Murray Watt (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Northern Australia) Share this | Hansard source

I don't think that it could be doubted by anyone who participates in politics at the moment that trust in politics in Australia, and across the world, is at an all-time low. Everywhere we look we see evidence of that, whether it be disengagement from the political process, the kind of abuse that is regularly meted out on all sides of politics over social media or the rise of fringe third parties at elections. All of those things are indications that trust in politics is at a serious low. So, for that reason, the time for a national integrity commission in Australia has never been greater. I don't believe, as some advocates of an integrity commission believe, that simply creating a national integrity commission will be a magic wand and will immediately fix the lack of trust in Australian politics, but I certainly believe, and Labor believes, that establishing a national integrity commission is a fundamental plank in what is needed to restore trust in Australian politics.

As we could have expected, Senator Waters in her speech took the opportunity to throw her usual insults about Labor when it comes to integrity matters, so I'd like to remind Senator Waters and anyone who's watching this debate that Labor has had a proud record in driving integrity in government for many decades, well before the Greens party even existed. In my own home state of Queensland, of course, politics over the last 20 or 30 years has been defined by the response to the Fitzgerald inquiry, established by the then National Party government but which trawled over the obscene corruption that we saw in the Liberal and National Party governments in Queensland over a 20- or 30-year period. As a result of that inquiry, Labor, under the leadership of Wayne Goss, put forward incredible integrity moves, incredible anticorruption moves, that survive in Queensland to this day. It's hard to believe that until the early 1990s, when Labor, under Wayne Goss, was elected, Queensland didn't have any sort of corruption body, didn't have freedom of information processes for people to access information about what government was doing and didn't even have estimates committees of its parliament with which to hold government ministers and the government generally to account. All of those things—a corruption commission, FOI laws, estimates hearings and many, many other integrity measures—were introduced by the Goss Labor government and remain in Queensland to this day.

At a federal level, Labor has championed donations reform and is still waiting for the government to come around to our position that donation thresholds should be reduced drastically so that people do know who is donating to politics, whether it be to the Liberals, to the Nationals, to Labor, to the Greens or to any other party, but still we are waiting for the government to come around on that. In government, federal Labor also brought in stronger FOI laws, whistleblower protection and a range of other anticorruption measures. So driving integrity in government is absolutely part of Labor's DNA.

In contrast, unfortunately we have seen and continue to see the Liberals and the Nationals in government oppose various integrity measures, such as the donations reform that I was talking about, stronger whistleblower protections and, of course, the establishment of the very integrity body that we are debating today. I do recognise that, under public pressure, late last year the government finally accepted that we did need to have some kind of integrity commission at a federal level, but, of course, what the government is putting forward falls well short of what this parliament should deem acceptable and what the Australian people deem acceptable. Only last week, Geoffrey Watson, the former counsel assisting the New South Wales ICAC, who was a director of the Centre for Public Integrity, wrote an opinion piece about an integrity commission. He described the coalition's proposal, the government's proposal, as 'a joke'. He described it as:

Toothless, spineless, and secretive—it would have no power to examine the activities of politicians or those close to them. ... It also—laughably—prevents the investigation of corruption in the past, with the consequence of protecting crooked politicians from any examination of their misdeeds.

He concluded by saying:

The Coalition’s proposal is not a real anti-corruption agency; it is a sham. It would be worse than having no commission at all.

Over the course of this debate we have heard government senators like Senator Stoker, who just spoke, get up and talk about how committed the federal government is to an anticorruption commission and how their model is superior. Don't listen to what I've got to say about this by any means, if you don't want to, but just listen to someone like Geoffrey Watson, who's been at the coalface of fighting corruption for a very long time. He describes the government's model as a joke and a sham, and that is not where we should be heading. In the end, the reason that the Morrison government is taking this position is that it fundamentally hates the idea of being held accountable for its actions. That's why the Morrison government has been slithering around on this important issue, trying to avoid making any real commitments.

Labor has been talking about the need for a national integrity commission since January 2018—well before the last election—when we announced our commitment to establish such a body. We in Labor made it clear that while we were not proposing to draft, from opposition, the legislation that would establish that body, we had been consulting extensively with legal and integrity experts and examining the pros and cons of the various state models. From that work we arrived at seven basic design principles for the proposed body, which we were committed to establishing.

When we made that announcement in June 2018, we invited the Turnbull government to work with us on this initiative. After Prime Minister Turnbull was overthrown and removed from office by his ambitious friends—the member for Dickson and the current Prime Minister—we then made the same offer to the Morrison government to work with us on establishing a national integrity body that actually had real teeth, because we in Labor know that corruption is something that harms us all, and it harms our nation.

As I've already said: the public's trust in politics and our institutions is at an all-time low. While there are many factors that have led to this erosion of public confidence, there is no doubt that corruption in government will only further entrench that mistrust.

Every single state in Australia now has anticorruption bodies, and Labor went to the May election promising to establish such a body at the federal level. Finally, in December last year, the Morrison government announced that it would backflip on its previous claims that a national integrity commission was not necessary or that a national integrity commission was, as the Prime Minister described it, a 'fringe issue'. Suddenly, having sniffed the public mood and becoming aware of their ongoing embarrassment about having rejected a need for a banking royal commission, until it was forced upon them, they were suddenly in favour of a national integrity commission. But we haven't heard anything from the government about it since—that was 10 months ago, and we still haven't seen an exposure draft of legislation from the Morrison government. As I've already said, experts in these matters describe the government's proposal as a sham and a joke. So much for the Morrison government's promise of action.

Having unexpectedly won office again, it seems the last thing this government wants is a national integrity commission to look at what they and their mates are doing behind closed doors. We acknowledge this bill, which was prepared by the former independent member for Indi, Cathy McGowan, and is being presented to this parliament by the Greens party, is not perfect, but the integrity commission that would be established by this bill is incomparably better than the sham version of an integrity commission that the Morrison government proposed when it was finally dragged kicking and screaming, in December last year, to support one. It is because the need for a national integrity commission is now so urgent, and because the Morrison government has made clear that it only wants a sham of a national integrity commission so that it can pretend it is doing something about corruption in government, that Labor is willing to support the passage of the National Integrity Commission Bill 2018 (No. 2) through the Senate.

The Morrison government has to wake up to reality. The Australian people want a national integrity commission and our country would benefit from having one. The Morrison government also has to understand that the Australian people want a real national integrity commission—not the kind of sham and not the kind of joke that Geoffrey Watson describes the government's proposal as—a commission with independence and with the powers and the resources needed to stamp out corruption in government and the federal public sector. The Australian people want a watchdog with real teeth rather than some kind of obedient lapdog of the government, which seems to be what Mr Morrison and his cronies want.

As I've said: trust in politics and politicians is at historic lows in this country, and it's made worse every day by the chaos and cover-ups that have become the hallmark of this government. Labor is supporting this bill because it is time to do something about corruption in government at the federal level. As on so many issues of vital importance to this nation—from the economy to climate change to the need for an energy policy to the ever-rising cost of living—the Morrison government continues to pretend that there's no problem to deal with in relation to integrity and that a slogan will do in place of a policy. Labor supports this bill and calls on the Morrison government to do the same.