Albanese as bad as Morrison on integrity: Teal MPs and new report card slam Labor

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s decision to cut opposition staff and attempt to tighten freedom of information laws has earned his government a failing grade on transparency and spurred teal MPs to claim it is worse than the Morrison government on promoting integrity.

In a report card on Labor’s transparency record, the independent Centre for Public Integrity claimed the government had failed on six of seven fields: secrecy, jobs for mates, reining in lobbyists, parliamentary accountability, an independent public service and oversight of the executive branch of government.

The centre, which counts former judges and corruption busters on its board, said Labor had either ignored pressing problems or failed to go far enough in addressing them.

“This report card reveals significant integrity failures across a range of key areas. It is our hope that the government seizes the opportunity to correct course and deliver Australians the democracy with integrity that we were promised,” said the centre’s chair, Anthony Whealy, KC.

Teal MPs cited a similar range of failings as the report, including the government’s plan to start charging for more freedom of information requests and expand the grounds to refuse them. The report and MPs also took aim at the government’s refusal to disclose which lobbyists MPs let into Parliament House, and the long wait for the release of a major report into alleged cronyism in public appointments.

The CIP released research in July showing that Labor was going backwards from previous Coalition governments on how often it released public documents in full, either through freedom of information laws or Senate requests to release information. The CIP, which works closely with independent MPs, has occasionally had its work challenged by the major parties.

In September, Labor unveiled a proposal that would make Australians pay for access to government documents, which opposition leader Sussan Ley labelled a “truth tax” and the biggest attack on freedom of information laws in 15 years.

It is not clear if the Coalition will ultimately vote against Labor’s proposal, which the government claimed was driven by a spike in spurious requests made by artificial intelligence.

Climate 200-backed MPs, including Monique Ryan, Helen Haines, Andrew Wilkie and Nicolette Boele, chastised Labor’s transparency record.

“Some of us were here during the Morrison times and really it felt like we couldn’t go any lower than what we saw during that period,” Haines said. “But we have.”

“Suppressing transparency only increases distrust in our citizenry, and that’s the last thing we want when democracy in the free world is under attack.”

Scamps said: “The PM has come out and said he wants to be a defender of democracy, but then we see all these different things ... happening to our integrity infrastructure, so they’re not walking the talk when it comes to increasing integrity in our political system.”

After the May election, Albanese cut the number of staff working for the Coalition and several minor parties. The government has argued it also cut some of its own staff and could have cut harder in line with the opposition’s diminished numbers in parliament.

The prime minister’s office was contacted for comment.

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