Helen Haines (Indi, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

When former High Court Justice Mary Gaudron and Tony Fitzgerald put their names to something, you would be a fool to ignore it. Yet that's what this government is doing: ignoring 59 eminent Australians who yesterday sent an open letter to the Prime Minister demanding a strong integrity commission. In December 2018, the Prime Minister promised us an integrity commission, and on 8 September it will be 1,000 days—and 1,000 excuses—since he made that promise. We are still waiting. The government has consulted on its dud model for almost three years. There were 333 submissions in its last round, and only two had anything positive to say. None supported it as a whole. It is simply unsalvageable. The government knows that; the opposition knows that; every Australian knows that.

This government went to the last election promising to deliver an integrity commission, but there were zero dollars and zero staff in this year's budget. The new Attorney-General has admitted we won't see a government bill before at least 2022. That sounds like a broken election promise to me. Nearly nine in 10 Australians want an integrity commission. They don't care who it comes from. So the Prime Minister has two choices: deliver a robust integrity commission now or step aside and let parliament vote on my Australian Federal Integrity Commission Bill.There are good MPs on all sides of the House— (Time expired)