MARK DREYFUS MP

The Morrison Government must stop making excuses and introduce legislation to better protect journalists and whistleblowers.

Sex crimes against children are abhorrent. Children are the most precious and vulnerable members of our community. They require and deserve our protection and support. The debate about this bill should be about one thing and one thing only how best to protect and support children. This should not be a topic for scoring political points.

There are now very serious questions in the Liberal Party about the Member for Chisholm, and about the Prime Minister's extremely poor judgment in the way he has sought to dismiss these allegations by insisting that there's nothing to see, and then resorting to the race card when even his own party room abandoned him.

Time's up.

Labor and the Australian public know that our nation needs a national integrity commission.

Time's up for the Morrison Government to get their priorities right, and work with us to make that happen

The first immediate political challenge to reform is to ensure that Scott Morrison and his Government understand that the Fourth Estate is a foundation of all healthy democracies, including ours.

Ensuring that all Australians are able to have their legal rights upheld is especially important for families and children under threat of violence, to the victims of financial fraud and other crimes perpetrated against them by banks and other large companies, to Indigenous Australians and communities, to the sick, to the elderly, to rural Australians who don't have easy access to lawyers or to the courts, to our new arrivals, and yes to those accused of serious crimes.

Labor strongly agrees that farmers and those in other agricultural businesses should not be subject to intimidating and unlawful actions by activists trespassing on their land.

This government is not serious about integrity or tackling corruption. If they were, they would establish a National Integrity Commission now.

It should be a matter of great concern to all Australians that the now-Member for Chisholm, the Treasurer of Australia and the Liberal Party sought to mislead Chinese-speaking Australian voters with their shamefully deceitful signs.

This Liberal government should focus on putting its own house in order before it lectures others on matters of integrity, because this Liberal Party has an uneasy relationship with the concept of integrity.