Leader of the Australian Greens, Adam Bandt MP, has said the Government\u2019s much anticipated response to growing concern about rorts in parliament looked like a protection racket for politicians that would fail to discourage and root out corrupt behaviour.
\nInstead of the government\u2019s toothless model, Mr Bandt called on Morrison to allow debate on the Greens model for a Federal ICAC, which has been approved by both integrity experts and the Senate. It has already passed the upper house and could become legislation by next Monday.
\n\u201cThe Liberals are still running a protection racket for corrupt politicians,\u201d said Mr Bandt.
\n\u201cAfter 18 months of delay, the Liberals have rejected the Greens\u2019 model.
\n\u201cInstead of a tough watchdog, it\u2019s a toothless tiger.
\n\u201cIn announcing his model, Christian Porter pushed back hard against the Greens\u2019 model for a Federal ICAC and it\u2019s not hard to see why.
\n\u201cThe Liberals\u2019 model is limited only to serious criminal conduct, meaning many of the misconduct scandals involving current and former Government MPs would not be caught. It won\u2019t hold public hearings, so politicians could escape scrutiny for years. The public sector branch won\u2019t be able to start investigations under its own steam, so whistleblowers will need to jump through hoops to warn about political corruption.
\n\u201cThis consultation draft could push back action for another 12 months. This sends a green light to any corrupt minister that they\u2019ve got another year to milk every last cent out of our democracy.
\n\u201cChristian Porter warned that the Greens National Integrity Commission Bill would be too powerful for them to support, so he has come up with a defanged model.
\n\u201cPeople are fed up with politics. Every day they see it work for big corporations and developers, but not for the public. This sham ICAC will do nothing to change that.
\n\u201cWith a Greens bill for a Federal ICAC with teeth already through the Senate, we could be rooting out corruption by lunchtime Monday. Bring on the Greens bill for a National Integrity Commission in the House and we can start rooting out corruption next week.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Leader of the Australian Greens, Adam Bandt MP, has said the Government\u2019s much anticipated response to growing concern about rorts in parliament looked like a protection racket for politicians that would fail to discourage and root out corrupt behaviour. Instead of the government\u2019s toothless model, Mr Bandt called on Morrison to allow debate on the … Continue reading “People want an ICAC, Government offers them a sham: Bandt”<\/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-8999","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\/8999","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=8999"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8999\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8999"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8999"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8999"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}