Motions

International Anti-Corruption Day

Mr ODENWALDER (Little Para) (11:34): I move:

That this house—

(a) recognises that 9 December 2015 is International Anti-Corruption Day;

(b) supports the UN Convention Against Corruption; and

(c) calls upon all governments and businesses to ratify and implement the convention to help combat and prevent corruption.

International Anti-Corruption Day is recognised on 9 December and is set aside to acknowledge the UN anticorruption convention, an international pact to say an emphatic no to corrupt practices. As the first legally binding international anticorruption instrument, the United Nations Convention Against Corruption provides a unique tool to address this global problem.

Fighting corruption is a global concern because corruption is found in both rich and poor countries, and evidence shows that it hurts the poor in all societies disproportionately. It contributes to instability and poverty, and it is a significant factor driving fragile countries towards state failure. Corruption is arguably the single greatest obstacle to economic and social development around the world.

Each year, $1 trillion is paid in bribes, while an estimated $2.6 trillion is stolen annually through corruption, a sum equivalent to more than 5 per cent of global GDP. In developing countries, funds lost to corruption are estimated at 10 times the amount of official development assistance. Corruption does not just steal money from where it is needed the most; it leads to weak governance, which can in turn fuel organised criminal networks and promote crimes such as human trafficking, arms and migrant smuggling, counterfeiting and the trade in endangered species.

In effect, since December 2005, the convention covers four main areas: prevention, criminalisation and law enforcement measures, international cooperation and asset recovery. The convention also contains provisions on technical assistance and information exchange, and its Conference of the States Parties established the peer review mechanism in 2009. The convention now has 177 states parties, meaning that the vast majority of UN member states have come on board.

Governments, the private sector, non-government organisations, the media and citizens around the world are joining forces to fight this crime. The 2015 joint international campaign focuses on how corruption undermines democracy and the rule of law, leads to human rights violations, distorts markets, erodes quality of life and allows organised crime, terrorism and other threats to human security to flourish. We all have a stake in fighting corruption.

Corruption undermines government's ability to serve their people by corroding the rule of law, corroding faith in public institutions and destroying trust in leaders. Corruption acts as a brake on development, denying millions of people around the world prosperity, rights, services and employment, which they desperately need and deserve. When corruption prevails, both democracy and sustainable development do not. The three things go hand-in-hand.

With the United Nations Against Corruption, the world has a powerful tool to fight a global ill. Let us all use the convention's far-reaching measures to help kickstart development, lift countries out of poverty and build fairer, more just societies, and let us all lend support to those nations who are well on the way towards addressing longstanding corruption through greater transparency and democracy. I commend the motion.

Mr KNOLL (Schubert) (11:37): I rise to support the motion. I want to quote something from the UN website, which states:

Attitudes on corruption are changing. As recently as ten years ago, corruption was only whispered about. Today there are signs of growing intolerance toward corruption and more and more politicians and chief executives are being tried and convicted

The 2009 joint international campaign focused on how corruption hinders efforts to achieve the internationally agreed Millennium Development Goals, undermines democracy and the rule of law, leads to human rights violations, distorts markets, erodes quality of life and allows organised crime, terrorism and other threats to human security to flourish.

To our regional neighbours, Australian aid is precious and demonstrably effective in supporting their budgets, but when money leaks or is ineffective in getting to the right people because of corruption it has a devastating effect on the most vulnerable people—the people who invariably need this aid the most. Corruption is not only an economic consideration. It also goes to the security of a state and the state in their region. The infection of corruption can ravage a region and drive and scare away future investment and possibly take decades to recover from incidents.

I would like to look at Zimbabwe as an example. The reason Zimbabwe is close to my heart is that I saw an otherwise prosperous country seem to sink deeper and deeper into corruption and cronyism with the ever-lengthening rule of Robert Mugabe, which has taken what was otherwise the food bowl of Africa and turned it into a place with some of the lowest literacy rates and an economy that has collapsed to the point where they had to get rid of their own currency and switch to the dollar.

