Jacqui Lambie (Tasmania, Jacqui Lambie Network) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Minister for Foreign Affairs (Senator Payne) to a question without notice asked by Senator Lambie today relating to the establishment of a Commonwealth integrity commission.

Perhaps Minister Porter would like us to believe that federal politicians are more saint-like than their state counterparts. I doubt it. Maybe he thinks that he can pull the wool over our eyes and insist that we don't need someone to watch over the people in this place and make sure that we're all doing the right things. Maybe he thinks he can convince us that the Commonwealth government doesn't really need a strong cop on the beat. That's the only explanation I can see for the way he's designed his Commonwealth Integrity Commission. Compared to how we treat corruption in the states and territories, his commission isn't a watchdog; it's a mouse. It won't have the scope, the power or the capability to look into some of the worst corruption problems we've seen this year alone.

Take the example of Adem Somyurek. You might remember him; Mr Somyurek was a minister in Dan Andrews's government in Victoria. He was a factional powerbroker with the membership numbers behind him to control which candidates would get preselected to run at an election. It turns out that he wasn't pulling tonnes of members because he had a convincing sales pitch; he was faking it. He was forging signatures on sign-up forms and paying people to let him put them down on the books. He got caught lugging a folder full of $50 notes through a Red Rooster parking lot and handing it over to a staff member of another minister's office to organise for more sign-ups—very uncouth. What he was doing wasn't criminal; it isn't illegal, but that shouldn't matter. Australians can tell you: it is morally and politically corrupt. It is wrong. It is a misuse of public office. Australians get that. The experts get it. The Victorian IBAC gets it too—that's why they're running an investigation into what he's done. But somehow Minister Porter and the LNP don't get that. If Victoria had his version of an integrity commission, Adem Somyurek would be under investigation right now. He wouldn't have to face the Australian public and explain why he did what he did. The commissioner would have no power at all go in and take a look at what's been going on in the Labor Party, because they can only examine actions if they're pretty sure a criminal offence may have been committed.

Take another recent example: Daryl Maguire, who used his position as the member for Wagga Wagga in the New South Wales Liberal government to make money for himself and his associates. He was lining up meetings with decision-makers in government for his clients and charging them for the privilege. When his clients got a good result thanks to the meetings Mr Maguire set up, he'd get a payout. Thanks to the public hearings run by the New South Wales anticorruption commission, we know that the Premier knew about it too—not as angelic as she'd like to be. When he told her that he was set to make five grand out of a multimillion property deal that he'd helped to set up using his government contacts, she texted him back: 'Congrats!!! Great news!! Whoo-hoo'.

It's important for the Australian people to find out when these things are going on, and Minister Porter's proposal wouldn't let them do that. It keeps everything behind closed doors—what's new? Cover-ups. We would never have found out what was going on in New South Wales if we had his model there. All of us here should want to prove to voters that politicians who misuse their office for their own gain will get found out, and so they should. Voters should know that shoddy, immoral behaviour will be punished, as it should be. Minister Porter's model does not do that. His model ties the commissioner's hands. They couldn't look into sports rorts and they couldn't look into the Leppington airport sale. You can give a commission like that all the powers in the world, the powers of a royal commission or more, but it won't mean squat if they're never able to get started on an investigation in the first place and the public never hear about it anyway. Minister Porter's proposal as it stands won't do anything to convince Australians that corrupt politicians will get caught. In its current form, it is worth absolutely nothing at all.

I think we've got to be honest here: we'd be better off having nothing at all than the crap that Porter is putting in front of us. It does not build back trust in the eyes of the Australian people. They might as well just call it a policy of cover-up, because that is all it will present. This is not what the Australian people have asked for. This is not what they want. If you have nothing to hide then let's get serious about this. Let's get an ICAC in place that actually does something and holds us responsible for our actions up here. I can tell you now that it is not on. It is unsatisfactory what is going on up here. If you think that's acceptable, really honestly, you need to go back and have a good moral look at yourselves.

Scott Ryan (President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Lambie, I'm not going to ask you to withdraw that phrase, but I am going to ask you to reflect on your language and not use such unsavoury terms in the future. It was not quite parliamentary, but I'll let it lie for the moment.

Question agreed to.