Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus says he wants the new commission operating by the middle of next year
Labor wants a national corruption watchdog operational by the middle of next year, despite a push by Opposition Leader Peter Dutton and the Greens for a more powerful model to be adopted.said on Wednesday a taskforce within his department was already at work on the design of the new commission, which he says will have retrospective powers to investigate corruption in government and jurisdiction to consider political misuse of government grants – so-called pork-barrelling.
Mr Dreyfus said he had already held talks with state and territory anti-corruption commissioners, and was consulting with the crossbench. The newly elected crop of teal independents support Indi MP Helen Haines’ draft legislation for a commission.Advertisement“The election of many independent members of the parliament who campaigned on integrity issues tells us about the level of public support for this anti-corruption commission.
Mr Dutton said last week he was a strong supporter of plans to establish a federal commission, despite former prime minister Scott Morrison’s failure to introduce legislation as promised in the last term of parliament. Mr Dreyfus said that under Labor’s plans, public hearings would only be allowed when clearly in the public interest.“Overwhelmingly the work of these commissions is conducted by private hearings. They’re sparing in their use of the public hearings,” he said.“We’ll work those issues through and they will be dealt with in the legislation that we bring forward.
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