The Palmer United Party senator Dio Wang will attempt to amend the Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC) bill to create a national corruption body, similar to the New South Wales Independent Commission Against Corruption (Icac).

The Turnbull government will present a bill to reinstate the ABCC as its first piece of legislation this year when parliament resumes on Tuesday.

The Senate blocked the legislation last year but the employment minister, Michaelia Cash, is hoping to use the secret sixth volume of the Trade Union Royal Commission report to convince senate crossbenchers to support the building industry watchdog.

Labor and the Greens will not have access to the confidential briefings, which, according to the government, must remain secret to protect witnesses named in the report.

But Wang is in the process of drafting an amendment to broaden the legislation to create a federal corruption commission, although he has yet to discuss the proposal with the government.

“Obviously the current situation with the building and construction industry is quite daunting given that the royal commission has made some serious findings,” Wang told Guardian Australia.



“But also there is corruption anywhere and everywhere so a national Icac would be a really good authority to deal with it.”

He said the ABCC approach was too narrow and there was a need for a federal corruption body to focus not just on unions but on public officials, politicians and white-collar crime.

“Given the royal commission has done its work and the government has had two or three years talking about this issue, I think it’s the right time,” he said. “We have enough momentum to talk about a national Icac now.”



The government needs six of the eight senate crossbenchers to pass the ABCC bill. If it is rejected again by the Senate, it provides another potential trigger for a double-dissolution election.



Asked whether the government would consider using the issue for a double dissolution, Cash said: “That is a thing that the PM would obviously need to authorise himself but certainly we have said we will take both of these policies to the next election whether that be sooner or later. We are prepared to go back to the Australian people as we did in 2013.”

The independent senator John Madigan also called on the Turnbull government to take a broader approach to corruption but would not comment on the federal corruption commission proposal until he had seen more details.

“When constituents approach me complaining of corruption, unfair practices and unconscionable conduct their complaints inevitably relate to their treatment at the hands of banks, financial planners, lawyers, accountants, valuers, doctors, builders, major supermarket chains or government departments,” he said.

“Not once has a constituent approached me to complain that they were ripped off by their union, yet this seems to be the government’s exclusive focus.”

Madigan said that illegal activities needed to be “stamped out” but criticised the Turnbull government’s approach as having “more than a whiff of ideology about it”.

He said if the government’s ABCC bill was aimed at corruption across the board he would sign up tomorrow.

“It is not just a happy coincidence for the Coalition that [Dyson] Heydon’s report appeared at the beginning of an election year,” he said.

“This gives it ammunition to, firstly, pressure the Senate to pass anti-union laws it previously rejected and, secondly, to fight an election campaign on this issue against an opponent it hopes will be sullied through its association with the union movement.”

The independent senator Jacqui Lambie told the ABC she would not support the ABCC bill while the government was considering making cuts to Medicare.

And the Liberal Democratic senator David Leyonhjelm wants to place an eight-year sunset clause on the legislation so it does not stay on the statute books indefinitely.

When the Greens tried to introduce a bill to establish a federal commission against corruption in 2014, Coalition senators argued the current multi-agency approach was sufficient to fight corruption while Labor senators argued that it was “premature”.

At the federal Labor conference last year, a former party vice-president, Tony Sheldon, who is the national secretary of the Transport Workers Union, included a motion for a federal Icac but it was taken down at the last minute.

At that time, the shadow special minister of state, Gary Gray, echoed the Coalition by saying the existing agencies were already working.

