House debates

Wednesday, 23 November 2022

Bills

National Anti-Corruption Commission Bill 2022, National Anti-Corruption Commission (Consequential and Transitional Provisions) Bill 2022; Second Reading

6:47 pm

Photo of James StevensJames Stevens (Sturt, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in favour of the creation of a National Anti-Corruption Commission, and I've been waiting for the opportunity to do this for some years, ever since entering this place in 2019.

I want to start by pushing back against some claims that speakers have made in this debate and that others have made publicly—this claim that trust in politics in this country has never been lower. This is a kind of attack on Australian democracy and Australian government. It is right to have a National Anti-Corruption Commission, but that's not a concession that the reason we need one is that there's all sorts of rampant corruption occurring. We've had our political challenges in this country over the decades in Queensland, New South Wales and Western Australia—certainly not in the era we're in right now. I'd be surprised if members of the Labor Party are now suggesting that things are lower than they were on 11 November 1975, which is the Labor Party's great reference point, I would have thought, for apparent low trust in government and our institutions. I doubt that, if we stopped anyone on the street in Tehran, Baghdad, Kabul or Moscow and put to them the proposition, 'I'm here from Australia, and, God, it's never been so bad in Australian politics; it's just horrendous in Australia,' they'd love to hear stories of torture, murder and governments imprisoning their citizens, with no concept or pretence of democracy.

So the suggestion that things are in some diabolical circumstance in our democracy and in our politics is absolute, complete rubbish. I get the need for hyperbole in debates, both in this chamber and in the media, but I'm going to stand up for democracy in this country and for the privilege and honour of serving in the Australian House of Representatives and say that we are not some cesspit of corruption and we do not have deep challenges of trust or confidence in our democracy. Other people around the world literally die seeking to come to a country like this for the things that we dispute and argue about to be the challenges that they've got to face, compared to what they're facing in the regimes that they live under around the world.

It is completely ridiculous to push this suggestion that we've got a crisis in our democracy and that trust in politics has never been lower, because people almost anywhere else, in any other corner of the planet, would absolutely love to live in this democracy. People's jaws would be on the ground at the sorts of examples that are used to suggest there's this complete crisis of confidence. The jealousy of living in this beautiful country is something that we should be proud of. It's pretty appalling that there are people who want to rubbish it in the process of an important debate—one that I suspect is going to end up in unanimity in supporting the creation of this new institution. But I push back against the lunacy and stupidity of some of those comments because they are absolutely ridiculous.

I definitely support having a national integrity body, but I also dispute that we don't have an integrity framework in place at the Commonwealth level. That's incorrect. There are lots of very esteemed bodies and agencies that safeguard the integrity of our systems and undertake investigations into criminal activity, and they do an excellent job. We might find, having created this body, that one of the things it confirms is that we don't have serious, systemic corruption in federal government in this nation. This is probably a good price to pay—although this is an expensive exercise—if it confirms that to all the people who want to claim there's some kind of rabid corruption occurring throughout politics and government at a federal level. If nothing more, the creation of this body will go to show that that's not the case.

It will also go to show that we do have a robust framework in place already. Corruption is a crime, and, if someone is being corrupt, they absolutely can be reported to the Federal Police—if the corruption is of a federal nature—investigated, prosecuted, and potentially sent to jail. That's the other thing that really disappoints me in this debate—the suggestion that we need a corruption commission because at the moment you can get away with corruption. That's complete rubbish. So, in supporting the creation of this body, I think that will be a good outcome to look forward to, because creating a body that doesn't result in significant uncovering of major systemic corruption will, of course, give people confidence that it isn't occurring.

That's happened in my home state of South Australia. We created our ICAC. The legislation passed and the body came into effect around 2013. That's over nine years ago—coming up to 10 years. I believe it's fair to say that that body was initially given spectacular and extraordinary powers and was very well resourced, and it has had effectively no significant successful prosecution whatsoever. In fact, and regrettably, it has become an institution of embarrassment bordering on scandal. We have an awful situation at the moment in South Australia where a prosecution has been abandoned because of very poor conduct from the ICAC in withholding pertinent evidence from a trial. The public servant involved has had the charges against him dropped. His life for the last few years has been ruined, and I think there will be very serious repercussions for the South Australian ICAC as an investigation brings the reality of what happened there to light.

Regrettably, this is also the case in the Northern Territory. We see some very poor examples of practices of the Northern Territory ICAC. And, of course, once these ICACs—or the NACC as we'll have at a federal level—lose credibility through poor conduct and poor behaviour then it is very difficult to get that back. That's a regrettable example that I hope the NACC sees as a very important watchword for them to be very wary of the need for a robust system of integrity within their own organisation and the need to act with a great deal of responsibility with the powers that they are being given.

