David Shoebridge (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

nator SHOEBRIDGE () (): I rise to speak about amendments (5) and (6) on sheet 1769, moved by Senator David Pocock. I particularly want to draw the committee's attention to amendment (6).

This amendment is about ensuring, as best we can, the financial independence of the National Anti-Corruption Commission. I know from my experience in state politics and with the New South Wales ICAC that one of the most effective ways the government of the day had of limiting the reach of that state anticorruption body was to strangle its funding. We've seen over the last decade in particular moves by the current coalition government in New South Wales literally to starve the Independent Commission Against Corruption of funds, and to do so with minimal public scrutiny. There is a multiparty oversight committee for the ICAC in New South Wales, but it has a retrospective role in reviewing the previous year's budget of the Independent Commission Against Corruption. It doesn't have the capacity to review the draft budget at budget estimates nor to make recommendations to the government of the day in the budget-making process.

In the Commonwealth sphere, we have a very good working model in the role of the public finance committee, which is a multiparty committee. It reviews the finances of the Audit Office. We spoke to the Audit Office in the committee, and the Audit Office—admittedly, speaking only from their experience and, consciously, as good auditors do, not extending their practice themselves to the potential practice of the NACC oversight committee—said that it has worked extremely well for them. It has been a key reason why we have a genuinely independent and adequately funded Audit Office at the federal level. That's because the committee can review the budget estimates and make recommendations for the budget estimates in the budget process, to ensure that the Audit Office has the funds it needs.

What Senator Pocock's amendment is doing here is saying, 'Well, if this oversight committee for the NACC undertakes that role'—and we have amendments that would give that explicit role for the committee, and I understand that the government and the opposition may not support those amendments but nevertheless acknowledge that there can be that proactive budget role in this committee, and we will address that when we get to it—and 'if the committee makes a recommendation to the government about the NACC's finances, and the minister decides not to follow that recommendation not to provide the funding in accordance with the committee's recommendation, then the minister has to explain him- or herself.'

That is a key element of transparency. There are similar provisions that apply in other jurisdictions—most notably, right here in Canberra. The ACT Legislative Assembly's oversight committee has this exact same process. It is a committee with a non-government chair, a non-government majority, that oversights the budget of their anticorruption commission. When it makes a recommendation, if the ACT government does not accept it, if the treasurer doesn't accept the budget recommendation, then the treasurer has to explain that to the house in the course of the budget.

We see it as a core transparency measure. What I'd hoped to hear from the government is, if they don't accept it in black and white, do they accept that that's the process that they expect to follow—that if the NACC oversight committee does make a recommendation about funding without being compelled to by this amendment then does the government expect that that's the practice that will be followed in due course once we get this NACC up and running?