Doug Cameron (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Human Services) Share this | Hansard source

I have to rise to respond to a couple of the points that Senator Rhiannon raised. Senator Rhiannon and the Greens did not raise the issue of a broader anticorruption bill with the ALP at any time during the lead-up to this debate.

I know a little bit about anticorruption issues. I appeared before ICAC as a witness. I've been to the Supreme Court as a witness for the prosecution against former Labor Party ministers in NSW. So I am personally supportive of a broader anticorruption bill coming at some time to this place after proper discussions and consideration between the parties.

Senator Rhiannon interjecting—

You can intervene all you like, Senator Rhiannon. You have not raised this issue with us. We are—and I certainly am—supportive of a broader anticorruption situation in this place, but it is not appropriate to raise that now as an issue that we should be making a decision on right now. We are not going to do that. We think, and you've agreed, that we need to make these amendments to make this bill better. They are based on the consideration of the scrutiny committees of both the House of Representatives and the Senate. We think that is very important.

The issue of the Heydon royal commission has raised its head. As I said, from my point of view this was nothing more than a political royal commission. There's no doubt about that. The commissioner was biased. The commissioner showed no elements of being impartial within that royal commission. The treatment that some witnesses received compared with others was an absolute disgrace. It's pretty typical of this mob across here that they do, as soon as they come into power, run royal commissions against their political opponents. That's their modus operandi. There is also no doubt that ideology from the government benches was driving that royal commission. There is absolutely no doubt about that whatsoever. Heydon was biased. It was politically influenced by the government. It is just unacceptable that this type of approach is taken by the coalition. Every time they get into government they want to run royal commissions against their political opponents. But that's a matter of history. That's a matter of fact.

We have here a badly drafted bill which breaches a number of conventions that have been supported over a long period of time by the scrutiny committees of this parliament. I'm glad to see that the minister has conceded the commonsense position that various parts of the bill were not appropriately drafted and that the amendments will make it a better bill, even though we have to wait and see what the final outcome is. This should be about dishonesty. It should be about giving and receiving corrupting benefits. It shouldn't be about a wider ideological attack on the trade union movement.

One of the issues that has not been discussed this evening in the committee is the fact that the bill does not deal with corruption from company to company. There has to be union involvement before a company can get engaged in this. We are of the view that if there are to be wider discussions and debates about corruption then they should be done in an appropriate manner with proper consultation with the opposition. We will sit and listen to the issues. We will make our decision about where we go with it. But this bill is still deficient in the context that company-to-company corruption is not covered.