In that spirit, I sponsor a child in Zimbabwe. His name is Delight. He lives north-west of Harare. The reason I did that was that I thought the situation he was in was fundamentally reversible. If a corrupt and cronyistic government had not taken hold in Zimbabwe, Delight would today have a very different life.

Because it was an entirely avoidable situation, I felt compelled to help in that country as opposed to picking other countries. With zero being highly corrupt and 10 being very clean, Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index marked Zimbabwe at 2.1. This marks an increase in corruption since even 1999, when the country ranked at 4.1, and it is now so dangerous that basically there is no foreign investment to speak of.

I know that Western Australia has quite a strong community of Zimbabwean expats, especially white Zimbabwean expats who escaped persecution as they saw their farms acquired by the Robert Mugabe regime and given to his cronies. Subsequently, the food that was produced on those farms basically stopped because the sycophants of the Mugabe regime certainly knew the right people but did not know how to farm. That has caused untold damage to what was otherwise a beautiful country.

The member for Bright spoke earlier in this place about his time in Zimbabwe, and I look forward to a time when Robert Mugabe is no longer in power. Surely, nobody can live forever; he is a man who is in his 80s, and it could be suggested that many lives would be much better off if Robert were no longer here. I look forward to the people of Zimbabwe, in the absence of Robert, taking back their country for the better.

In this era of free trade, we must be vigilant, as Australians and Australian companies, of the trappings of temptation. Australia has a strong anticorruption stance in both its government and its international corporate players. It is by taking the so-called high road and showing the way in transparency and anticorruption that the region and, hopefully, the world will be able to trade with one another without consideration to corruption. This is especially true in terms of aid from developed countries to those they give aid to.

In Papua New Guinea, the Australian government is leading a program called (and I assume that this is pidgin English) Strongim Gavman Program, which strengthens anticorruption and security efforts. By increasing the professionalism of the PNG Public Service through training and mentoring, the hope is that Australia, through their aid, is helping to improve corruption within PNG and help that country to progress.

It is by helping other countries within our region and strengthening our region that we can stamp out corruption in all forms for the betterment of everybody. The Tone from the Top concept, in which leaders play a crucial role in shaping an organisational culture, is important. Many anticorruption experts show that leadership is a strong determining factor for pressure against opportunities for corruption to emerge within an organisation. I would like to turn now, a little bit closer to home, to South Australia.

We are lucky in South Australia that we do not have many instances of corruption, but where there are a few cases that have been before the court recently they have involved the misappropriation of public moneys, and I am comfortable that the courts will deal with those people sufficiently. For the most part, the ICAC, which again was a great Liberal initiative the Labor Party was dragged kicking and screaming to implement in South Australia, is a strong deterrent to corruption and maladministration, the likes of which we have seen much more prevalent in South Australia.

It is interesting that when we talk about corruption, except for these few isolated examples in South Australia we see it as largely a foreign idea. Again, that shows us why, in a state like South Australia and a place like Australia, we are truly grateful for the positive outcomes our constitutional monarchy and our democracy give us. Our strong institutions and the strong adherence to the rule of law that our citizens abide by we cannot take for granted. For instance, when we have a system, such as we have in Australia—a wonderful constitutional monarchy—if the system is working, we should not mess with it, but we also should not take it for granted. With that, I commend the motion and look forward to supporting it.

The Hon. J.R. RAU (Enfield—Deputy Premier, Attorney-General, Minister for Justice Reform, Minister for Planning, Minister for Housing and Urban Development, Minister for Industrial Relations, Minister for Child Protection Reform) (11:44): I know that others want to speak on this, so I will not take up too much time. I think that all of us have seen instances of corruption overseas, and we read about them in the newspaper, and, quite frankly, in many cases they are sickening, and I agree with the remarks about Zimbabwe, and there are countless places around the world where in fact corruption is so endemic that the system itself, from top to bottom, is corrupt, and thank God we do not live in that sort of place

However, that said, in Australia we have had uncomfortable experiences of corruption. I could, for example, refer to the period during which the Bjelke-Petersen regime was operating in Queensland and all the notorious goings on there with people like Top Level Ted, I think he used to call himself, and other members of the white shoe brigade, and large brown paper bags being moved around.

