David Smith (Bean, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The Albanese government has no tolerance for corruption of any kind, whether in the public sector or in the private sector. Since coming to office just over a year ago, we have walked the walk and we have got on with the job through action. With the support of this parliament, we are restoring integrity, honesty and accountability to government with the commencement of the National Anti-Corruption Commission. During the 2022 federal election, Australians were clear that they wanted a national anticorruption watchdog and they wanted a government that they could trust. Indeed, the electors of my electorate in Bean were very clear in wanting the National Anti-Corruption Commission, many of them spending much of their careers in public administration. They clearly put integrity on the ballot, and they voted accordingly.

The measures in the Crimes Legislation Amendment (Combatting Foreign Bribery) Bill 2023 address challenges with detecting, investigating and prosecuting foreign bribery in Australia. These measures build on our work to date in tackling corruption. Foreign bribery is another form of corruption, and it's an insidious problem across the world. Bribery, in particular, harms investment and economic growth. It distorts markets, artificially inflates prices and leads to substandard products being procured. Further, it undermines efforts against poverty and disease and facilitates serious transnational crimes. Bribery corrodes good governance and contributes to social and economic inequality in local communities where it occurs. It is rightly the business of this parliament to be addressing these issues.

Thankfully, Australia is party to a number of international instruments aimed at fighting corruption including bribery. These include the United Nations Convention Against Corruption, the United Nations Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the OECD, and the Convention on Combatting Bribery of Foreign Public Officials in International Business Transactions. In addition, Australia's also engaged in the following regional and international forums and initiatives: the G20 Anti-Corruption Working Group, the OECD Working Group on Bribery in International Business Transactions, the Anti-Corruption and Transparency Experts Working Group and the ADB-OECD Anti-Corruption Initiative for Asia-Pacific.

Undetected and unpunished, bribery undermines the reputation of all Australian business and negatively impacts business and government relations. The Australian government has a zero-tolerance policy in relation to foreign bribery and supports ethical business practices. This bill is both welcome and overdue. Bribery by its very nature is incredibly difficult to investigate and prosecute. It is both opaque and sophisticated. Sadly, as other speakers have already said, there have been relatively few foreign bribery prosecutions in Australia. The current foreign bribery defence in division 70 of the Commonwealth Criminal Code has been overly prescriptive and difficult to use. The bill seeks to address this issue. It does so by replacing the existing foreign bribery offence with a new, carefully developed offence. For example, the prosecution needs to show that both the bribe and the business advantage were 'not legitimately due'. This wording presents difficulties for prosecutors, so it will be replaced with 'improperly influencing a foreign public official'.

This bill also broadens the scope of the foreign bribery offence so that it will now capture bribery conducted to obtain personal advantage. This is because experience shows that bribes can include a range of benefits, including personal honours, the processing of visa or immigration requests, or reducing personal tax liability. Further, this bill seeks to prevent foreign bribery in the first place by implementing a new indictable corporate offence. This is in order to overcome the problem of companies that wilfully turn a blind eye to misconduct by their employees. These provisions will apply to companies when an associate bribes a foreign public official for the profit or gain of the corporation. Importantly, the offence would not apply if a body corporate was able to demonstrate that it had adequate procedures in place to prevent the bribe in the first instance. In a positive sense, this new provision will provide an incentive to companies to be proactive about preventing bribery. I know many Australian companies already have rigorous procedures in place to combat bribery, and I commend them on this. To assist those companies that may not have the necessary procedures in place, guidance material on what constitutes adequate procedures will be produced.

The measures in this bill may sound very familiar to those opposite. That's because they're virtually identical to the amendments introduced by those opposite in 2017 and then reintroduced in 2019. Both times, under the watch of those opposite, those bills were allowed to lapse, failing to even be debated. The previous government had years to bring the measures forward for debate and pass them. It didn't. On these matters of corruption and bribery, there can be no leeway. We must be vigilant. The stakes are too high. Australia's international reputation for world-leading corporate governance, including antibribery provisions, must be protected, and this bill does that. Indeed, the fact that this bill will help the government to crack down on bribes that are built into seemingly legitimate contractual arrangements is a particular positive.

What makes this bill particularly critical is recent reports of millions of taxpayer dollars allegedly being paid to foreign officials through suspicious contracts between private companies and subcontractors engaged by the Department of Home Affairs on Nauru and in Papua New Guinea. These are allegations of suspicious contracts during the time when the now Leader of the Opposition was the Minister for Immigration and Border Protection and the Minister for Home Affairs. He was in charge. He knew what was going on, one would assume. Reports suggest that the Department of Home Affairs may have disregarded what was effectively a bribe disguised as a legitimate contractual arrangement. This happened, as I said, when the now Leader of the Opposition was the Minister for Home Affairs. He had responsibility. Furthermore, when the now Leader of the Opposition was in his role as the Minister for Home Affairs, he knew that his department had a multimillion-dollar regional processing contract with a man who'd been charged by the AFP with foreign bribery. Even if the Leader of the Opposition claims that he did not know about the bribery at the time, these contracts became a matter of public record in September 2018. In September 2018 Mr Bhojani, who was associated with Radiance International, was charged by the AFP for foreign bribery. In August 2020 he was convicted, after pleading guilty. The department continued to pay Mr Bhojani millions of taxpayer dollars and extended contracts with his company during this period.

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