South Australian independent Senator Rex Patrick has kicked off his election campaign with a call for a major integrity overhaul of federal Parliament, laying out a long list of reforms to improve both parliamentary conduct and improve integrity in federal politics.
“Parliament has operated like a private club, organised by and run in the interests of the big political parties,” Patrick said, noting that federal Parliament “now lags far behind most state and territory parliaments in terms of the enactment of codes of conduct for MPs, ethics standards and key accountability mechanisms”.
In fact federal Parliament has the fewest integrity and anti-corruption protections of any jurisdiction in Australia and the worst transparency laws.
Patrick’s list starts with a serious federal integrity commission — now off the agenda of the Coalition — that would hold public hearings. He also wants a legislated code of conduct for MPs and senators, backed by a parliamentary ethics commissioner empowered to provide advice to individual MPs and the Parliament as a whole on the implementation and compliance with the code of conduct and any other ethical questions that relate to the duties and responsibilities of parliamentarians.
Patrick also wants publication of ministerial diaries, with diaries and appointment lists to be regularly tabled in Parliament (with only national security exemptions), as well as a lobbyist register for every lobbyist with access to Parliament House, along with which parliamentarian has sponsored their parliamentary pass. And political fundraising events would be banned from Parliament House, ending the tradition of budget-night and budget-reply-night fundraisers.
As an independent, Patrick is keen to curb the influence of the executive in Parliament by expanding question time and cutting government member questions to one-third of allowed questions, and forcing House of Representative ministers to attend Senate estimates hearings.
Evidently reflecting his frustration at the way the government has refused to answer questions on notice, he also proposes a 14-day deadline for all questions on notice and financial penalties for non-compliance. Patrick also wants an end to the major parties being able to block private members’ bills, with a requirement that private members’ and senators’ bills must be voted on within a fixed period.
Patrick also proposes stronger reporting requirements for the financial interests of MPs and wants the Register of Members and Senators’ Interests to be fully digitised, making it easily searchable (currently it’s only available in PDF form on the Parliament House website).
Patrick faces a tough reelection in South Australia with his one-time boss Nick Xenophon returning to politics, possibly at his expense. Patrick has been a strong advocate for greater transparency since arriving in the Senate in late 2017, and probably Parliament’s most assiduous user of freedom of information laws to ferret out embarrassing information.
