Penny Wright (SA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Australian Greens National Integrity Commission Bill 2013, which was introduced by my colleague Senator Rhiannon. I acknowledge the hard and persistent work of Senator Rhiannon in fighting to establish transparency and accountability in our governance arrangements. This Greens bill is a significant part of that work.

Let us start by acknowledging the nature of one of the major problems we are confronting in this arena. Political donations have become an endemic part of our political culture. Year by year, government by government, we have seen the increasing importance and influence of those who would make donations to political parties. The terms 'big oil', 'big gas', 'big coal', 'big pharmaceutical', 'big retail', 'big agriculture',' media barons', 'banking tycoons' and 'property developers' have become part of our everyday lexicon not because the corporations and individuals involved in these industries have merely been going about the day-to-day running of private sector businesses; they have earned these names and this familiarity because of the manipulation by some of these players of the most sacred of democratic values, and that is the ability of those who are elected to a position of trust to govern and make decisions in the national interest and in the interests of the people who elect them. In my home state of South Australia, we have seen in recent times the pernicious influence of property developers bearing gifts in the form of political donations and the effects on the state planning process, which has resulted in decisions that have been manifestly not principled or based on good policy but, indeed, reflect the degree of generosity of those who have made those donations.

The fundamental and wonderful idea of a representative democracy is that elected representatives are ultimately accountable to the voters—to those people who put their trust and their faith in them by voting for them at an election—and that the decisions that those elected representatives make in the chambers of parliament reflect the will, the interests and the wellbeing of the electorate. Instead we have a system that is being increasingly skewed. Because of our system of political donations, third-party campaigns and media quid pro quos, we too often have a government that looks after the interests of the big end of town—those who actually have the influence, the power and the finances to assist them to stay in power—at the expense of everyday Australians who do not have those resources to influence decision making. Let us be absolutely clear: this problem is not limited to the current government. Political donations and excessive influence have been a blight on governments, both conservative and Labor, in the past. Therefore, although it would be easy to attribute the blame for the failings of previous governments and any failings of the current government to a simplistic view that they are due to a lack of moral backbone or some kind of sinister personalities; the truth is that the problem goes much deeper. We need a sophisticated and thoughtful solution to this, because it is systemic. It does in fact cost money and require resources to mount an election campaign to enable people to be elected to represent their constituencies in the parliament. Even the best and noblest of characters in our current political environment—and I believe that there are decent, good people in all political parties in this parliament—are caught up in a system that has perverse incentives to look for ways to raise the money and the resources that are needed to mount an election campaign. The ultimate dilemma is that political campaigns cost money and election-winning campaigns cost a lot of money.

Although the Greens have argued previously for a clear solution to this issue—that is, transparent, accountable public funding for election campaigns in order to reduce the influence and the necessity for special interests—this has consistently fallen on deaf ears in this parliament. Unless we can do away with the need to raise money from those who are wealthy and have influence, we are always going to have this issue about where the line is drawn. As an alternative or, indeed, an adjunct to that proposal, which is still very much the Greens' point of view, my colleague Senator Rhiannon and the Australian Greens are proposing this bill before the Senate today that would see the creation of a national integrity commission. Although the system of donations would continue in the absence of agreement that there be public funding for election campaigns, the national integrity commission—or what has been nicknamed the 'federal ICAC', independent commission against corruption—would provide the necessary scrutiny and oversight to ensure that our system of donations does not override the fundamental and important right of the Australian people to accountable government.

Importantly, we can look around and see the value of other independent commissions against corruption and what they have been able to achieve in the relatively short period of time in which they have been in existence in Australia. The NSW ICAC has been able to uncover property developers in cahoots with elected officials. No-one could argue that that was in the public interest. When you have nepotistic appointments to so-called independent bodies, you can be pretty sure that the person appointed will have riding instructions. There will be favours and there will be a loyalty involved after that appointment. We have seen donations from coal and gas companies that happened to coincide with the issuing of mining licences.

There is so much evidence of what occurs and then what is able to be revealed through the effective use of independent commissions against corruption. In New South Wales, for instance, this has led to an understandable disenchantment with the political class in that state. It was and is a necessary step towards the rehabilitation of our political culture, so that any representative parliamentarian can hold their head high and know that they are making principled, evidence-based, good, policy decisions in the national interest on behalf of the Australian electorate, the people who elect us.

The question remains: why are both the old parties against this bill that the Greens are proposing? Surely, the elimination of special interests and rent-seekers serves both the parliament and the Australian electorate. It would stop what is an endless race to the bottom, where the party who can sell out the most for private industry donations is the one with the most funds for campaigning. Nobody wins from this process. This bill would serve to level the playing field, so that even if the culture of donations did continue, all politicians could have the confidence that they can say no—and, in fact, would be well advised to say no to the more egregious requests from business and the deals that otherwise get done behind closed doors.

If all parties know that corruption, quid pro quos and the manipulation of impartial regulation will potentially come to light, will lead to penalties, will lead to media outrage and will lead to some of the consequences that we have seen recently in relation to the 'choppergate' scandal and the negative political consequences that accompany them, it would not be in the political interests of those persons to break the rules and the norms of ethical and good governance just because they have big donors asking them to do so.

