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

I don't wish to take up too much of the House's time; just a couple of minutes, really. Today we've seen the final set of bills that the government are planning to introduce to the House, and I note that, as expected, there is no integrity commission bill coming from the government. Yesterday, I inspected the document that the PM tabled in the House and it is, in fact, the same exposure draft that the former Attorney-General published over a year ago. To be clear, that is not a bill before this House.

I want to know why the government is doing this. I want to know why we haven't seen an integrity commission bill introduced this morning on the last possible day of the year. Last week, the member for Bass did something extraordinarily brave and crossed the floor in good faith to bring on debate on my Australian Federal Integrity Commission Bill 2020. Since that time, government senators have called for a stronger integrity commission bill to come from the government. Nothing has been forthcoming. Since that time also, other members of the government, in good faith, have gone into the Prime Minister's office and called for collaboration and good-faith consensus to get a bill to the House that the Australian nation needs.

The member for Bass has done something brave and extraordinary over the course of this parliament to bring on an integrity commission debate on the Australian Federal Integrity Commission Bill 2020. It was a brave step and it has not been taken up by the government. I think this is really, really disappointing. In fact, it's worse than disappointing. This is the most important bill that the government should introduce, and it's nowhere to be seen.

John Alexander (Bennelong, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would just like to add some comments to those of the member for Indi. If we were to enter a period of debate on this issue, we might be here in another 20 years, as we have been on climate change. I would suggest that we act like mature adults, enter a room—we both have our positions—and start working through this document line by line until we have a resolution together. We should work together across this great divide to do well for the Australian people because the one thing they want of the people in this place is integrity, and our stocks are not high in that department at this time.