Christian Porter (Pearce, Liberal Party, Attorney-General) Share this | Hansard source

What demonstrates why this requires time and effort is the fact of what the bill that is now before this parliament does. Every member opposite should have absolutely perfect understanding of what the bill now before this parliament does. Under the bill, which the member for Melbourne proposes to be a working model, any public official who did anything that could be said to impair public confidence in public administration—even if that conduct were so minor as to only constitute an administrative irregularity that had some form of employment or disciplinary outcome attached to it, or even if that conduct gave rise only to the most minor civil outcome—would be declared corrupt. Hundreds of thousands of civil servants would potentially be declared corrupt for the most minor of matters.

Let me describe to the House how the bill that has been tabled by the crossbench would work. Under section 9, 'any conduct of any person' that, 'directly or indirectly', affected the impartial exercise of functions of any person or group in the Public Service would be, prima facie, corrupt; anything that any public official did that was a partial exercise of the public official's function would be, prima facie, corrupt; anything that constituted a potential breach of public trust would be, prima facie, corrupt; and any other conduct that could impair public confidence in Commonwealth public administration would be corrupt. That is, so long as any of those four standards met the additional standard that they represented any type of civil liability offence, no matter how minor; or any disciplinary offence, which might include any conceivable form of 'misconduct, irregularity, neglect of duty, breach of discipline or any other matter that constitutes or may constitute grounds for disciplinary action'; or any other reasonable grounds for an employment dismissal; or any conduct where grounds for arguing a substantial breach of an applicable public sector code of conduct existed. If you affected an impartial exercise of the functions of persons of a group in the Public Service; if you, as a public officer, partially exercised your functions; if you breached the public trust; or if you impaired public confidence in the Commonwealth public administration—if any of those four things were said to exist, and even if they represented only the most minor civil penalty or irregularity, that would be declared corrupt conduct.

For example, any public official that it could be argued behaved in a way that constituted a breach of public trust or impaired public confidence in public administration would be liable to a finding of corruption, even if that behaviour otherwise would only have given rise to a small fine or it was an administrative irregularity or there was some breach of discipline or other conceivable form of misconduct. Any public official who did anything that could be said to have impaired public confidence in the public administration of the Commonwealth, even something so minor as to only constitute an administrative irregularity, under this bill that public servant would be corrupt.

Have a moment's thought about what that would actually mean in practice. One recent example springs to my mind. In October 2017, Andrew Probyn, a public servant, an employee of the ABC, described the member for Warringah as the 'most destructive politician of his generation'.

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