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

I move:

That the Senate take note of the committee's Report on proposed recommendation for appointment of a Deputy Commissioner of the National Anti-Corruption Commission, dated 24 January 2024.

I urge all senators to read the report. It is short. It's a matter of a handful of pages. In that report, the eventual nominee that came from the Attorney was supported unanimously by the committee. I wish them well, and I believe that they will be an effective, credible and—I hope—capable deputy commissioner. The evidence would suggest that. The work done by the department enabled the committee to come to that conclusion.

But, if you read the report carefully, you will see that there was a prior nomination which came from the Attorney and which was vetted by the department. Then some sanitised documents from that vetting process were provided to the committee—not the original document provided in the application process. Some sanitised documents and a modest amount of additional information was provided to the committee. The committee was not satisfied with that and sought further information from the department and some detailed briefing from the department. At the conclusion of that, the committee was not minded to forward and endorse the nomination from the Attorney. Thankfully, the nomination was withdrawn.

I'm not casting any aspersions on the character or the qualifications of the person who was the nominee, who is a highly capable person. The concern I have, which is expressed in the report in somewhat guarded language, is: how did the department fail to do adequate due diligence and, if they did adequate due diligence, why was that information not supplied to the committee? This is a really important committee to oversight appointments to the National Anti-Corruption Commission, and there is an absolute obligation on the department and on the Attorney to ensure that that committee has all the information it needs to make a fully informed decision about something as critical as the appointment of a deputy commissioner. We didn't have that information. Either it wasn't obtained by the department in their due diligence process, which would be an indictment of the department for not doing its job properly, or it was obtained by the department but not supplied to the committee, which would be a different form of indictment.

Ultimately, the Attorney is responsible for ensuring that process—for ensuring that due diligence is done and the department does its job properly. There needs to be a good, hard look inside the department about it, and there needs to be a good, hard look in the Attorney's office at what happened, because we shouldn't have got the situation where, over the end-of-year break, we had a nomination put forward, endorsed by the Attorney, which ultimately wasn't accepted by the committee. The committee was put in a very invidious situation without adequate information to deal with that. The NACC itself, the National Anti-Corruption Commission, which we all want to succeed and which must be above politics and must be seen to be irreproachable in its appointments and processes, had its reputation put at risk in this process.

I come back to this: I'd urge members here who haven't read that short report to read the report, to familiarise yourself with the circumstances that led to the nomination being withdrawn and with the concerns raised by the committee, and to place pressure within your own parties to ensure that the government does better next time.

I seek leave to continue my remarks later.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.