Rex Patrick (SA, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I seek leave to move a motion relating to the consideration of the Australian Federal Integrity Commission Bill 2020, as circulated.

Leave not granted.

Pursuant to contingent notice of motion standing in my name, I move:

That so much of the standing orders be suspended as would prevent me from moving a motion to provide for the consideration of a matter, namely a motion to give precedence to a motion relating to the consideration of the Australian Federal Integrity Commission Bill 2020.

I will quickly address a concern that Senator Ruston will no doubt raise in her response to my short contribution here. She will say this is a stunt, brought on to waste government business time, but it's not.

One of the roles of the Senate is to make sure that we oversee the government, to make sure that the government does its work properly and to make sure that the government meets the commitments it has made to the Australian public. I draw the Senate's attention back to 13 December 2018, when the Prime Minister promised the Australian public that, were he to be given the opportunity to govern again, he would introduce a federal integrity commission bill. I don't know whether that was a 'core' promise; I don't know whether it was a promise. I don't know whether it was a commitment or an undertaking. I don't know which one of those it was or how the Prime Minister may consider each of those sorts of commitments. But I know that the Australian public would expect that, prima facie, if the Prime Minister says that then the Prime Minister will do that. But he hasn't. Either he was lying to the public or he has simply misled them. It's not like we're at the start of the 46th Parliament; we're at the end. There was a commitment by the Prime Minister to deal with a federal integrity commission, and it has not been met. That's why this is urgent and that's why this must be dealt with today, otherwise we'll have run out of time.

We don't have a bill that the government has brought to the chamber, so there's a bill that I've tabled which has been worked up by eminent experts in this area, former judicial officers included—and thanks to the member for Indi, Helen Haines—and we need to deal with it. We need to deal with this urgently. We have a situation where a government went into the last election, knowing full well that there's no federal integrity commission, engaging in car park rorting. I say that with the backing of the Auditor-General. We find that in the Treasurer's own seat four car parks were allocated. One of those car parks came in at a cost of $220,000 per car park.

Let me explain how this principle works. We are supposed to take taxpayers' money and spend it on the basis of need and on the basis of merit. That's what we're supposed to do. Yet, against the rules, against the objectives of the grant program, the Treasurer announced grants to his own electorate. If you are a public official and you subvert process and give money for the purposes of personal benefit—that being getting re-elected—that is corruption, and we have to be able to deal with that. We've seen sports rorts, where people or communities were given a grant not on the basis of merit but on the basis of a colour coded spreadsheet. That is wrong. We've seen water purchases that well exceed market values. We find that, in one instance, the department seemed not able to understand a valuation properly.

We've got blind trust, where ministers are getting paid a million dollars from unknown contributors and the government is not standing tall and saying, 'That's wrong.' There are so many issues that we need to have addressed, in relation to corruption, so that people can regain confidence in this place and in the other place. That's why we need to urgently deal with this bill. I ask that senators support my motion to suspend.