Morrison and his cabinet are frightened of an effective integrity commission

The prime minister has explained his refusal to establish a national integrity commission on the basis that Labor has rejected his detailed proposal for one. Never has anyone in office justified the breach of an election promise on the basis that the opposition opposes it. Scott Morrison’s explanation is a pathetic attempt to justify the indefensible.

The opposition could not possibly have supported the government’s useless and contemptible model. The truth is Morrison and his cabinet are frightened of an effective integrity commission, and what it might expose, and they have very good reason to be.

The government is blaming the opposition for the failure to set up a national integrity commission.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen, Rhett Wyman

The High Court has made it clear that the executive does not have free rein to spend public money as its members wish, and that the executive must, with rare exceptions, have statutory authority for their spending. This government has developed a series of programs and grant schemes under which vast amounts of public money are spent, in an attempt to avoid the requirement of obtaining statutory authority.

The sports rorts were exposed by the auditor-general in a report released in January 2020. The report said that the Australian Sports Commission had prepared well-structured guidelines with transparent weightings, but the minister’s office disregarded these and began its own assessment focussing on marginal electorates. Professor A.J. Brown, a board member of Transparency International, said of the sports program: “Fundamentally it is corruption. What has happened here is corruption.”

In the Senate committee which investigated the sports rorts, submissions were made by four of the leading academic constitutional lawyers in this country, the effect of their testimony being that the program was not authorised by statute, was unlawful, and a breach of the rule of law. It was also in flagrant defiance of rulings of the High Court.

Senator Bridget McKenzie during a Senate hearing examining the administration of sports grants.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

The prime minister appeared before the National Press Club lunch in January 2020, at which he was questioned by at least eight journalists about the sports program. Morrison said there was nothing wrong with the program, and that the minister, Senator Bridget McKenzie, was simply doing her job, exercising her discretion in the public interest.

He treated the journalists’ reasonable questions with arrogant contempt, brazenly brushing aside uncomfortable points. No apology of any kind was made for this appalling piece of corrupt conduct, the abuse of $100 million of taxpayers’ money, spent not for the sports program, but for the Coalition’s electoral prospects. Other members of the cabinet lined up afterwards to repeat this nonsense. No one offered any apology or remorse for this conduct.

This was followed by a second report of the auditor-general in mid-2021. The Coalition’s Urban Congestion Fund was set up to increase traffic network safety and efficiency. The amount in question was $660 million, a component of the fund, which had grown to $4.8 billion as at March 2021. Under the National Car Park Fund, 47 projects were selected, half of them allocated on a single day, the day before Morrison called the 2019 election.

All were in vulnerable seats, there were no merit or eligibility criteria, no cost-benefit analyses, and no significant consultation other than with Coalition members and some unelected candidates. In the process of determining the allocation of funds, a marginal-electorate list was shared between the offices of the prime minister and the infrastructure minister, Alan Tudge.

In the submission of Transparency International to the Senate committee investigating the car park rorts, which was signed by Dr Serena Lillywhite, the CEO of Transparency International, Transparency’s definition of corruption was quoted, after which it said, the car park program was an example of political corruption.

Transparency International described the car park program as an example of political corruption.Credit: Joe Armao

In February 2022, a third report of the auditor-general concluded that yet another example of a party-politically biased federal grants program was the $184 million Safer Community Fund, set up in 2016. The report said that grants made under this program also favoured government-held seats, and that decisions were often made without clear and recorded justifications.

These three examples of political corruption alone total some $944 million, and the Coalition had many other such programs.

As at the last election, the Coalition is therefore known, on the reports of the auditor-general, supported by the evidence given later at Senate committee hearings, to have engaged in massive politically-corrupt spending. The last election was tight and the result was close.

Notwithstanding that Labor contributed to its loss with a flawed campaign, what is evident is that the Coalition’s massive spending may well have been the factor that gave it the win. Since the prime minister and cabinet members have shown no remorse, and since the government again faces unfavourable polls, it is more than a reasonable assumption that the Coalition will repeat this corruption at the coming election.

Pork-barrelling is not only political corruption, it is a breach of the rule of law and an assault on our democracy – in that it is an attempt by an unpopular government to entrench itself in power by the misuse of public funds.

The establishment of a national integrity commission is directed at whichever party may be in government in Australia, to investigate and expose corruption in the interests of the community, and to prevent any government from engaging in the egregious misconduct committed by the Coalition at the last election.

The opposition and most crossbenchers have made it clear that they seek an effective integrity commission, not the sham that is presently proposed by the Morrison government.

These are the reasons why the Morrison government has broken its election promise to establish a national integrity commission.

Stephen Charles, QC, is a former judge of the Supreme Court and the Court of Appeal. His book about the need for a national integrity commission, Keeping them honest, was released earlier this month. It is co-written with Catherine Williams.