Mark Dreyfus (Isaacs, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Attorney General) Share this | Hansard source

I say again, Deputy Speaker: you couldn't make this up. Under the third-term government that we have here, Australia has the slowest growth in a decade. We have stagnant wages. We have productivity in decline. We have record household debt. We have high underemployment and declining living standards. But nothing in this bill would create jobs or grow the economy. And there's nothing in this bill that would create integrity—just the one word in the title. It's pathetic to see this government thinking that it can claim integrity or confer integrity simply by using the word.

Just to remind members, this government went to the election promising to establish a Commonwealth integrity commission, and according to the Prime Minister the government's been working on the establishment of a Commonwealth integrity commission for nearly two years. So, where is it? Of course, even if they did bring it forward, the Liberal Party's preferred model for an integrity commission is a joke. As many experts observed at the time, when the Prime Minister made his policy announcement, the integrity commission's the kind of model you announce when you don't want an integrity commission. Putting to one side the many problems with the Liberal Party's understanding of integrity, I ask again, where is the integrity commission that the government has promised? It has been two years and we've seen nothing.

Stop attacking pensioners, stop attacking Australian workers and stop extorting money from vulnerable Australians. Instead, try to introduce legislation that actually does what it says on the label. A good start, if you really wanted to act on integrity, would be to introduce a bill to establish a national integrity commission that is worthy of the name.

See this speech in context