Ms Catherine King (Ballarat, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Development) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. Is the reason the Prime Minister is blocking an anticorruption commission to avoid scrutiny of the forging of documents to discredit the lord mayor of Sydney, the purchase of land in the Leppington triangle at 10 times its value, a cabinet minister taking anonymous donations and the use of colour coded spreadsheets to rort taxpayers' money?

Scott Morrison (Cook, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The government has a proposal for a Commonwealth integrity commission. The Labor Party do not support it. The government has funded nearly $150 million to support the establishment of a Commonwealth integrity commission. Our proposed commission will investigate specified criminal corruption across the whole of the public sector, including parliamentarians and their staff. It will have two divisions. The law enforcement integrity division will have the same function as ACLEI. The public sector integrity division will be able to investigate allegations of criminal conduct in the rest of the Commonwealth public sector, as well as higher education providers and research bodies that receive Commonwealth funding. Our proposed commission will have a full suite of powers to investigate corrupt conduct, including to require people to give sworn evidence at hearings; to confiscate people's passports by court order; to search people's houses and seize their property under warrant; to conduct a search of a person under warrant; and, where necessary, to tap phones and use other surveillance devices to investigate them. The proposed Commonwealth Integrity Commission that we put forward and the law enforcement integrity division will be able to hold public hearings. That's our proposal. Why don't the Labor Party support it?

This has been out for public consultation for a long time—even the draft legislation is there before them—but they don't want a Commonwealth integrity commission. They want a Commonwealth kangaroo court that can go and pry and pursue political vendettas, as we've seen in New South Wales with the disgraceful treatment of the former Premier of New South Wales, Gladys Berejiklian, who was chased out of office before they'd even made a finding. The Leader of the Labor Party may support what was done to Gladys Berejiklian, but I do not.