05:32

The attorney general, Christian Porter, has done a press conference defending the government’s decision to support a motion calling for an anti-corruption body while it still has no plan to create one.

Porter said the motion only asked the Coalition “do you support a thing, and the thing is given a label”. He noted there are 13 federal bodies that deal with corruption issues, including the Australian Commission for Law Enforcement Integrity, which Porter says is “in effect Australia’s national integrity commission”.

Porter said the government was concerned the bar for corruption in the crossbench bill was set so low it could result in corruption findings against public servants for “administrative irregularities”:

Based on that trigger definition, applying the most extreme coercive powers that exist anywhere in Australia on the lowest conceivable definition of corruption, we consider it is utterly unworkable.”

Porter warned that corruption findings could have “retrospective application” and predicted the legislation would result in politicisation of the complaints process.



Despite Labor offering bipartisan support for an anti-corruption body in January, Porter could only give an undertaking that a cabinet process is underway, with no concrete timetable for delivery. Nor does he rule out just combining existing anti-corruption functions.



This is the closest we got to a commitment:

