Page 5134 - Week 13 - Thursday, 29 November 2018
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A recent article in the Sydney Morning Herald noted that since its inception in 2006, ACLEI had not held a single public hearing into any commonwealth corruption matter. The article also noted that most of the agency’s public reports are brief, and several deal with relatively trivial conduct. This is not to discredit the work that ACLEI does, but to note that there is a clear gap which all states and territories have recognised and responded to. It is time that our federal counterparts did the same. I am proud to see my Greens colleagues in the federal parliament continuing the campaign for a federal integrity commission with strong powers. With support from the crossbench and now the Labor party, it looks as though we may be getting close to that becoming a reality.
In contrast to what is happening in federal parliament, the process we have gone through in this Assembly could not have been more different. It has been great to see all three parties working collaboratively on this important legislation. I want to thank all the members who have sat on both committees, those who have drafted legislation and everyone who has been involved in the negotiations over the past few weeks since the final committee report was released as we moved towards this day where we actually debate the legislation.
I have mentioned this when we have tabled committee reports before, but I really feel that the community process for establishing this has been very beneficial. With the first committee initially looking at what was needed for an integrity commission to operate effectively and being able to produce a consensus report, we were able to lay a strong foundation. Then the subsequent report analysed both the bills.
I thank each of the members of those committees. Mrs Jones was on the first one; Mr Steel, Ms Cody and Ms Lee were on both committees; and Mrs Dunne was on the second committee while Mrs Jones was on maternity leave. The spirit in those committees was very positive and demonstrated a commitment across the board to getting a good outcome. I know that in those committees, without disclosing any deliberations, members did change their view on things at times as we talked through issues and thought about them. That was a very constructive approach that has got us a long way in preparing for this legislation.
I noted Mr Coe’s comments and his observations around the timing of his bill and how that forced the government to hurry up. I have sat out of the cabinet process for all of this, so I am not exactly aware of how that took place. But I think we are going to see a bit of that in the next little while. “Success has many fathers” is the old saying. Of course, by the time Mr Coe tabled his bill, the government had already funded an integrity commission, to begin from 1 January 2019, in the budget.
Mr Coe interjecting—
MR RATTENBURY: If we want to play these things, and the comments are coming back across the chamber in interjections, we can go back to August 2016, when the Liberal Party said they did not think we needed an integrity commission in the ACT. They changed their mind. That demonstrates that as we have gone along this
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