Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Minister for Finance) Share this | Hansard source

The government does not support Senator Patrick's motion to suspend. The government does not support it—on the basis that we have a well-developed draft legislation established, published, in relation to the Commonwealth Integrity Commission.

There are many misconceptions peddled by some in relation to these debates and they're peddled in the context of, seemingly, wanting to create an impression that there is no anticorruption framework in Australia, which is patently untrue. We have existing frameworks that tackle corruption, clearly, already. Under the frameworks, multiple agencies across the Commonwealth government have responsibilities for preventing, detecting and responding to corruption.

These agencies, such as the Australian Commission for Law Enforcement Integrity, bring specialist skills to address corruption across law enforcement agencies. The Australian Federal Police have the power, and work across partner agencies right across the Commonwealth, to leverage their expertise and capabilities, information and data collection capabilities, to respond to serious and complex corruption offences, including any allegations of fraud or bribery or the like, under existing corruption laws. The Commonwealth Ombudsman considers and investigates complaints where people believe they've been treated unfairly by an Australian government department. Even in relation to matters such as our own expenses, we have the Independent Parliamentary Expenses Authority that advises and reports on expenses of parliamentarians and their staff. This is set within laws, clearly enabled and established, that deal with corrupt conduct and all of the other elements of scrutiny applied within this parliament and a free media across our democracy. But we have seen benefit in acknowledging that having greater consolidation, greater coordination, across those different entities and efforts for handling corruption matters would be a positive.

That's why we've gone through an extensive process in relation to developing the legislation around the Commonwealth Integrity Commission. The integrity commission that we propose, backed by several hundred pages of legislation, detailed modelling, will investigate the most serious forms of criminal corruption that threaten good public administration; however, it won't duplicate the roles of existing bodies that already investigate corruption.

The arrangement we're proposing reflects the different nature of the corruption risks that exist across law enforcement bodies as opposed to those that exist in the public sector. When we talk about the public sector, we mean of course across the public sector from office holders at ministerial level right through the Public Service and public sector. Where the public sector division of our proposed Commonwealth Integrity Commission found evidence of a criminal offence, it would refer a matter, rightly, to the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions, ensuring that the courts remain the relevant arbiter of whether someone is innocent or guilty of a corrupt offence.

We have put in place funding arrangements for the Commonwealth Integrity Commission: the 2019-20 budget committed more than $106 million of support for that in addition to more than $40 million for the Australian Commission for Law Enforcement Integrity. The substantial investment that we've made is in stark contrast to the very low levels of budgeting and support that had been provided under previous governments for anti-corruption and related activities and enforcement.

We've already implemented phase one of our Commonwealth Integrity Commission by expanding the jurisdiction of the Australian Commission for Law Enforcement Integrity to cover additional agencies: the ATO, ASIC, APRA and the ACCC. The work is there; the legislation has been developed. What we're very clear about is that we're not interested in establishing Star Chamber type processes. We're not interested in establishing processes that are simply there as political playthings. So, the invitation stands to the crossbench, the Greens, the Labor Party: make clear your support for the model the government has developed for an integrity commission. That will clearly bring together the elements of being able to further strengthen and uphold Australia's anti-corruption framework and we will see that legislation passed. We're not interested in entertaining a model that simply creates opportunities for more political grandstanding that becomes a kangaroo court or a show trial model. This has got to be done in the proper way that our government has proposed.