Labor is opting for an integrity commission model that appeals to those who don’t really want an integrity commission
Labor’s proposed national anti-corruption commission looks to be arriving not a moment too soon, with Australia’s faith in government on the decline. Only 41 per cent of Australians believe the government can generally be trusted to do the right thing, down from 44 per cent last year and 56 per cent in November 2020. Other recent surveys on trust and corruption show similarly damning results. This was a theme of many speeches in the House of Representatives today, as MP after MP stood to discuss the importance of restoring public trust, and of returning a sense of integrity to Canberra. Everyone seemed to agree that corruption is Bad, and that integrity is Good. But if that is the case, why is the Coalition still trying to weaken the proposed model, arguing that a watchdog that experts think is too weak is actually too strong? And why is Labor opting to rely on the votes of a party that, deep down, doesn’t really want a commission at all, rather than on those who were elected on platforms of integrity?
The Opposition is still seeking amendments – “safeguards”, as shadow attorney-general Julian Leeser calls them – to the government’s bill, despite the fact that the “exceptional circumstances” test for public hearings is assumed to have been put in there to secure Opposition support. Listening to Coalition MPs’ equivocating speeches today, one was reminded of how hard the former government had worked to avoid introducing a watchdog, only begrudgingly putting forward the weakest possible model (one that it never actually introduced to parliament, as the prime minister noted today). Corruption is wrong, Coalition MPs said, but this was frequently followed by a “but” – or several, as was the case of former deputy PM Michael McCormack, who went on an extended rant about how humans make mistakes (including the media, he noted pointedly). Many of the speeches seemed more concerned with protecting reputations than with stamping out corruption, even as the elected representatives insisted that they had nothing to hide.
Members of the integrity-focused crossbench, meanwhile, are still pushing for the “exceptional circumstances” clause to be removed, even knowing that they don’t stand a chance against the combined forces of Labor and the Coalition. Indi MP Helen Haines, who spearheaded initial efforts to legislate the body, and whom Prime Minister Anthony Albanese paid tribute to in his speech today, argues that the threshold is alarming and unnecessary. “This is not just a fine legal point,” she said today. “It’s a threshold question for public trust and the principle of transparency.” Goldstein MP Zoe Daniel has warned Labor that the strength of the commission will be its legacy. “Get it right and the electorate will applaud,” she said. “Get it wrong and the major parties, and indeed this parliament, will pay the price.”
Is Labor getting this wrong by making a trade-off in order to secure broad parliamentary support for the bill? Government MPs argue that they have “struck the right balance”, putting forward a bill that all parliamentarians can get behind – which is something of an acknowledgement that this was done to secure the all-important bipartisan support. “Exceptional circumstances” are just two little words, which are open to interpretation, and the power to hold a public hearing still rests in the hands of the commissioner, as Albanese sought to emphasise today. But at the end of the day, it’s hard to escape the fact that the government has opted to ignore experts and defang its watchdog in order to appease those who have made it clear they would rather not have a watchdog at all. No wonder Australians have so little faith in their elected representatives.
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“I’ve watched people on the other side of the chamber laughing when we’ve spoken about education around students’ gender. I invite you to come into a school and sit in front of a student who has made several attempts on their life because they have been subject to hate and transphobia. How dare you use our young people as political footballs?”
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Greens senator Penny Allman-Payne, a former secondary teacher, hits out at Pauline Hanson’s “transphobic, racist, anti-science” bill, which seeks to give parents the right to “protect their children from indoctrination”.
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“So I know it’s very difficult for people to accept the idea that wages don’t rise with inflation, and people are experiencing declines in real wages. That’s tough.”
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Reserve Bank governor Philip Lowe repeats warnings of a wage-price spiral if wages rise too fast, adding that it will be relatively “painless” if people experiencing low wage growth can just “ride through this period”. NDIS minister Bill Shorten rubbished the comments on RN this morning, arguing that wages aren’t moving at all.
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7am Podcast
Did Australia live up to expectations at COP27?
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At COP27 in Egypt, measures to tackle damage and loss in countries affected by climate change have been decided upon. The summit also marked a turning point for Australia – a chance for a new government to bring its new targets to the international stage. Today, a former diplomatic adviser during the Paris Agreement negotiations, on Australia’s role at COP27, and the next challenge: meeting our commitments.
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The amount by which temperatures have increased since 1910, with a CSIRO report showing sea levels rising at an accelerating rate. Asked what Australia was doing in response, Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek noted the government’s (wildly insufficient) 2030 emissions-reduction target of 43 per cent.
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The Policy
Report calls for changes to IR bill
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A parliamentary report into Labor’s industrial relations bill has recommended seven changes, including increasing the definition of a small business from fewer than 15 employees to fewer than 20. In other news, the Greens are pushing for a “right to disconnect” in future workplace legislation, after the Centre for Future Work found the average employee performs 224.3 unpaid hours per year.
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