Jordon Steele-John (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Let's be really clear about what is going on here. The Morrison government was caught red-handed engaging in nothing less than politically motivated robbery—robbery of community for political gain. They were caught by the independent processes which exist, thankfully, in some corners of our system. They were caught and exposed for the crooked, corrupt and irredeemably self-focused shambles that they are.

The Senate has requested that the government provide documentation in relation to this scandal, and the response of the government has been to treat this request with contempt. It is a contempt which is emblematic of an insidious culture which has infected our politics for decade after decade—a culture of entitlement, an idea that the major parties in this place are rightfully empowered to use public funds for their political purposes if the polls are getting a bit tight. Let's be really clear: this is not something that the Labor Party is free of. In the year before I was born, 1993, the Keating government was caught doing exactly the same thing. This sense of entitlement that the major parties have about using public funds for their own purposes is bipartisan.

Minister McKenzie may well have been forced to resign, but the resignation of one minister is not a cure-all for a deeply ingrained cultural problem. You cannot cure culture by scapegoating. The only cure for this type of misuse of public funds is the implementation of a federal anticorruption commission, the very policy proposal that the Greens here, on behalf of the community, have been advocating for more than a decade. For more than a decade, we have been in here arguing for it; and, for more than a decade, the major parties pushed back on that and did everything they could to protect their mates, to protect their donors, to protect the revolving door between this place and the private sector that guarantees so many that serve in here a job in one firm or another, in one consultancy or another, when their time in this place comes to an end. This closed shop of corruption, this mutually supportive pact that has existed in this place for so long, is exactly why the Australian people regard this parliament as a space in which their hopes, dreams and aspirations, the diversity of their communities, their desires for the future come to die, come to be ground into a million pieces by the political pacts of the major parties to put their own self-interest ahead of the needs of the Australian community, ahead of the needs of people and planet.

Many of us in here have been shocked by the naked disregard for accountability that has been shown by the Morrison government here today. But many of the community are not shocked; they didn't expect anything less. I mean, this is a government which has taken to colour-coding corruption. This is a government which has taken to investigating itself in the face of independent inquiry and proving itself to be innocent. This is a government led by a man whom the Australian people know to be devoid of any particular moral compass or sense of duty; these things were long ago sold off by the Morrison government to the highest corporate bidder. Sadly, people now also expect to see the Labor Party follow along meekly behind the government, piping up here and piping up there but never really rocking the boat, because they are still having 'a bit of a sad' about losing the election.

There is a feeling, unfortunately, of dark comedy about this particular spectacle. There's been a lot of hot air displayed in this chamber this afternoon; there'll be a lot of hot air displayed tomorrow. The red side of the chamber will accuse the blue side of the chamber of being absolutely unfit to govern the country—'Oh my God, we should have an election now!'—and on and on and on it will go. And we'll come back here in 10 years and the same thing will happen again—unless we change the culture, unless we put the fear of God into the major political parties in this place. There is one way to do that: threaten their ability to be re-elected. We need an anticorruption commission at the federal level, empowered to hold both sides to account and to leave no stone unturned. We need a federal anticorruption commission. We need reforms to donations. We need an ending of that revolving door, with penalties at such a severe level that you would be ejected from this place. And then watch how quickly this shit will stop happening!