Larissa Waters (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

that's right; so does this government—received $20 million, but the council don't want a pool to go ahead because they're going to have to co-contribute and they haven't budgeted for it, and they're still undertaking a feasibility study to see if it's even a good investment.

So sports rorts 2 is even worse than sports rorts 1. They didn't even develop any guidelines about how public money would be allocated. They made massive promises for unwanted swimming pool infrastructure in marginal seats prior to the election. They talked it up as funding for female change rooms and then barely coughed up any dough for women and women's sport. We know the Prime Minister likes to occasionally remember that women exist, but he's never going to do anything to actually fix their predicament, as this morning's speech at the International Women's Day Breakfast proved.

I also saw this morning that former Liberal leader John Hewson has come out begging for a six-point plan to address transparency and accountability in government. In fact, all of those six points are Greens policies. I hope that this current government listens to its former leader. Chief amongst his asks was the need for a federal corruption watchdog. Sports rorts 1, sports rorts 2, all of the other rorts that we've seen, all of the other fingers in the pies, the vested interests and personal interests being prioritised ahead of the public interest—the list just keeps going on, and public trust in our democracy just keeps going down.

This government have been promising a federal corruption watchdog for 16 months. We've seen absolutely no evidence that there's been any progress, beyond a few weak principles that have been criticised for effectively facilitating ongoing corruption and for allowing cover-ups of ministerial misconduct. The Greens' bill—a bill for a strong corruption watchdog that could do the job, that could actually apply to members of parliament and clean up this corruption that's seemingly so typified by this government—passed the Senate, but the House wouldn't even let that come on for a vote. They are so afraid to have independent scrutiny because, frankly, I reckon they know there are more skeletons in the closet.

This is why the Senate has been insisting on the production of documents. The public deserve to know what's really going on here. Minister Colbeck says, 'We need a bit more time, sorry,' but we all know that we're not going to get those documents because whoever is leading the government in the chamber will say, 'That's public interest immunity,' or 'That's cabinet in confidence.' This government is the most secretive that Australia has ever had, and it's about time that they started realising that that is not only bad for them but bad for the country. We need some integrity in politics. We need a federal corruption watchdog.