Dean Smith (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Competition, Charities and Treasury) Share this | Hansard source

Senator Pratt would like to use a hundred days, or a hundred days plus, since the federal election to talk about the last 10 years. But let me make this statement: there is no virtue in raising the bar of ministerial standards if you're only going to lower the bar on compliance, and that is exactly what's happened.

We have a situation where the Labor Party, in seeking government, made much of the virtue of lifting standards of integrity in our country. I agree with that. Standards of integrity in our parliament and in our country need to be lifted. Indeed, I'm on the public record as supporting a federal integrity commission, and I will look with great interest when the government delivers its bill.

But the Labor Party have made much virtue of coming to government wanting to raise the integrity standards. Indeed, in the ministerial code of conduct, which contains Anthony Albanese's signature, he says:

Australians deserve good government.

The Albanese government is committed to integrity, honesty and accountability, and Ministers in my Government (including Assistant Ministers) …

Hold that thought—including assistant ministers.

… will observe standards of probity, governance and behaviour worthy of the Australian people.

That's what the Prime Minister not just said but signed off on in the ministerial code of conduct.

Labor is confused about integrity. It says: we're committed to integrity because we're going to have a national integrity commission. But in the first hundred days it seeks to abolish the mechanism for establishing integrity on our construction worksites. It says: we're going to abolish the construction industry watchdog. Then it says it's going to remove measures of transparency introduced by the coalition over the superannuation industry. On one day they want to be committed to integrity, but on the following days, by their actions, they remove mechanisms of integrity in our country. Wow!

We've had three parliamentary sitting weeks—just three parliamentary sitting weeks—and we now have five ministers, including assistant ministers, who are in breach of a ministerial code signed by the Prime Minister himself. We are seeing a conga line of Labor ministers in breach of the ministerial standards: in this place, Senator Ayres, the Assistant Minister for Trade; in the other place, Mr Bill Shorten, the Minister for Government Services and the National Disability Insurance Scheme. We've heard comments in regard to the Assistant Minister for Health and Aged Care. Add to that the Minister for Regional Development, Local Government and Territories. Just three weeks of sittings, and already it is one, two, three, four, five ministers—five members of the executive government. Add to that Senator Scarr's contribution on the latest development, in just the last 45 minutes, in regard to the Attorney-General, Mr Dreyfus. Labor said at the election that it would make permanent and much-needed changes to standards of integrity and accountability in government. Labor said it would have the lowest tolerance for core integrity standards in government. Judge Labor not on what they said but on what they now do.

Some senators in this place have tried to make a virtue of the fact that Mr Albanese, in his ministerial Code of Conduct, has said, 'We're going to do better.' Well, the measure of integrity is not what you're going to do but the standard that you apply to those new measures. Mr Albanese, as the new Prime Minister, would do well to learn the lessons of past leaders in our country. And we would hope—it is our great ambition—that every day, every week, every year the standards of integrity in our parliament and our community are lifted. But these breaches of the ministerial code are a dangerous precedent, and they deserve a stronger response from the Prime Minister.