Likewise in New South Wales and that enormously expensive reality TV show funded by the New South Wales taxpayer called ICAC in New South Wales, which, aside from achieving nothing by way of convicting anybody of anything, regularly trots people out and goes through a ritualised form of public humiliation for the entertainment of the news media. But, again, it does point to some very bad behaviour by government officials, and the question I would like to ask members of the parliament is this: what particular theme in common have most scandals in this country that have involved public officials or members of parliament? What is the feature they have in common?

I thought about this for some time, and the golden thread that runs through most of these stories, back to the time of the land boom in Victoria when at the time the premier's name, perhaps ironically, was Bent, back then it was always about land deals—the preferring of some people over others. What is the characteristic of land deals? Madam Deputy Speaker, I will tell you what it is. When you change the use of a particular piece of land from one thing to another—

Members interjecting:

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. J.R. RAU: I am talking about corruption, I don't know about you. What you do when you do that—

Mr PENGILLY: Point of order, ma'am.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: The member for Finniss has a point of order.

Mr PENGILLY: This is the subject of a bill that is being debated in another place and it has been through this place. We are waiting for it to come back. Surely, it is out of order.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: I think it is a general observation.

The Hon. J.R. RAU: Thank you very much. What is it that happens when you transform a land use from use A to use B? Let me pick an example at random.

Mr Duluk: Mount Barker.

The Hon. J.R. RAU: Let me pick an example. When you rezone something from a paddock in which you grow potatoes—

Mr Knoll: Gillman!

The Hon. J.R. RAU: —to, let's say—

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! Just sit down for a minute. I know it is Thursday, and I know we have a bit of deja vu with our favourite speaker on his feet on Thursday, but the dignity of the house does require members to observe standing order 142—and we should.

The Hon. J.R. RAU: Madam Deputy Speaker, I appreciate your assistance. As I was saying, my little example, we are getting a paddock which has potatoes in it and it is worth a $1,000, say, a hectare, and then somebody with a magic pen—and at the moment that somebody is the minister—decides that it is not going to be potatoes anymore, it is going to be brick veneer something or other as far as the eye can see, and what happens to that land? It goes from being $1,000 a hectare to $100,000 a hectare.

So, characteristic No. 1 is huge windfall profits for whomever it is who happens to be in charge of the land at that point in time. There is a second part: huge costs to whom? The answer is: the taxpayer, the taxpayer of the future beyond the forward estimates, who gets to foot the bill for putting all the services in there and all the other services, like schools and hospitals and public transport and all those things. So that is the characteristic.

As it so happens, if we are really serious about corruption, we should be thinking about that and we should be doing something about that and, as a matter of interest, what we should have is the Minister for Planning being prepared to say to the people of South Australia, 'I don't think it is appropriate for me to have the power to do that sort of thing. I want to give that power back to the parliament so you can all see what is happening, and so nothing happens behind closed doors in my office. Nothing like that should happen in my office behind closed doors; it should happen here where everyone can see what is going on.' That is what I would do if I was the minister and, as it turns out, I am. So, I say to those opposite that the Libs are squibs on corruption. I will say that again: the Libs are squibs on corruption.

Mr GARDNER: Point of order.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! Sit down. Member for Morialta.

Mr GARDNER: I take offence at that.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Yes, I think you will probably not want to say that.

The Hon. J.R. RAU: Okay, I won't say that again.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: No, you will not want to say it.

Mr GARDNER: Withdraw.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! You won't want to say it, will you? The member for Morialta has taken offence, so you won't really want to say that, will you?

The Hon. J.R. RAU: Well, look, if he has taken offence, I withdraw it. In my time, a 'squib' was a reference for a rather small firecracker one had on Guy Fawkes Day and it was compared with the big ones which were penny bungers and thrupenny bungers. Anyway, let me come back to the point. What I would like to say is this: I have listened in here several times to the member for Hartley pontificate about the high moral ground and the principles and so forth about issues like corruption.

