NSW ICAC turmoil: Federal corruption watchdog low priority

Christian Porter has refused to unveil draft legislation for a national integrity commission — despite it being ready for release.

Attorney-General Christian Porter. Picture: Britta Campion

Attorney-General Christian Porter has refused to unveil draft legislation for the Morrison government’s national integrity commission — despite it being ready for release — insisting there were “more immediate priorities” during the pandemic.

Labor has renewed calls for a federal anti-corruption watchdog after NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian revealed her secret five-year relationship with a disgraced former Liberal MP facing corruption allegations.

The government’s initial $125m proposal was announced in December 2018 and an exposure draft was meant to be ready to put to the people before the May 2019 election but it has still not been published.

“The government remains committed to establishing the commonwealth integrity commission and will progress to the next steps with the release of draft legislation as soon as possible after the more immediate priorities concerning the manage­ment of the COVID recovery have been dealt with,” Mr Porter said on Tuesday.

“The draft legislation to establish the CIC was ready for release before the global economic and health crisis caused by the corona­virus. The draft legislation is the result of more than 12 months of planning to ensure the new body has both the resources and power that it needs to investigate allegations of criminal corruption across the public sector.

“It will also be properly funded with $106.7m of new money allocated to it — compared to the $58.7m that Labor budgeted for.”

Anthony Albanese said the draft legislation for the commission was “about as visible as the Scott Morrison surplus budget” and the watchdog was needed to restore faith in democratic processes. “You have had issues like sport rorts. You’ve had the issue of buying land at Badgerys Creek (for the Western Sydney Airport) that has flowed over into the state Liberal government as well,” the Opposition Leader said.

“The only response from the government has been to cut funding of the Australian Nat­ional Audit Office that has been doing its job. As payback, they’ve had their funding cut. We have seen no legislation. There’s no reason why. This is not related to the pandemic.”

Liberal National Party senator Gerard Rennick was forced to backtrack on his rejection of a federal ICAC on Tuesday after he told Sky News he did not want bureaucrats tapping his private phone conversations, as Ms Berejiklian’s were.

He later tweeted: “To clarify, I don’t support integrity commission models that repeat the many notable failures of the NSW ICAC. The government policy aims to address many of these problems and I will look closely at the legislation once it is released.”

Mr Porter noted last week’s budget included a $9.9m expansion of the Australian Commission for Law Enforcement Integrity’s jurisdiction to cover four new agencies, as part of stage one of developing the national integrity commission.

“The CIC will have greater investigatory powers than a royal commission,” Mr Porter said.

“However, it is also important that these powers are employed judiciously so that we avoid some of the worst mistakes of state-based integrity commissions, which have resulted in multiple instances of unjust and irreparable harm to the reputations of innocent people due to a lack of appropriate checks and balances in their processes and operation.”