Marcus Paul and I discussed the proposed Commonwealth Corruption Commission which is long overdue and designed to be a toothless tiger.
Transcript
[Marcus] Retired Victorian Supreme Court Judge, Stephen Charles said, “This is not a corruption commission. It’s designed to protect parliamentarians and senior public servants from investigation. After two years of waiting, this is a tremendous disappointment. An annual budget of $42 million when fully operational. And of course it will file in its current form of how it’s you know being sold. It will fail to hold people to account. It won’t be anything like a new South Wales, independent commission against corruption.
[Malcolm] The early indications, from what we can see is there will be no public hearings for public sector and, and members of parliament corruption.
[Marcus] Well, that’s right. And we won’t have yeah.
[Malcolm] That’s the place where you need it. That’s gotta be out in front and transparent. The prime minister, the attorney general have dragged their feet on this for a couple of years now. And they now produce something that falls short of the mark. And, you know, so how can we do public hearings for law enforcement and police, but not for members of parliament, and for public sector employees, this is wrong.
[Marcus] Yeah
[Malcolm] And then we’ve gotta have the names out there, and yet people are entitled to make sure that the government that they elect are working for the people. And that’s what we need to get. We need to make sure that there is pressure on politicians to be clean at all times.
[Marcus] Absolutely. You know, under its current proposed format, you won’t see people like, you know, I mean, look, what’s happened in new South Wales in the last couple of months, we’ve had a premiere drag before the independent commission of corruption and grill to within a nature of a personal life. And that won’t happen under this proposed federal CIC. And that’s an issue for me.
[Malcolm] Yes. And the attorney general has the power to limit information that can be considered by the Commonwealth integrity commission. There are also the bars for referral are way too high. Someone approaches the institution with reasonable suspicions of corruption breaches, but no actual evidence. It can be ignored. And then with retrospectivity, which means a sport rots and the Murray-Darling basin quarterbacks, they won’t be investigated because they were in the past. This is, this is just way way too short of where we need to be.
[Marcus] All right now . I’m glad to have you on we’ll chat soon, mate. Thank you again as always.
[Malcolm] Thanks Marcus.