Let's make no mistake, the powers of this entity, like other entities, are very significant. As the Manager of Opposition Business pointed out, they are not bound by some of the appropriate mechanisms that are in place in our criminal justice system. There are very important principles in defending oneself in the criminal justice system, like the right to silence. Some of the coercive powers that are provided to these agencies, not just the NACC but other agencies have them as well, are a reminder of how important it is for us to be extremely vigilant as a parliament in making sure that those powers are handed over because they are necessary and that very significant monitoring of the exercise of those powers is in place.

There have been some important points made in the course of this debate. There have been elements of amendments that have been foreshadowed both by the opposition and other people in this place, and the other place, around that, because we want to make sure that this body that we are creating is doing what it is meant to do and not doing what it is not meant to do. Regrettably, a lot of these bodies at the state and territory level are more infamous for doing what they're not meant to be doing than what they are meant to be doing. But we have an open mind and hope that the NACC indeed fulfills the objectives that we, as legislators, are putting in place in creating this agency through these bills.

I am also very nervous about the importance of all of us defending the fundamentals of parliamentary privilege. We are going to have to do this as a parliament. It is not a matter for the government. It is the matter for parliament. We know the very ancient origins of parliamentary privilege. We know that we also have a statute from the 1980s that further qualifies that privilege, and we know through House Practice how that operates. There is an extreme risk—and there are examples in the state jurisdictions of these bodies not having an appropriate respect for parliamentary privilege. It's going to be vitally important for presiding officers now and into the future to ensure that we as a parliament, this chamber and the Senate, are standing up for those very important rights. Nobody, including a NACC, should have the ability to intimidate legislators, members of this place or the Senate, in any way in us undertaking our vital responsibilities as parliamentarians. The privilege that we are given, which is very appropriately called privilege, is one that we as a chamber are sovereign over. It is absolutely vital that this body, like any other body, never ever encroaches upon the very important protections that we have as parliamentarians and there is a risk of that. We have seen it happen in other jurisdictions. I will be part of being very vigilant around that as deputy chair of the privileges and members' interests committee. I'm sure all of us as parliamentarians share the very important, vital need to safeguard privilege and ensure that this body, and any other body that has all kinds of powers, never uses those powers in breach of that privilege.

I want to close by disputing some attacks on our democracy and some claims by some contributors in this debate that the decisions we make as members of parliament, as governments and alternative governments, need some kind of accountant's process put over them, and that we as community leaders and representatives should have some kind of restraint or filter, by some mathematical process, around the commitments that we make in election campaigns, the ideas that we advance and the things that we say that we will do if we are elected when we are campaigning for election to this place. I get the political points, and people can talk about the things that previous governments have done that they don't like. That's something called democracy. As Winston Churchill said: 'Democracy is the worst form of government, except for every other form of government that's ever been conceived.' There are elements of democracy that those of us who participate in it don't necessarily like at times, but we also accept that we do want to live in a democracy. It is absolutely the reality that if you want democracy, you have democracy holus bolus.

It would be outrageous if this body ever thought they could interfere in appropriate decisions that this chamber, and any government formed in this chamber, decides to make. In an election campaign, if I want to announce that a Liberal government will build a monorail from the south to the north of my electorate, and the people of my electorate re-elect me, and they elect a majority of other members of parliament who form a government that had that policy of that monorail, then—whether or not it is a sensible idea in the eyes of an accountant or any other process—that might happen.

At the end of the day, in a democracy we get to make commitments, take them to the people and put a platform forward, and the people decide if they want to vote for that or not. We would not be a democracy if we said that decisions that are made through the democratic process have got another hurdle that they have to clear, which is justification to some kind of non-elected entity as to why we've made commitments to the people that we represent, and then they, as participants in our democracy, like the ideas that we've got and vote for them.

The examples used in this debate are around decisions of governments that people don't like. That is the reality of living in a democracy. I don't like most of the things that those opposite take to elections. It depresses me when they win an election—one in every five or six—and get to come in and implement those crazy ideas that I don't support, but that is their right by virtue of being democratically elected to form a government. I really don't like it when they do things they didn't tell the people about in an election campaign, but the reality is: if they form a majority in this chamber, they get to do the things that governments get to do. I will absolutely resist any suggestion that we need some kind of undemocratic restriction on the exercise of democracy in this country. With those comments, I commend this bill to the House.

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