Sally Sitou (Reid, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I saw the consequences of government corruption early in life. I remember travelling overseas with my parents on holiday. We arrived at the border immigration office and presented our passports. The advertised price for an entry visa was US$50, but my mum ended up handing over US$55. I asked her what the extra US$5 was for, and she told me it was for the immigration officer to pocket. That was my first introduction to government corruption. In every interaction, there was potential for corruption, bribery and fraud. People living in that country knew that, in order to get things done with the government, money had to be exchanged.

I distinctly remember seeing a sealed tar road leading up to a huge estate. The road stood out to me because all the roads in that town had been bumpy dirt tracks, so I asked our family friend if the estate was some sort of government building or a place of national significance. She simply replied that the owners of the estate were wealthy and had paid off the local government officials with bribes to build the public road leading up to their house. This is what happens when corruption permeates and becomes the norm in a country. It undermines trust in government, it increases inequality and it means growth and progress stagnate. And, critically, it undermines democracy. Democracy only flourishes when decisions are made openly and transparently. Governments need to be held accountable. Their decisions need to be scrutinised and they need to be made in the public interest.

Corruption in Australia might not have been quite as obvious, but we have never been immune to it. Over the last decade, according to Transparency International, we have come down the rankings of the Corruption Perceptions Index. On a scale out of 100, Australia's score in 2012 was 85. In 2021 that had dropped to 73, a 12-point drop. Alongside Hungary, Australia experienced the biggest drop of all OECD countries. Not only does this drop in perception have a consequence for our democracy; it also has an economic consequence. Corruption has a corrosive economic impact. It builds distrust between corporations and governments. It has an impact on long-term investment decisions.

In every state and territory in Australia, there's an anticorruption body. In my home state of New South Wales, the Independent Commission Against Corruption has exposed the presence of corrupt activities in the state—corrupt activities that have meant interests of individuals were placed over the public's and community's interests. These activities have been committed by representatives at both levels of government, local and state, by both major political parties, including the party that I am a part of, the Labor Party. It saddens me to say that, but I'm grateful to the Sydney Morning Herald's investigative reporter Kate McClymont for exposing this corrupt behaviour, and I'm grateful to the Independent Commission Against Corruption for its thorough investigation. I'm grateful because I don't want to be part of a party with corrupt representatives. I want their behaviour exposed, investigated and prosecuted.

Currently, the only jurisdiction that does not have an anticorruption body is the federal level. It's just extraordinary, isn't it, given the magnitude of the decisions made in this place? In response to the former government's contention that there was no corruption at a federal level, Geoffrey Watson SC, a former counsel assisting the New South Wales Independent Commission Against Corruption, said:

This argument is not only absurd, it is circular.

Without a federal agency armed with the appropriate investigative tools, it is unlikely that corruption will be detected, much less exposed.

Integrity in parliament was an issue raised with me during the election campaign. Time after time, doorknock after doorknock, the people of Reid raised their concerns about lack of integrity in our parliament. That's why I'm so proud to be part of a Labor government that is establishing a powerful, transparent and independent national anticorruption commission. And that is happening this week.

The commission will be tasked with investigating serious and systemic corrupt conduct across the entire federal public sector and will have the following design principles: it will have broad jurisdiction to investigate corrupt conduct across the Commonwealth by ministers, parliamentarians and their staff, and across the Public Service; it will be independent of government, with the discretion to commence inquiries on its own initiative; it will be overseen by a statutory parliamentary joint committee; it will have retrospective powers; it will have the power to hold public hearings; it will have the power to refer matters to the AFP or the Commonwealth Department of Public Prosecutions; and it will have procedural fairness and be subject to judicial review.

Importantly, too, the legislation that will seek to enshrine the National Anti-Corruption Commission will provide strong protections for whistleblowers and exemptions for journalists to protect the identity of their sources. Both of these elements are fundamental to the orderly administration of a democracy like ours.

A great feature of the debate around integrity and the Anti-Corruption Commission so far has been the degree of collaboration and consultation across the parliament. While it's early days in terms of its passage through parliament, I'm glad to see that the Independents, the Greens and, more recently, the opposition have been constructively working on this important policy. It sends a signal that integrity, accountability and transparency are important in this parliament.

The National Anti-Corruption Commission will be a policy that we look back on in years to come and ask ourselves how we ever managed without it. It's a body that will help to build trust in our government, trust in our politics and trust in our democracy. And, while that may sound abstract, it's a policy that's fundamentally about ensuring better government and better policy outcomes for citizens across this country, including my own constituents of Reid, who I'm so proud to serve. It's about ensuring that people have faith that government is serving those whom it is supposed to serve, not those who might seek to unduly influence it. It's about ensuring integrity in government, not just for integrity's sake but because it will materially improve people's lives. So, while it's tempting to think of the National Anti-Corruption Commission in big, bold but somewhat abstract terms, its real impact will be felt in better policy for people's day-to-day lives.

A national anti-corruption commission is long overdue, so let's get this done.

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