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A federal anti-corruption commission now appears to be a live option, thanks to the growing power of the crossbench in the House of Representatives, with legislation to establish a body that would investigate corruption likely to be introduced into Parliament before Christmas.
Key points:
- Crossbenchers including Wentworth independent Kerryn Phelps are among those with a national corruption body on their wish list
- The Senate has asked the House of Representatives to debate the idea of a national anti-corruption commission
- 7.30 can now reveal Malcolm Turnbull had been working on the idea with Attorney-General Christian Porter earlier this year
The election of independent Kerryn Phelps in the Wentworth by-election has boosted the numbers of crossbenchers in the House of Representatives, and deprived the Morrison Government of its majority.
Crossbench MPs have put the establishment of a federal integrity commission at the top of their wish list.
Labor has already pledged to introduce legislation for such a body within 12 months of election and the Greens got cross-party support in the Senate on Tuesday for a motion calling for the Government to establish a national anti-corruption commission.
The Senate has requested the House of Representatives also debate the motion when it next sits.
That means that a debate on the issue is likely in the House.
Crossbenchers Cathy McGowan and Rebekha Sharkie have also foreshadowed they will introduce legislation to establish an overarching corruption fighting body when the House sits on November 26.
The Federal Government has been hostile to the idea in the past, with former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull wary of such bodies because of his experience representing Kerry Packer in the Costigan Royal Commission.
Turnbull and Porter worked on structure
7.30 can reveal Mr Turnbull had a change of heart earlier this year — judging the politics of the issue had changed — and, along with Attorney-General Christian Porter, had undertaken significant work on a new federal anti-corruption structure.
However, there remains a clear difference between the Government and others in Parliament about the road to reform.
"The two ways in which you could proceed are to enlarge or change the jurisdiction and powers and resourcing, I think, of a present body like the [Australian Commission for Law Enforcement Integrity]," Mr Porter said.
"Or you could copy the state-based system where you have an entirely new body that sits over the present system."
Mr Porter said he did "not have a preference yet".
"But I think there are reasons to be very cautious about adopting a state-based model, which is to have a brand new integrity body sitting over the top of every other agency that takes care of integrity investigations at the moment."
This is the model being pursued by the crossbench, which would see an overarching body, the National Integrity Commission, take overall responsibility for corruption issues at the federal level.
It would have powers to look beyond Parliament and the public service into business relationships with politics.
A separate body, an independent parliamentary adviser, would be set up under legislation to deal with issues surrounding politicians and, for the first time, their staff.
Mr Porter said that as a former prosecutor and state attorney-general:
"I've seen these bodies up close, and mixed amongst their successes, and some successes are significant, are a range of really substantial failures.
"You've had state bodies with false and incorrect findings of corruption. You've had state corruption bodies withholding evidence from prosecutors.
"You've had them compromising the health and safety of witnesses. You've had them misleading judges to obtain warrants.
"You've even had examples of state corruption bodies themselves behaving in an unlawful way which resulted in criminal charges and staff being dismissed."
'Would be a brave government that ignores the community'
But there will now be intense pressure on the Government to act on the issue, and it risks being seen to be resisting anti-corruption measures in the lead-up to the next election.
Greens democracy spokesperson Larissa Waters, who moved the motion in the Senate on Tuesday, said "it would be a very brave government that would ignore both the community and the majority of both houses of Parliament" on the issue.
Shadow attorney-general Mark Dreyfus said:
"We think that every Australian needs to be assured that there is integrity in our system of government and that's why Labor has announced we will legislate for an integrity commission within 12 months of coming to office."
Panels of former judges and academics are now providing detailed advice to our politicians about how they should proceed.
Griffith University's Professor AJ Brown, who also sits on the board of Transparency International, said it was "certainly not a matter of simply stitching together what's there and hoping it will work any better".
"What's needed is to plug the gaps and that includes having a new national integrity commission which can do more than simply just hunt corruption, but it can actually build integrity and deal with whistleblower protection, deal with parliamentary standards and some of the other big gaps in the system.
"We certainly need more than simply a poor copy or even just a good copy of a state anti-corruption commission, because we have got international obligations, we have got defending the borders, we've got foreign bribery.
"We've got all the things that a federal government has to worry about, about Australia's place in the world when it comes to corruption and corruption risk.
"When you are talking about corruption risk, who is it that is trying to corrupt government?
"It's not governments that try to corrupt governments, other than international governments. It's people with vested interests, including in business."
Mr Porter said "the current system has been operating very effectively".
"We have a multi-agency system. We're a very low-corruption jurisdiction based on all the international rankings," Mr Porter said.
"That's not to say that the present system might not need some improvement, but on the whole the system has worked relatively well. And no-one is seriously arguing that there's some massive or unsolved problem of corruption in politics or the federal public sector.
"We've had conversations with Cathy McGowan and others, so we'll look at the model they're going to propose and consider it. And well done to them for proposing a model. But this has to be done in a consultative and cautious basis."
Topics: government-and-politics, corruption, australia