This is not about blame; this is actually a proactive measure that the Australian Greens are introducing here today. It is not about blame; it is not about scapegoating; it is about looking forward. It is about fundamentally reforming our system to make it fair, to deal with the problem that we have identified—that is, the incentives in our current system to allow powerful interests with deep pockets to unduly influence the political decision-making that affects the Australian people in the way they go about living their lives. We want a system that is fair for the Australian people, that is fair for Australian politicians and, ultimately, in the interests of Australian business because Australian business also relies on the continued confidence of people in our political institutions in order to maintain the peaceful and prosperous conditions of their own success in a democracy like Australia.

When I was first elected to parliament, one of the things that struck me was the incredible trust voters placed in me when they voted for me, which resulted in me being in the Senate, when they put their mark on the ballot paper at the election. It is a trust where, if you unpack it, people would say that by choosing to vote for that particular person or that particular party there are certain expectations lying behind that, that that person or that party will rise above particular naked self-interest and try to make decisions, try to make changes, try to introduce and modify legislation in the greater interest—in the interest of at least those people who vote for them but, more broadly, in some ways in the national and long-term interest of Australian society. Increasingly, I think, there is a sense of scepticism among Australians and a sense of a loss of faith to some extent in the ethics of government and in the ethics of elected representatives. I find that very sad because, ultimately, that will erode respect for democracy.

The other thing that people perhaps are more concerned about now is understanding that the ability of sovereign governments to take long-term, broad views about what is indeed in the national interest has been undermined by the influence of very powerful interests. An example I would call on there is what happened when the former Rudd government attempted to introduce the mining tax in the interests of trying to recoup a fair share of Australia's mining resources for the benefit of all Australians and not so predominantly for the benefit of shareholders, who happen to be living in countries outside Australia. What we saw there was a concentrated and very, very powerful and incredibly well-resourced campaign from the mining interests to undermine the thrust of that legislation. There was a lot of commentary at the time about whether that heralded and highlighted the real difficulty for sovereign governments in nation-states to be able to take principled steps in the long-term national interest that would be in conflict with the short term but very powerful interests of corporations, which are often multinational corporations that have no allegiance and no loyalty to any particular nation-state. That question is still very much a live question.

It is a very sobering thought to think that perhaps if we do not do something to change the balance about powerful interests and the ability of elected representatives to govern in the genuine national interest, where will that leave us in the future, especially in this century when we are being beset by so many immediate and urgent challenges, which are almost existential? How are we going to survive, given many of the challenges and the human population challenge and the environmental challenges that we face?

I would like to come back to a particular example, a perhaps less widespread example, of where it was clear to me that a federal ICAC could change our political process for the better. That was an inquiry of the Legal and Constitutional Affairs References Committee into the work undertaken by the Australian Federal Police's Oil for Food Taskforce. I was the chair of the committee and it was a Greens' initiated inquiry. The inquiry, ultimately, looked at why it did not achieve the outcomes that a lot of people expected it might achieve in getting to the bottom of what happened in the oil-for-food scandal, which was atrocious in and of itself. But the investigations into that scandal failed to end up with anyone being held accountable and failed to properly untangle the structural problems at the root of it. The Senate inquiry should have been able to dissect exactly why the investigation into and actions against the Australian Wheat Board were so ineffectual in the end, but we were not able to do that.

The Australian Greens presented a minority report to that committee and in the oil-for-food scandal investigation report. We recommended that the Australian Commission for Law Enforcement Integrity launch a far-reaching inquiry into what we saw to be the structural failings in both the Australian Federal Police and the Australian Securities and Investments Commission in being able to prosecute wrongdoers in relation to the oil-for-food scandal. But unfortunately, and perhaps unsurprisingly, the Australian Greens' recommendation in the minority report has not been taken up.

Ultimately on that committee we saw the major parties, the old parties, united to protect the Australian Federal Police and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade from the scrutiny that was required to get to the bottom of it. One can only speculate—in fact there was evidence put to that inquiry, and it is available for people to have a look at—that there were higher powers and higher interests involved that were being protected. It is important to note that the period of the investigation into the Australian Wheat Board involved both the Howard government and subsequently the Rudd government. It was notable how little interest there was from the members of the committee who had allegiance to those governments in digging too deeply in a way that could potentially jeopardise the standing of either party or any of the personalities who might still hold political office to this day.

The political make-up of the references committee on that occasion ultimately did undermine the effectiveness of our inquiry. It has become clear that it is here that a federal ICAC could play a role. A standing body with large powers of information procurement and the compulsion of testimony would not only be able to overcome particular difficulties that we face, and that were faced in relation to the original investigation into the Australian Wheat Board scandal, but also have more resources and time to properly pursue the case. Senate committees, by their nature, are peopled with senators who have many other demands on their time and resources, not to mention other loyalty demands on their attention as well. So of course Senate committees, while often doing very good work, can sometimes be very limited in what they can achieve, particularly if they are investigating a controversial, contentious and highly risky political matter. A federal ICAC would mean that partisan politics would no longer get in the way of these sorts of investigations and of the Australian people getting the transparent and open government they deserve both in our parliament and in our federal departmental bodies.

I guess that leaves the question of why it is that the coalition and the Labor Party, the two old players, do not support this Greens proposal. There is lots of rhetoric around why it is too hard and why it will not work. But the evidence is mounting all the time that the current system we have is broken, that we need to fix it and that we need an effective, impartial and powerful body to be able to genuinely investigate issues that are arising in relation to the behaviour of political parties, the behaviour of federal politicians and the behaviour of federal departments and agencies. I guess in the end whenever we get this kind of resistance, this kind of obfuscation and this kind of apologist response to something that seems to be such a clearly good idea we have to wonder what it is that they have to hide.