Barbara Pocock (SA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

RA POCOCK () (): I rise today to speak in favour of this very important bill, the National Anti-Corruption Commission Bill. During my election campaign, I spoke with thousands of South Australians across the state and two issues were most often raised: a need for urgent action on climate change and a lack of trust in politicians and political institutions. South Australians are sick of seeing politicians making decisions based on corporate or personal interests, instead of for the benefit of the people who elected them. This is undermining political integrity and causing a crisis in our democracy.

We need a National Anti-Corruption Commission, a strong Anti-Corruption Commission, with teeth, serious teeth, as we've just heard Senator White say. We need it to restore the health of our democracy and the future of our country. The South Australian community, and all Australians, must be able to trust our elected representatives, but they can only do this if there is a truly independent, accountable and empowered commission that can get to the bottom of integrity matters, including pork-barrelling and dodgy donations.

The Greens have strongly advocated for a federal corruption watchdog for over a decade. I thank my colleague Senator Larissa Waters for introducing landmark legislation to establish a national anti-corruption commission last year, which passed in the Senate but not in the House. Alongside Senator Waters, I note the important advocacy of former senators Bob Brown and Christine Milne, and my colleagues Senator David Shoebridge and Senator Sarah Hanson-Young, who have all pushed to achieve action in this space.

The South Australian community and I are glad to finally see a substantial move to establish and restore integrity in politics. This bill represents a first, important, good step. It creates a national commission with power to investigate and report on serious or systemic corruption in the federal public sector, including parliament and ministers. The commission will be able to refer evidence of corrupt criminal conduct for prosecution and undertake education and prevention activities.

The Greens welcome the establishment and powers of the commission generally, and particularly support its retrospective capacity. However, we have some concerns with the final model that my colleagues will seek to address through amendments. A key concern includes that the bar for public hearings is too high and should not be limited to extraordinary circumstances. Everyday Australians deserve transparency. There are many circumstances where public hearings are appropriate, as so many experts have pointed out. Concern about this issue is shared by many South Australians and was a recurring theme amongst stakeholders who submitted evidence to the inquiry into the bill.

We need to go further than this bill permits. While this bill represents a long-overdue first step, it is not a silver bullet to restoring democracy. The government must go further to rebuild South Australians' and Australians' faith in our political institutions, starting with getting corporate money out of politics. Big corporations and billionaires wield too much power over our parliaments and our politicians.

Take, for example, the fossil fuel industry. In recent years, fossil fuel companies have donated millions of dollars to both major parties, including $670,000 to the coalition and $470,000 to Labor in 2020-21. Meanwhile, the latest State of the climate report released by CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology shows Australia's climate has warmed by 1.7 degrees on average since 1910. People across Australia are already feeling the impact of this warming and the associated changing weather patterns. We've had floods, storms, bushfires and increasing heatwaves. This is threatening our farmers, our food production, the Murray-Darling Basin and our livelihoods. At the same time, the government continues to provide millions of dollars in taxpayer funded handouts to the fossil fuel industry, continues to approve new climate change accelerating gas projects, and continues to invest billions of dollars of our own money into fossil fuel companies through Australia's sovereign wealth fund, the ironically named Future Fund.

These are signs of a captive state. Coal and gas companies are above all motivated by profit. Time and time again we have seen them prioritise profit over the protection of First Nations cultural heritage, over the health of the environment and over the future of everyday Australians and the kids to come. Just last week my colleague in the House Mr Andrew Wilkie uncovered documents indicating that people in the coal industry had lied about the quality of Australian coal exports by using fraudulent testing. Until we ban political donations from fossil fuel companies and other big corporations, it is impossible to discount the influence they have over government decisions.

In sum, this bill to establish the National Anti-Corruption Commission is an important first step—one that has come about based on the relentless advocacy of many, including many Greens MPs, as well as mounting community pressure that is too big for the government to ignore. South Australians elected me with a clear mandate: they want to see politics cleaned up. We must go further to restore the community's faith in our political system. We need to ban all political donations from coal and gas companies and we need to cap other donations to $1,000 a year. We must end the revolving door between politicians and big business by stopping ministers from taking cushy industry jobs directly after leaving parliament. We need to reform political advertising laws. We need to fund the Australian National Audit Office to audit all government programs to stop the rorting of our public funds. It is essential that our elected representatives and political institutions work for the benefit of the people and not the profit of big corporations and billionaires. This bill is a first and important step along that path, and it will go a long way towards reassuring Australians about the integrity of politics. We need to start there, and we need to go further.