Joe Ludwig (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

You will get your chance. The Greens always get excited about any criticism, but I will get to a little more criticism that they may want respond to in their submission. What is proposed would cut across work that is already being done by other agencies. Do you create a new agency that cuts across existing agencies' work? Do you have a duplication? Do you have unnecessary investigation being run in parallel while the Commonwealth Ombudsman does his job and while the various functions that oversee our Federal Police do their jobs? Do we have intercommission fights about who should take the lead in respect of a particular investigation? Of course, the short answer is that it may all be sorted out in the wash, but whilst that is occurring you have inefficiencies, costs and imposts. You also have confusion, and things may slip between the cracks.

While the current model that the Commonwealth has is not perfect, the efforts to improve this model are better than choosing to create an entirely new model. It would also be the role of the proposed commission to provide independent advice to ministers and parliamentarians on matters of appropriate conduct and parliamentary entitlements. The National Integrity Commission would have full investigative powers in relation to public officials and Commonwealth agencies. I think the jury is out on this matter more broadly, but is it appropriate to put parliamentary matters—that is, our pay and conditions—into the hands of a corruption watchdog body?

Or is it better to wait for the review to see how we can eliminate what the Greens also have recognised are the grey areas, ensure that the rules are clear and unambiguous, and thereby be able to have a proper person, body or whatever it might be to ensure that those issues are independently dealt with, rather than lumping it all into a National Integrity Commission? What the Greens would have is a National Integrity Commission which effectively has three functions in one. Again, you would have competition for resources within that agency itself. I do not think that is efficient or effective.

I think what the Greens have not cottoned on to is that there are several agencies which already exist with strong, effective investigative powers to promote integrity and accountability at the Commonwealth level. Labor did not support this bill when it was introduced on 20 September 2010 or when it was in introduced in the House on 28 of May 2012. Adequate capacity and resources across existing integrity frameworks are, I think, far more important than the existence of a single oversight body. We already have a range of integrity mechanisms including the Australian Federal Police, the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions, the Australian Crime Commission, the Australian Commission for Law Enforcement Integrity, the Australian National Audit Office, the Australian Public Service Commission, the Commonwealth Ombudsman, the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security and a few more that Senator Fawcett added into the mix as well. Plus, as Senator Fawcett was also alluding to, there has been a significant shift in the Public Service to ensure that they manage risk, identify risk and deal with issues of corruption within their own ranks. And I do not think that has been a small shift; I think it has been a seismic shift. It has also been a cultural shift within the Public Service more broadly. All of these agencies perform many of the functions, if not all of them, that would be performed by a stand-alone integrity and anticorruption commission. In fact I would go as far as suggest that having those interlinked would provide more security for the Commonwealth. However, these specialist agencies have expert knowledge that is likely to be lacking in a distant, more generic body. They are in all of those areas doing their job very close to the coalface rather than as a remote national body.

I remain unconvinced that a National Integrity Commission is necessary or desirable. In my view the range of arrangements we have in place at the Commonwealth level are adequate to combat misconduct and corruption. That does not mean they do not need more work. Looking at what the federal government is doing in respect of one of these areas, I think it is wrong for a range of reasons in transferring the FOI complaint-handling role from the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner to the Commonwealth Ombudsman. I think that is a weakening of that latticework I described. But the remedy is not to create a national body; the remedy is to ensure that you do have a strong and robust FOI-handling body and a strong OAIC to ensure that we do have the public release of information by the Commonwealth.

If you look at the work of the Greens—I will just turn to the Greens for a moment, which will excite them—you will see that their hypocrisy on the integrity and accountability matter is rife. I will share with the chamber just a couple of examples. On the matter of ethical standards, Senator Rhiannon, as I understand it, accused the then incoming foreign minister Bob Carr of lacking ethical standards, questioning his ability to make unbiased decisions in cabinet because of his previous work in the corporate world. This is not to pick on the former foreign minister, but some members of this chamber will recall that when Labor got into government in 2007 they adopted a revised standard of ministerial ethics, imposing the highest standard of ethical conduct that has ever been applied to federal ministers. Yet, as I understand it, the Greens are yet to adopt an ethical standards model, and I await the day when I see it. They do like to regularly trumpet their balance of power position in this house. If they do have that position then they should address it with appropriate ethical standards and adhere to them.

Senator Di Natale interjecting—

They want to talk about matters of political donations. Senator Rhiannon is on record as saying that business should be banned from making donations to political parties. But the Greens accepted $1.6 million from Graeme Wood, the founder of online travel company Wotif.com—the largest political donation in Australian history. If you are going to talk about national integrity you ought to make sure you have got your house in order. Senator Rhiannon was reported as apologising at the time after it emerged that she helped to ghostwrite an opinion article attacking her own party for accepting the huge donation. Be that as it may, the Greens are not a party that should be in the business of recommending reasonable reform when they are so clearly unfamiliar with it.

