{"id":8828,"date":"2020-10-21T22:13:57","date_gmt":"2020-10-21T22:13:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/?p=8828"},"modified":"2020-10-21T22:13:57","modified_gmt":"2020-10-21T22:13:57","slug":"mates-investigating-mates-shows-icac-needed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/2020\/10\/21\/mates-investigating-mates-shows-icac-needed\/","title":{"rendered":"Mates investigating mates shows ICAC needed"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Revelations that the Finance Department inquiry into Assistant Minister Michael Sukkar was outsourced to the law firm he used to work for is further proof Australia urgently needs a federal corruption watchdog, Greens say.<br \/>\nGreens Leader in the Senate and spokesperson for Democracy, Senator Larissa Waters, said:<br \/>\n&#8220;This is just another outrageous example of why we need an independent federal corruption watchdog. Mates investigating mates won&#8217;t stop corruption.<br \/>\n&#8220;Not only is the Prime Minister choosing not to investigate whether Mr Michael Sukkar breached Ministerial Standards, but now we&#8217;ve learnt the Finance Department administrative inquiry into the Assistant Treasurer was outsourced to the very law firm he used to work for.<br \/>\n&#8220;The government cannot be trusted to properly scrutinise its own Ministers and is doing all it can to delay setting up a watchdog with teeth that will hold their dodgy dealings to account.<br \/>\n&#8220;Just this morning, the Attorney General&#8217;s Department revealed an exposure draft of the Government&#8217;s bill for a federal integrity body has been sitting in the Attorney General&#8217;s inbox since December 2019. And yet the Government is still peddling the excuse that the pandemic has slowed them down.<br \/>\n&#8220;After two years of excuses and promises of draft laws being &#8220;imminent&#8221; and &#8220;soon&#8221;, it&#8217;s clear that the government just doesn&#8217;t want a watchdog, and perhaps that&#8217;s because with every passing week there is a new scandal.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Revelations that the Finance Department inquiry into Assistant Minister Michael Sukkar was outsourced to the law firm he used to work for is further proof Australia urgently needs a federal corruption watchdog, Greens say. Greens Leader in the Senate and spokesperson for Democracy, Senator Larissa Waters, said: &#8220;This is just another outrageous example of why &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/2020\/10\/21\/mates-investigating-mates-shows-icac-needed\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Mates investigating mates shows ICAC needed&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8828","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aussie"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8828","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8828"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8828\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8828"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8828"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8828"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}