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

I rise to speak on the Public Governance, Performance and Accountability Amendment (Waiver of Debt and Act of Grace Payments) Bill 2019. This bill would require amounts that the Commonwealth forgives in the way of debts to the ATO or to social security payments to be made public. It would also require act-of-grace payments made by the government to be made public. In that sense, it's a bill that improves transparency, and we welcome it. But it's not exactly a groundbreaking bill, let's be honest. We're spending 2½ hours of the chamber's time talking about these issues, when actually we think far broader transparency mechanisms are required. That's why we had a bill for an independent federal corruption watchdog passed through this Senate late last year, which has been lying in abeyance on the House Notice Paper because this government refuses to bring that bill on. So, if we really want transparency and accountability and integrity in this place, the government know what to do, but instead we've had 18 months of them saying that they're going to deal with this matter, describing it as 'imminent', and then of course we saw them, two weeks ago, saying, 'Sorry. Coronavirus. We can't do anything. Everybody just keep up with the rorts, because we're not going to have an ICAC anytime soon.'

As I say, whilst we welcome this bill for disclosure of when the Commonwealth actually does do the right thing and waives some debts or provides act-of-grace payments to people, it's a pretty low bar in terms of a transparency reform. There was some concern about the administrative burden, but, to be honest, this government is not known for forgiving debts by vulnerable people to the government, so I don't imagine the list is going to be very long. So I don't think there will be much of an administrative burden in complying with this bill should it be passed—unless, of course, we're talking about corporate tax avoidance, which the government is indeed very forgiving of.

As my colleague Senator Siewert spoke of in her contribution, the real debt, which should never have existed in the first place, let alone now be waived, is robodebt. It's very interesting that this bill is coming on for debate in that context. As I understand it, this bill would not have affected the hundreds of thousands of people that were issued with an incorrect and illegal robotically issued debt notice. This government presided over that, and last week the Prime Minister gave what was in my opinion a very half-hearted, not really fulsome apology for it.

Hundreds of thousands of people were affected by that debt scandal and—trigger warning—we know that for many people robodebt was a contributing factor to them taking their own lives. It must never happen again. So if we're talking about debt waivers and transparency we need to be talking about ICAC and we need to be talking about robodebt. It is of course why we pushed for a royal commission into robodebt. Otherwise, we won't get to the bottom of how this happened, how many people it truly damaged and how many people, sadly, took their lives as a result of the financial imperilling and dogged pursuit by debt collectors thanks to this government's sicking them onto people.

This bill is a step towards transparency, and we welcome that. Look at the history books, folks: in the last few years you can't blink without there being another rorts scandal exposed. We had sports rorts 1, hot on its heels we had sports rorts 2, we've now had the community development grants rorts, we've had the export grant rorts, we've had the urban congestion fund rort and we've had the environmental restoration grants rort. That is six buckets of public money that have been used as pre-election slush funds to bankroll the government of the day to keep government. They are absolutely election slush funds. We're up to six now, and no doubt they'll keep on being revealed. This government, of course, has delayed its own, weak federal corruption watchdog bill because it doesn't want those rorts investigated. It should be embarrassed by them, and I hope it is embarrassed by them. It's no wonder that their own ICAC bill has been delayed, but of course their own ICAC bill is so weak it's been criticised for not even being able to stop such rorts. It's a Clayton's ICAC that is just on the never-never. That's why later today we will be moving a concurrence motion to call on the government to bring on the Greens bill for a strong federal corruption watchdog with teeth that we expect will pass the Senate and that will then compel the House to bring on that bill for a vote. We did this late last year, and of course the government ganged up to gag debate on that motion, the effect of which was that the bill for a corruption watchdog could not be debated and could not come on for a vote in the House of Representatives.

This is a government that has been plagued by scandal and plagued by rorts, that is stopping all attempts to bring on debate for an integrity watchdog, that is delaying its own weak version of an integrity watchdog and that then has the cheek to criticise this bill and to use the time set to debate this bill to simply attack its political opponents. I think the Australian public know full well what's going on here. This is institutionalised corruption. These are slush funds en masse.

Sadly, the list of rorts doesn't stop there. We've got a whole series of sagas which are contracts-for-mates scandals. We saw the grant of a contract to Paladin, a two-bit shelf company that had no experience running these offshore gulags which have been known to torture people and send people to their graves, something my colleague Senator McKim has long spoken of and raged against. That is one of the most egregious examples of contracts for mates that the ANAO has criticised. There is still nothing from this government to explain why that company was chosen. Of course, the fact that there's a personal connection there is the reason—we all know that. We've had the numerous scandals involving Minister Taylor, whether it's allegations that he's doctored documents to try to impugn the climate credentials of a local council—I mean, dude, haven't you got better things to do? You're a minister for heaven's sake! Or that he's tried to get his mates off an environment law prosecution and tried to change the listing of a critically endangered ecosystem so that—whoops!—the fact that his brother's company poisoned it won't get him into strife, or whether it's the dodgy water dealings that have plagued Minister Taylor and also former minister Barnaby Joyce. We saw a couple of weeks ago now that a big pharma donor got the contract to do the COVID vaccination work for aged-care organisations. Again, it's contracts for mates, it's election slush funds and it's special treatment for people with personal connections to this government.

Then we come to the COVID commission. It's a so-called advisory body that is stacked with people who are recommending their own industry's projects and getting paid a pretty penny while doing so—and they don't even have to disclose their conflicts of interests if they're on that task force, the manufacturing task force in particular. I asked the government about this last week, and Senator Cormann thinks it's fine—why was I asking about this? 'Sit down, little girl.' That was the short version of what he said. He said that he missed Senator Di Natale and that I was going a bit far. Well, get used to it, folks. When you are putting your mates in charge—