What needs to be realised is that agencies with strong investigative powers already promote accountability and integrity at the Commonwealth level.

The Australian Federal Police have all the necessary powers to investigate what may be considered as an offence under the Commonwealth law. The Law Enforcement Integrity Commissioner has powers to investigate corruption within government agencies with law enforcement functions. The Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security provides independent assurance for the Prime Minister, senior ministers and parliament as to whether Australia's intelligence and security agencies act legally and with propriety by inspecting, inquiring into and reporting on their activities.

The Auditor-General, as an independent officer of the parliament, may review or examine any aspect of the operations of the Commonwealth public sector. The Auditor is empowered to examine cabinet decisions and cabinet documents, and this goes to the very heart of government. So the ANAO is not locked out of examining any part of the Commonwealth: if you want to go back to various reports of the ANAO, they have not held back in examining aspects of the Commonwealth probity and accountability.

The Ombudsman has the power to investigate administrative actions of Commonwealth agencies. He does not have to wait for a complaint. The concept that is being promoted is that we need a body that can investigate; that can, without a complaint, go in and look and look and look until it finds something as the Greens would have us believe. We already have one: the Commonwealth Ombudsman does not have to wait for a complaint; he can conduct investigations at his own initiative.

The Ombudsman can investigate everything from minor complaints about the way an administrative decision affected an individual—for example, an application for Centrelink assistance being rejected. They can range from the very small, although important to the individual, to large complaints—for example, the operation of the entire immigration detention system. Breaches of the APS Code of Conduct by a public servant can be investigated by the relevant agency head. The Public Service Commissioner has a similar role with respect to agency heads.

The failings of the New South Wales ICAC are enough to convince this chamber that a federal equivalent is not desirable. In his days as Chief Justice of the New South Wales Supreme Court, Justice Gleeson overturned corruption findings against one of the watchdog's first scalps. In 2005 a requirement was inserted into the act after a review of ICAC to direct its focus 'as far as practicable' on 'serious and systemic corruption'. What was found, I think—and I am interpolating here—was that we had a body that had to find work, and it looked and looked and looked, as the Greens would have a national body do, until it could find something to justify its existence. That is not to say it was a bad body; that is what its job was. However, it was required to keep looking and it found many issues that were otherwise small and easily addressed but instead elevated them to serious and being worthy of investigation. I suspect along the way it ruined careers that should not have been ruined.

The requirement was inserted into the act following an independent review by Sydney silk Mr Bruce McClintock to ensure that the commission used its broad investigative and coercive powers to net big fish rather than small fry. Mr McClintock implied that much time had been wasted prosecuting cases that in no way met the test. In those cases there was a distinct lack of understanding of the commission's powers as demonstrated in the Cunneen case.

One of the problems when you invent a national body is that you end up very much in the same place. In a New South Wales Parliamentary Research Service paper, ICAC v Cunneen: the power to investigate corrupt conduct, it is worth reading the conclusion:

As discussed in the Research Service’s Key Issues for the 56th Parliament, the ICAC’s lead role in the drama of NSW politics has resulted in questions being asked of the Commission itself, including questions about ICAC’s procedures, with the damage done to high profile reputations. Criticism has also accompanied the Cunneen case and its aftermath. An editorial in The Daily Telegraph from 21 April 2015 commented:

So the blame entirely lies with ICAC itself for trying on a flimsy case and as a result losing much of its previous impressive reputation and a great deal of power besides.

The decision in ICAC v Cunneen presents an opportunity for a thorough reconsideration of the appropriate scope and nature of the Commission’s powers. What do we want ICAC to do on behalf of the people of NSW? What is its purpose?

Until the Greens can bring forward something that answers those two questions, it is way too early to start supporting a national integrity commission. I think there is an opportunity to continue—I do not criticise the Greens for putting it forward, because it is a matter that we should always remain vigilant about, particularly about how this government treats the integrity agencies to ensure that they are properly resourced and funded; that they do not tear one down; and that they do not change its operation so they can continue to act effectively. If the day were to come where the integrity agencies that currently exist were weakened to such an extent that they could not do their job any longer, then I may be persuaded at that point that a national body is in fact needed.

The issue of establishing a single anticorruption body that will replace presumably—or work alongside—so many specialist agencies is one I have serious concerns about. Ultimately, it is the judgement of the people in this instance which will tell us whether or not we should establish a national body. Most national bodies have usually been established with an event—something that is so bad that it does require a huge national response. I do not think we have that. We have the Greens seeking to promote a body for its own reasons, but I do not think it solves the problem of ensuring that we have a strong anticorruption framework in place.