Michaelia Cash (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Hansard source

He's stubborn—absolutely. But perhaps, despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary, he is genuinely persuaded by the silly rhetoric of the Labor senators who spoke about two-tiered justice in the last parliament. That is contradicted, as I said, by the experience internationally. It is contradicted by stakeholders here in Australia.

The truth is—and we all know this; stakeholders know it—that the Attorney-General has been cornered. He has been snookered by his own Labor senators. I would have thought, given the body of evidence and the international experience, that in private the Attorney-General may well recognise the wisdom of a DPA scheme and the experience internationally; if he doesn't, one might say he's burying his head in the sand like an ostrich. But he knows he can't adopt one now without shredding the credibility of those Labor senators who were so keen to rip the guts out of this bill when it was last in the parliament. What is so sad is, as a lawmaker, he is missing an opportunity now to enhance Australia's enforcement of foreign bribery offences around the world. Ultimately, guess who gets to pay the price? That would be the Australian people.

As I said, this is basically the coalition's bill. The coalition will support the measures in this bill even though they are deficient. We are glad Labor has introduced this bill because it is our policy. It was good policy at the time; we liked it then, and we like it now. But, as I said, we'll introduce amendments to reintroduce the DPA scheme that was coupled with these measures last time, and we will include a statutory review to ensure the scheme is working as intended. The Attorney-General can use that time, if he likes, to reverse-engineer his own DPA scheme, one that is just different enough from the coalition's policy for him to save face with his party and with Australian voters—and I certainly hope that he does.