Patrick Gorman (Perth, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Western Australia) Share this | Hansard source

I guess I shouldn't be surprised that there's not another government speaker on this motion. What this government has failed to do over the course of this term and under this Prime Minister, in not legislating any form of federal anticorruption body, is embarrassing, and it lets down the people of Australia. This government went to the 2019 election promising they would do exactly that, and—while they might blame the member for Pearce, who promised it and then was unable to deliver it, even though he had a thousand days to do so—it is inexcusable that this government has failed to deliver any meaningful action.

It is not just about catching things after they happen. The point I want to make in my contribution to this debate is that a strong, powerful anticorruption body also has a very important education and prevention mandate. It is so often lost, when we talk about a body that will look in the rear-vision mirror and find out what happened in the past or say that it will scare people, that, actually, when these bodies are constructed well, they make sure that we educate and prevent corrupt activity from happening.

If you look at the recommendations of the OECD, who have published extensively about this, they say that it's essential, if you want to have a good, ethical government process, to have prevention, and they say:

Communicating standards within public organisations is necessary …

and they continue:

Education is essential for disseminating integrity standards and norms …

If we don't invest in that education, then we'll continue to see the sorts of sports rorts and failures to disclose, and people pretending that that is somehow a completely acceptable way of behaving, because it's all that people have seen; it's all that they know; it's the culture that is accepted within the political party known as the Liberal Party and in the National Party, who currently run our government.

I also want to commend the work that Griffith University and Transparency International have done when it comes to this question of making sure that any anticorruption body is one that takes their education and prevention role seriously. Their report on Australia's national integrity system, which showed that our national integrity system has far too many gaps, said:

Australian anti-corruption agencies, including the new federal agency can only fulfil their mandate as integrity commissions if properly equipped and required to fulfil a clear prevention mandate and coordinate prevention-focused activities.

If you look at the necessity of prevention focused activities, it is clear what this government does on a weekly and daily basis!

These bodies have different names around the place. There's the ICAC and the IBAC. We've got the CCC in Western Australia, a corruption and crime commission that, when the member for Pearce was the Attorney-General in Western Australia, he watered down. He has form on this. I would encourage anyone who is wondering why the member for Pearce failed to actually legislate for a corruption and crime commission or a federal anti-integrity body to look at his record. When he wasn't building up $40 billion of state debt, which was his record as Treasurer in Western Australia, when he was the state Attorney-General, the member for Pearce actually watered down the corruption and crime commission.

It's just very concerning for Western Australia when they think about the sorts of things that this body might look into. I've expressed in this place a number of times my concerns about this government's deep and close connections to Clive Palmer. We saw these deep and close connections that this government has with Clive Palmer expressed when it paid a million dollars for his legal bills because the former Attorney-General chose to support Clive Palmer's bid in the High Court to tear down the WA border in the peak of a global pandemic.

In relation to the recent challenges that we had have around the use of a blind trust, that is something I have had a number of constituents write to me about expressing concern, saying, 'Where do we go and what do we do with our concerns about this blind trust?' It's clear there isn't a body they, as a member of the general public, can appropriately refer their concerns to. It is completely disrespectful to the people of Australia that they have no federal anticorruption body. We've got one in every state and territory. As I often say to my local councillors—there are five local councils in the electorate of Perth—because of this government's failure, those local councillors are under more public scrutiny from anticorruption bodies than those of us in the federal parliament of Australia. (Time expired)

See this speech in context