Mathias Cormann (WA, Liberal Party, Vice-President of the Executive Council) Share this | Hansard source

As I hear Senator Kitching not even contain her student laughter, I'm reminded of debates in student politics. You of course know that making a broad, generic statement in relation to a headline is very different than making a statement in relation to a detailed bill, which has serious ramifications. No doubt the reason Labor hasn't put forward a bill proposing a national integrity commission is that you yourself are having to grapple with some of the complexities that are involved in this.

The crossbench in the House of Representatives, to their credit, have gone though that work, but there are issues—there are problems, there are complexities—in relation to a bill that they have put forward. And I would suspect that the Labor Party are not ones to support the bill that was put forward by the crossbench. If you are supportive of the bill that was put forward by the crossbench, please let us know. Translating the question that Senator Kitching just asked—presumably it means that Bill Shorten is both in favour of a national integrity commission and against a national integrity commission. Unless you are not telling me here and now that you are supporting the bill put forward by the crossbench in the House of Representatives, in favour of a national integrity commission, then, on the basis of your logic, I put it to you that Mr Shorten is both in favour of a national integrity commission and against a national integrity commission. Is that the sort of wibble-wobble flip-flop we're going to get from Mr Shorten? That is the extension of your logic. We are saying that we support efforts to improve our anticorruption policy framework; absolutely we do. But we've got to act carefully to ensure that all the principles of natural justice, procedural fairness and the rule of law are appropriately reflected and that we don't have unintended consequences, and that is what we're focused on.