We Demand a National Corription Commission

In calling a double dissolution election over the reintroduction of the ABCC, the Turnbull Government has demonstrated that it is just as obsessed with unions as the Abbott Government before it. 

This focus on so-called union corruption is a blinding obsession for Turnbull and his cronies. For it seems to have obscured their vision of the endemic corruption in the corporate and political worlds, including within their own ranks.

Barely a week goes by without yet another startling revelation of corruption, tax evasion or bribery. Yet the government continues to reject calls from cross-bench Senators, the Greens and the public for the ABCC to be broadened into an independent corruption commission, out of hand.

What are they hiding?

If they had nothing to hide, they would have nothing to fear from a national corruption commission.

But as we learned in March, cabinet secretary Arthur Sinodinos and the NSW Liberal Party have been slammed by the Electoral Commission for concealing the identities of major donors to the party. The electoral commission has withheld $4.4 million in funding to the Liberal Party until they comply and name their donors. They have not complied. Why?

Meanwhile the secret volume of the Trade Unions Royal Commission, the undisclosed contents of which have been used as justification for the reestablishment of the ABCC, have been exposed by Jacquie Lambie as an empty vessel.

And now we have banker-turned-Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull leading a protection racket on behalf of Australia’s big banks, desperate to shield them from a Royal Commission deemed “unnecessary” by the big end of town themselves.

Organised crime racket

In late March Fairfax Media and the Huffington Post reported on the global Unaoil scandal. A massive leak of emails and documents confirmed that billions of dollars of government contracts were awarded as a direct result of bribes paid on behalf of companies including Rolls-Royce, Halliburton, Samsung, Hyundai and Australia’s own Leighton Holdings.

This was followed in April by the biggest leak in history, the 11 million documents of the Panama Papers. This leak has exposed the hundreds of companies and individuals who use offshore accounts in tax havens to avoid tax, to launder money and to evade the laws of their home countries to engage in corrupt and illegal activities.

The scale of the corruption revealed is extraordinary and has implicated Australian companies Wilson Security, BHP and the owners of Citipower and Powercor, Cheung Kong Infrastructure.

The picture being painted by these leaks and revelations is that the financial services and corporate world is little more than an organised crime racket. Yet they remain utterly untouchable because they have bought and corrupted politics itself.

Mad as hell?

The calls for a National Independent Commission Against Corruption will only grow stronger as these revelations continue. Add your voice to the calls for an independent corruption commission by signing the ACTU’s petition: www.australianunions.org.au/national_icac