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

I'll indicate, on behalf of the Greens, that we won't be supporting these coalition amendments. We did support the second reading amendment, which indicated our preference for Australia to rapidly adopt a deferred prosecution agreement scheme but to do so after some rigorous review. The amendments that have been brought forward by the coalition, on face value, cover the bulk of the necessary elements for a successful deferred prosecution agreement scheme, but we haven't had the benefit of a thorough consideration of whether or not the offences that are covered by a DPA scheme, which are set out in proposed 17B, are the appropriate set of offences. On one view, they are too narrow. We've heard that from some stakeholders. Another view we've heard from stakeholders is that they're too broad. So we encourage the government to use the statutory review as a way of rapidly and promptly considering this and doing it with due process. I do hear Senator Cash's urging of alacrity on the government, saying: 'You should act now. You've waited too long.'

I will share with the Senate a media release from Norton Rose Fulbright, one of the large global law firms. It says:

The Minister for Justice … has announced that the Australian Coalition Government will today introduce new laws to establish a Deferred Prosecution Agreement as part of a raft of new reforms to Australia's anti-bribery and corruption regime. The introduction of these reforms comes ahead of International Anti-Corruption Day on Saturday and have been announced despite the Senate Economic References Committee being given a further extension to publish its report on the foreign bribery inquiry by 7 February 2018 rather than by 7 December 2017 …

That media release is dated 6 December 2017. So what happened? What happened for five years under the coalition from 2017, when that was introduced? The coalition has been a little bit 'St Augustine' here: 'Oh Lord, give me a deferred prosecution scheme, but just not yet.' So let's get a little bit of historical perspective on some of this political debate. Hopefully, we all want to achieve a successful deferred prosecution scheme. Hopefully, we can use the statutory review to do it, and, hopefully, we can do it in less than seven years.