What I would invite the member for Hartley to do when he next has the meeting of that committee he is on—the Crime and Public Integrity Policy Committee—is to say to the committee, 'I'm so concerned about this corruption business with land, why don't we ask the commissioner, Mr Lander, to come down here and talk to us about what he thinks about this?' Why don't they do that? I invite the member for Hartley, and any of his colleagues who might be listening, that they should do that, see what he says about it, and then we will find out—is Janus-faced an unparliamentary reference? I am just checking before I use it.

Mr Gardner: It would be imputing improper motive.

The Hon. J.R. RAU: I see. I will say this: that it is all very well to come in here and talk tough about corruption: it is quite another thing when there is something you can do about it and you do nothing.

The Hon. T.R. KENYON (Newland) (11:52): I will speak on this motion very briefly, just to point out that the absence of corruption has allowed many economies to flourish. It has allowed merit-based economy, as much as it is, to flourish and allowed the best ideas and the most entrepreneurial spirit to flourish, along with a whole lot of other things like regulatory regimes and everything. But no regulatory regime is worth anything unless it is well administered. Two of the key components of good administration of a regulatory regime are, first, competence, and, secondly, lack of corruption.

What I would like to point out is that one of the greatest gifts to Western society and Western civilisations is that Western civilisations are largely—not exclusively or not entirely—corruption free and that is one of the great reasons why Western economies have done so well. There are a lot of other reasons. It is not a simple thing and it is obviously very complicated like most things, but one of the reasons for the predominance of Western economies over the last 200 or 300 years has been an absence of corruption or a relative absence of corruption.

You have seen other economies rise and then fall. The Chinese economy, for instance, was doing very well in recent years but they have a corruption problem and that brings with it misallocation of resources. It brings with it all of those things that are now showing up in the Chinese economy, and that they are struggling to deal with. To his credit, the new Chinese Premier—Xi Jinping, I think it is—is working his way through that issue and he is cracking down on corruption in a way that no other Chinese leader has in recent times, and that is bringing its own pain to the ruling class of China. He does not seem to be using this anticorruption, as far as people can see, as a tool for the repression of his political opponents. It is a genuine anticorruption drive and it is having an effect. In fact, in some ways it is having an effect on the South Australian economy because they are not splurging on wine and other gifts that they may have previously. That may not necessarily be good for us in the short term, but it will be in the longer term because a well functioning Chinese economy that is free of corruption will have its own benefits.

The importance of this day, International Anti-Corruption Day, to the world economy, the Australian economy, working and poor people in general, is an absence of corruption. As I said, it is one of the great gifts of Western society that we have a relatively corruption free economy, and that should be applauded.

Mr DULUK (Davenport) (11:55): I was not planning to speak to this motion but I do commend this motion to the house. As the member for Newland touched on, one of the keystones to ensuring a corruption free society and the rule of law is property rights. Property rights started in our system of government back in 1215 with the Magna Carta and King John and the rights of the English barons at the time to engage in property rights without the subject and the authority of the Crown. As the member for Newland touched on, it is property rights that are transforming China. In Eastern Europe there is no doubt it was property rights that fuelled the downfall of the Soviet Union: people's desire for freedom, for ownership, for free speech and political discourse.

Getting back to property rights, the quarter acre block is the great Australian dream and has underscored our democracy and relatively corruption free society in South Australia and Australia. Property rights started in South Australia under the British system with the Torrens title. The importance for Australians and South Australians to be able to buy their own property, buy their own castle, is extremely important. We should not see that right being denied. Any legislation or any move by any parliament that would deny the Australian dream, I think, is one which would be a retrograde step. I support this motion. The more we can do in this parliament, including defending property rights and the right to free speech, will lead to a less corrupt society overall.

Mr ODENWALDER (Little Para) (11:57): I want to thank members for their contributions to this debate. First of all, the Attorney-General for his calm and considered contribution, straying a little off topic, arguably, but always interesting. I largely agree with the words of the members for Schubert, Newland and Davenport. It goes without saying, really, that sustainable development, transparency of process, democracy and property rights go hand in hand. I am not sure that the quarter acre block underscores our democratic system, that might be over-egging the pudding a little bit, member for Davenport, but I certainly agree that those four things, along with free speech, go hand in hand to providing the best way of life for the citizens of the world. I commend this motion to the house and I thank all members for their contributions.

Motion carried.