Louise Pratt (WA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for the Environment, Climate Change and Water) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak against the National Integrity Commission Bill. The Labor Party has in the past supported, and currently does support, the principle of an ICAC type of body. But I do not believe the bill that is before us meets the kinds of objectives that Labor would like to see. The bill has a number of key components—a federal ICAC body based on the New South Wales model. I think that is problematic. Very diverse types of models operate in very different ways around the states, and what is before us does not give due consideration to the different models around the country and how they operate. I notice that the Australian Commission For Law Enforcement Integrity would be brought into this, but I have not been convinced that that needs to happen in terms of its current capacity to stand alone.

To me, like Senator O'Neill, the question of an independent parliamentary adviser to advise MPs on ethics and entitlements and to develop a parliamentary code of conduct seems problematic given the high level of debate and control that we have on those questions within the parliament and that sense of collective accountability, noting that the parliament itself is the highest authority on these questions. To my mind, the level of scrutiny we give each other will always be more successful and more important than a simple code of conduct. I do not necessarily object to the idea of codes of conduct, but I do believe that the idea of an adviser on ethics and entitlements within this bill would need further consideration.

Perhaps if some members of this place sat down and asked someone a few questions about their interests and the way they have disclosed them, they might not get themselves into as much trouble as they have done. But I do not think it necessarily requires legislation to see something like that happen. On the face of it, given that a number of recent decisions by a few members of this parliament have fallen short of public standards and indeed our own standards, it is pretty easy to draw the conclusion that we might need a body like this. But can such poor decisions be conflated with corruption and unethical behaviour? I do not necessarily believe they always can; they were simply poor decisions. Even after all of that—we have all played our roles in political theatre—the truth is that these matters have been dealt with openly and played out publicly, and the punishment and accountability comes out through public debate to the satisfaction of most people. We have seen ministers come and go because of that kind of scrutiny.

But when it comes to more serious matters too many cases, both now and in recent times, have been brought to the attention of the law and the public. By that, I specifically mean the New South Wales ICAC. But there are of course cases before other state commissions. For example, the ICAC in New South Wales heard allegations that illegal political donations had been funnelled to the New South Wales Liberal Party via various slush funds. I also note that a longstanding Liberal staffer confessed to ICAC that enormous sums of money, including from property developers—who under New South Wales law are banned from making political donations—were laundered through sham organisations, including Eight by Five and the Free Enterprise Foundation, before being passed on to the New South Wales Liberal Party. Eleven New South Wales Liberal politicians were forced to resign, including Premier O'Farrell. Most damningly, it caused federal Liberal senator and former Assistant Treasurer Arthur Sinodinos to be stood aside by the Prime Minister. These are all examples, in terms of the pub test, that show the DPP that the current agencies are indeed working.

Federally, we already have the Australian Commission for Law Enforcement Integrity, the Ombudsman and the Auditor-General, and these agencies have very broad oversight of federal administration and expenditure. We have specialist bodies, such as the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security, and they oversee particular parts of the federal bureaucracy. What is most important here, because our bureaucracy is so diverse, is that the agencies that are responsible for their own management have internal accountability processes that are embedded throughout the agencies. That is why connecting, for example, security and intelligence agencies is important. Of course, we have the Australian Federal Police, who have a very important role in investigating corruption. We have seen recent examples of them coming to collect parliamentary documents, for example, so we need to be very considered about issues of parliamentary privilege. We also have the Commonwealth DPP.

Along with all of that—and at the risk of being somewhat repetitive in this debate—we have also created a new Statement of ministerial standards. We have introduced the Lobbying code of conduct and a federal lobbyist register, and we have implemented the Code of conduct for ministerial staff. We have also expanded the powers of ACLEI, introduced whistleblower protections for those disclosing government wrongdoing and sought to improve transparency over political donations. At a state level, Labor governments have been seen to introduce the New South Wales ICAC, the Queensland Crime and Corruption Commission, the West Australian Corruption and Crime Commission, the Tasmanian Integrity Commission, the Victorian IBAC and the South Australian ICAC.

Like my colleagues, I do not dismiss the objects of this bill, but we already have a proliferation of agencies designed to deal with accountability and corruption in our country. If you are going to put together an overall Australian type ICAC body, the extent to which it becomes just another one of those agencies or the extent to which it relates to those other bodies are really critical questions, and I do not think they have been properly resolved in this bill. In that context, I worry about the unintended consequences of legislation like this: jurisdiction demarcation and duplication. In addition to looking at existing powers, we should be looking for opportunities to integrate functions between existing agencies. These are some of the examples we need to consider. With more time I think I could come up with a few more.

Reflecting on what Senator Lee Rhiannon had as examples to justify the bill, I return to my earlier comments that many existing agencies can—and indeed do—very successfully investigate these matters. I do not accept that we work in a system that is dominantly corrupt in any way. In fact in global ratings, when you look at corruption and accountability indexes, Australia rates highly in terms of the existing accountabilities in our political and bureaucratic systems and the accountability that they exercise over companies and other parts of the community.

In conclusion, the Labor Party and I support a broad approach to anticorruption, consistent with a longstanding tradition of Labor policy. That means it needs to be embedded in a wide variety of agencies, because accountability is something that needs to rest with each of us as individuals and with every government institution, every parliamentary institution and every company, school or other agency.