Senate debates

Thursday, 9 February 2017

Bills

National Integrity Commission Bill 2013; Second Reading

9:34 am

Photo of Scott LudlamScott Ludlam (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I am doing my best here. The proposal that the Greens have put forward and that Senator Rhiannon has put on the Notice Paper today is effectively a threefold body: a law enforcement integrity commissioner—so effectively taking the existing Australian Commission for Law Enforcement Integrity and rolling it into a body that will then incorporate a national integrity commissioner and an independent parliamentary adviser. The independent parliamentary adviser, you would imagine, would be the sort of person who would advise—before the fact rather than after—on helicopter charters, for example, or trips to polo matches, or taxpayer funded trips to weddings in India, or the various other disgraceful activities through which MPs in this building have eventually had their careers terminated—not through any kind of due process but effectively by public outrage. We saw it happen with the health minister over the summer break: pad out your investment portfolio with spontaneous purchases of investment properties on the Gold Coast—a brilliant idea!—and then have the taxpayer pick up the tab for the flights, the Comcars and whatever else.

These are the sorts of activities that MPs can avoid finding themselves enmeshed in if you have an independent parliamentary adviser. I do not believe the helicopter charters from Mrs Bishop or the taxpayer funded investment property splurge are grey areas at all, but anybody who has spent any time in here would be aware that there are grey areas around the use of entitlements, or the fact that they are even called entitlements at all. All of us from time to time could use somebody—an independent umpire on the end of the phone line—to ring up and say, 'I don't know about this; is this within the rules or not?' So an independent parliamentary adviser is a really important part of this.

The third body, obviously, is a national integrity commissioner. That is where the rubber hits the road. That is where you discover the kind of activities that destroyed a Labor government in WA and that have so disfigured politics in New South Wales. I think probably all of us representing the states and territories around the country would be very well aware that there is no level of government that has not from time to time been tainted with a hint—or a lot more than a hint—of corruption. Why would we imagine, as a government senator—I forget exactly who it was—tried to put to us yesterday, that at the Commonwealth tier of government, dealing with enormous sums of money and with very close contacts between ministers and industry and diaries that are not released into the public domain, we would be somehow magically immune? I think it is absolutely essential that we have this final—or not final but important—piece of institutional architecture, a corruption oversight body looking after what goes on in this chamber and in the other place just across the building.

I want to come to a couple of examples that are much closer to home. It was rather extraordinary again to hear a government spokesperson yesterday tell us we do not need a national anticorruption watchdog and it is better if this sort of thing is diffused throughout the Public Service. The minister is effectively saying, 'We'd rather nobody was in charge; we'd rather there was nobody where the buck stopped to keep an eye on this, unearth corruption, be able to take evidence and be able to be the person where the buck stops.' They would rather that that be diffused and that it not really be anybody's responsibility. I do not know if it is the first time that that form of argument has been run, but I found it peculiar and entirely unconvincing.

An example of where I think we could use this kind of body is in the Western Australian context. You will be aware, because Senator Siewert and I have been raising this matter for many years—as have Senator Lines and Senator Sterle—of the matter of the Perth Freight Link, the so-called Roe 8 extension back in Western Australia. It was announced very suddenly by the Liberal government right before the 2013 federal election. It is one of these dead dogs of a policy from former Prime Minister Tony Abbott that is still stinking up the place. There is WestConnex, there is the East West Link and there is Roe Highway. It is one of those kinds of zombie policies, a tremendously expensive one, that refuses to fall over. That was $1.2 billion of Australian taxpayers' money committed on a whim, effectively signed off on the back of an envelope by former Prime Minister Tony Abbott, with no business case and no public cost-benefit analysis.

And, what do you know, the contract has been awarded—by the state government, I should say, not the Commonwealth—to a consortium of companies led by Leighton Holdings. I do not know if this was anything to do with brand damage, but they renamed themselves CIMIC a little while ago. They are a massive donor to the Liberal Party. Leighton have donated nearly $700,000 to the WA Liberal and National parties. That buys a lot of TV time, doesn't it? That buys a lot of access. That buys a lot of quiet conversations. These old private-school networks, old boys clubs, are greased by a $700,000 political donation—all above board, nothing illegal. That is $700,000 to the Liberal and National parties.

This is a corporation that is bidding for a massive government contract. So, for your $700,000—entirely above board—you can go in to bid for a $1.2 billion engineering and construction contracts. That is a clear conflict of interest. No wonder trust in the institutions, with that queasy interface between commerce and politics, is at an all-time low.

We think that it is time to ban political donations from for-profit corporations. I know that is going to cause a degree of hyperventilation from the other end of the chamber because it is that money that helped put you here, but we think that these things should be banned. Leighton is a $6.3 billion company; it runs mining, construction and engineering projects all around the globe; and it has been described as company where corrupt practices were absolutely endemic. Highly paid senior executives used a range of bribery techniques, including kickbacks to subcontractors, special payments to procure contracts, and facilitation payments. So, while these bribery incidents occurred overseas, Leighton's involvement with Australian government funded projects has been questioned. Who would you put these kinds of questions to? At the moment, there is nobody. There is nobody that you can put these kinds of questions to.

As I said, Leighton now operate under the name of CIMIC, after corruption allegations came to light in 2013. So that's fine—just change the name! We do not know whether those practices have changed, whether the corporate culture has changed or whether these kinds of under-the-table activities are occurring here in Australia, because there is nobody tasked to find out.

In 2013, The Sydney Morning Herald reported 'Building giant Leighton rife with corruption', and they disclosed evidence of massive bribery and corruption in the way that contracts were being won around the world—most notoriously, the multimillion-dollar kickbacks paid to win contracts in Iraq, which were later investigated by the Australian Federal Police. As recently as 31 January of this year, the Herald reported 'Building giant Leighton rife with corruption', and I want to quote from that article:

In revelations that will cause international embarrassment for Australia and raise questions about the role of the nation's corporate watchdog, the files expose plans to pay alleged multimillion-dollar kickbacks in Iraq, Indonesia, Malaysia and elsewhere, along with other serious corporate misconduct.

Hundreds of confidential company documents, obtained during a six-month Fairfax Media investigation, also reveal a culture of rewarding corruption or incompetence, and abysmal corporate governance in what looms as the worst recent case of corporate corruption involving a major Australian firm.

So they can throw down $700,000 here in Australia and, as if by magic, through some black-box tendering process that is shrouded in commercial-in-confidence—this parliament has not been able to assess exactly why that contract was won or whether the contract represents value for money—they nailed down a $1.2 billion construction contract for a completely pointless road, a freight highway through an important wetland area, an area of enormous significance to Aboriginal people, an area of very high neighbourhood amenity, an area that has being dubbed the Kings Park of the south. Anybody from Western Australia will know that this is an area of extraordinary biodiversity and of extraordinary value to the community, and it is being torn in half, effectively, by this project.

I want to acknowledge Senator Rhiannon's work, particularly on the Democracy for Sale site. In many ways, our New South Wales colleagues are a bit ahead of the curve, presumably because—knowing a little bit about the way politics have worked in New South Wales in the past—it has been essential that the New South Wales Greens have held the major parties to account, partly because the institutions have not really been there to do so. The Greens have been a really important part, in New South Wales and elsewhere around the country, of holding the major parties to account and trying to throw some sunlight on that interface between corporations, commerce and the political tier.

This weekend, the launch of the Greens WA state election campaign is underway, and I am very proud to foreshadow an announcement that my colleagues will be making on integrity in government—

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