Larissa Waters (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

This is the second time that the Senate has sought to force this government to disclose a document that they themselves should have put in the public domain from the word go. Once again we're seeing the hubris of the Leader of the Government in the Senate as he essentially delights in seeking public interest immunity to not put this document in the public domain. We had very clear findings from the Auditor-General that pork-barrelling by this government had happened in the lead-up to the election. But, no, the Prime Minister's mate and former chief of staff has a look and says: 'Actually, there's nothing to see. The independent body got it wrong.' Well, I'm afraid the independent body has the advantage of being independent.

It's no surprise that this government has tried to silence that independent body, has found that for some reason it was not correct and that there's nothing to see and has tried to cover up the fact that the Prime Minister's office is up to its neck in these documents. The various emails between the Prime Minister and then Minister McKenzie show that the Prime Minister had a very strong part in sports rorts 1. I call it 'sports rorts 1' because the rorts keep on coming; we've had sports rorts 2, the community infrastructure grants, the community development grants and some environment grants. These guys sure love pork-barrelling and they sure love not having an independent body to take them to task over it.

Is it any wonder it has been 18 months and we've seen no action on a federal corruption watchdog from this government. It has been 18 months since they made that commitment and we still haven't seen a bill. We haven't even seen an exposure draft of a bill. This government will do everything it can to avoid transparency and everything it can to buy election results, because, frankly, it has no policy offering. All it can do is try to splash some cash around and bribe people into voting for it.

This is exactly why we need a federal corruption watchdog. This is why my bill passed the Senate in September last year. But the government doesn't want to bring that bill on for a vote in the House because my version of a federal corruption watchdog would actually clean up corruption. The government's discussion principles would not have even captured sports rorts. Their design for a corruption watchdog is so deliberately weak that all of this corruption, this pork-barrelling and these breaches of ministerial standards will just carry on. Some watchdog that will be, if we ever even see it! But we haven't seen it. We haven't seen the bill or an exposure draft and we know that this government is not committed to cleaning up corruption because it benefited very nicely, thank you very much, from being able to pork-barrel in the lead-up to the election.

So there was sports rorts 1 and then sports rorts 2. Now it's the community infrastructure grants. Now it's the community development grants. Now there are some environment grants. In the Commonwealth grants guidelines there is a little rule that says, where the minister doesn't take the advice of the independent officer on which grants should receive funding and which should not, they're meant to actually provide reasons for that to the Treasurer. No-one will be surprised that those reasons are not required to be made public. Once again, this government does everything it can to conceal the rorting and the pork-barrelling that it undertakes with glee in the lead-up to elections.

I will be moving in the chamber later today an order of continuing effect that says, 'You must put those reasons for deviating from the independent advice of grants bodies in the public domain.' It will be very interesting to see how this chamber votes on that order of continuing effect. We certainly know the government won't back it; they won't even release the Gaetjens report. Twice we've had to have the Senate demand that they release it, and they are still not going to do it. So we don't expect support from them. We wonder whether One Nation will back that motion. We will see.

This government is shrouded in secrecy. It continues to cook the books, to spend public money, to shore up its flailing political fortunes. It won the election by a whisker thanks to these sorts of bribes. It's lost all credibility and it's lost all integrity. This is exactly why all of the statistics and reports show that trust in democracy is at an all-time low. I don't care if people don't like this government—good; we want this government gone too. What I do care about is that this government no longer thinks that the institute of parliament represents the people. That is the more damaging effect of this sort of rampant rorting and pork-barrelling. People deserve a democracy that works for them and they deserve to have confidence that public money—those people's money—will be spent in a way that benefits them, not in a way that benefits the government.

The real issue here is the hubris of this government spending public money to shore up their own political fortunes. They take the massive corporate donations to fund their election campaigns, they do the bidding of those corporate sponsor elected and, meanwhile, they dish out public funds to shore up support in marginal suits. It is cooked and it is about time big money got its dirty fingers off this parliament—again, I'll be moving to ban corporate donations and to limit all donations to $1,000—because people deserve their democracy back. They deserve an independent federal corruption watchdog with teeth that could actually have applied to sports rorts 1 and 2, unlike the model the government is proposing. I mean, who proposes a model that supposedly is meant to clean up corruption but wouldn't have stopped or even applied to the rorts that we've seen plaguing this government since they were re-elected? What a joke! That is not going to fly with anybody. It would be worse than a smokescreen, smaller than fig leaf. This government simply has no credibility on integrity matters, and everybody can see it.

Release the Gaetjens report. Let's learn precisely how weak those ministerial standards are, because if they weren't breached by this pork-barrelling then what good are they either? The government has got this sewn up so nicely. It's got its mates to investigate how flagrant rorting somehow doesn't breach ministerial standards. It says quite a lot about the ministerial standards that this pork-barrelling doesn't breach them. Strengthen the standards, don't have them implemented by your mate who is now your chief of staff, actually give them to an independent body, make them legislative, have them independently reinforced and have them apply to all members of parliament. That's what the Greens think. We want a code of conduct for all of us here in this building who are elected representatives. We want those ministerial standards to mean something, to be strong and to be enforced. And we want a federal corruption watchdog that can actually do something to clean up the poor behaviour and the misuse of public funds that has so typified this government.

Once again we see secrecy, lack of transparency and 'it's just the Canberra bubble'. People are getting pretty sick of this government dismissing the premise of the question and saying it's just the Canberra bubble. No, this is our democracy and this is about how public funds are misspent by this illegitimate government. I can't wait for the next election, personally. I hope it comes real soon.