropriate uses of parliamentary entitlements all the way out the other side to what we would understand as corruption. The bill that is before us attempts to deal in a number of ways with all of those different tiers of activity.

I want to quote someone who I do not think I have quoted in this place before, Nicholas Greiner, the former Premier of New South Wales. I went back and looked at a little bit of the history of how the state anticorruption bodies were set up but, principally, the circumstances in which they arose. In general they arose in the midst of appalling corruption scandals within each of those states whether it was Queensland or New South Wales that I have been reading a little bit about this morning or in my own home state of Western Australia. In May 1988 when they were initiating the ICAC bill in the New South Wales parliament, Mr Greiner said:

Nothing is more destructive of democracy than a situation where people lack confidence in those administrators that stand in a position of public trust. If a liberal and democratic society is to flourish we need to ensure that the credibility of public institutions is restored and safeguarded and that community confidence in the integrity of public administration is preserved and justified.

They are quite strong words. I would not normally wander in here quoting coalition state premiers. But when you look at the context in which that bill was introduced, when you get a little way into his second reading speech, this was the backdrop against which that entity was set up. He said:

In recent years, in New South Wales we have seen:—

He goes on to list

a Minister of the Crown jailed for bribery; an inquiry into a second, and indeed a third, former Minister for alleged corruption; the former Chief Stipendiary Magistrate gaoled for perverting the course of justice; a former Commissioner of Police in the courts on a criminal charge; the former Deputy Commissioner of Police charged with bribery; a series of investigations and court cases involving judicial figures including a High Court Judge; and a disturbing number of dismissals, retirements and convictions of senior police officers for offences involving corrupt conduct.

What I found quite instructive and interesting in listening particularly to coalition contributions this morning was that Senator Fawcett quite carefully went through and listed all the different Commonwealth entities and checks and balances and accountability agencies that exist to keep a check on different parts of the Commonwealth machinery. He spoke a little bit about ASIO and ASIS; about the Federal Police, which I will get back to in a second; and about the law enforcement community more generally. He even talked about overseas anticorruption and about state and territory bodies—everybody except us. I was waiting for the punchline where he was going to use that to somehow justify the fact that no such body should therefore apply to this place but there was no punchline and he sat down. He did not actually come to the point that I thought he would have been trying to make and it was quite a well constructed speech—that everybody else has some form of anticorruption watchdog looking over their shoulder with a certain amount of powers except this place—but then he sat down and that was the end of his speech. And I thought that was kind of fascinating.

Senator Canavan just floated right off the deep end, and started comparing it to the Spanish Inquisition or stuff that was going on in the Middle Ages, and turned it into a human rights argument that everybody else should have some kind of anticorruption watchdog looking over them except federal parliamentarians because, 'What about our human rights?' It would be funny if this was not the same guy who wilfully voted for mandatory data retention for the entire population, for extraordinarily coercive powers to be placed over the media and for the ability of ASIO to snoop on practically the entire internet off the back of a single warrant. Now he is considering allowing a handful of select immigration department bureaucrats to revoke people's citizenship unilaterally. Human rights, obviously, can be disposed of for other people, but do not trespass on Senator Canavan's human rights. He does not need an anticorruption watchdog looking over his shoulder. An extraordinary contribution—