Should politicians be sacked if they’re found to have engaged in corrupt conduct, or breached a parliamentary code of conduct, if one is established?
New independent Kylea Tink suggests MPs should be expelled from Parliament, if necessary, if they’ve breached a parliamentary code of conduct — and breaches of that code would be assessed by the coming federal integrity body.
Integrity veteran Ian Temby disagress — he told Crikey’s David Hardaker only parliaments should have the power to expel MPs. Labor MP Kate Thwaites suggests the integrity body report to Parliament on breaches and let Parliament decide.
Thwaites at least acknowledges the clear problem with this — that a party with a majority simply won’t vote to expel its own MPs, especially not when parliamentary numbers are tight, which they have been in every Parliament but one since 2010. And even political opponents may be concerned about expelling an MP from the other side because of the precedent it might set for them.
The philosophy behind only Parliament being able to expel its members is that MPs are “employed” by voters, and only voters should therefore determine if an MP should continue to serve them. Given this can’t be done except through a byelection, politicians have decided that Parliament itself will stand in the stead of voters and determine if MPs should be expelled — something almost vanishingly rare.
It’s a classic case of the principal-agent problem: the agents (Parliament) responsible for representing the principals (voters) have a different agenda to the interests of voters, because Parliament is usually controlled by one party that wants to stay in power.
The result is that MPs are almost uniquely protected from the consequences of breaching the basic principles of workplace conduct. In most Australian workplaces now, harassment, bullying, sexual misconduct and even consensual relationships between people in different positions of power are regarded as sacking offences — joining rorting or otherwise misusing workplace funds, which have traditionally been seen as meriting dismissal.
Employers that refuse to sack someone found guilty of embezzling company funds would find shareholders in a rage; employers that declined to sack a workplace harasser or bully can now expect a torrent of negative publicity, interventions by key shareholders and demands for the board to resign.
But corporate Australia is now far in advance of parliaments, and especially the Commonwealth Parliament, where the most appalling rorting of taxpayer money for partisan ends, sexual harassment, bullying and sexual predation have all been ignored or covered up.
A parliamentary code of conduct that explicitly identified such behaviour as grounds for expulsion would only remain a code, a guideline, unless legislated, and unless enforced independently of political parties.
Let’s dump the fiction that politicians are somehow special, and carry some democratic anointment that protects them from having to face the consequences of their actions. Parliament should be a workplace like any other in Australia — if you break the rules, you pay the price, up to and including losing your job.
Once upon a time Politicians had a moral compass, which enabled them to resign from parliament,
when they had done something wrong. No more todays politicians have no such moral compass.
A “moral compass” is more likely to come into play when it is most evident in the parliamentary leadership. Neither Abbott nor Morrison showed evidence of having such a compass. Malcolm Turnbull tried, which was one reason he was rolled.
Howard tried to enforce standards early on in his reign, but lost MPs by the handful, and the Coalition hasn’t had a taste for it since.
That’s fascinating, I’ve heard Howard deliberately altered/stopped following the ‘code’ previously followed because he lost so many MP’s in the first term. Would love to know the story from the inside.
How the timing of that with Timor? Might have been worried about being in a glass house…
Plus a huge supply of hypocrisy, nastiness and incompetence
Given the most “godly” of the nation’s conservative politicians are the most morally deficient it appears to be a prerequisite to for them to park their compass’ at the door once they become a federal politician.
Am sure Howard’s would have barely filled a thimble, and the combined Morrison’s government moral compass would have had so much room let over on a head of pin they would have sublet the empty space to a trucking company
It’s time the AEC were given powers to vet all candidates who wish to stand for parliament. If an individual hasn’t shown a moral compass, ethics or integrity in their life then they have no business trying to represent a constituency. (this has nothing to do with position in society or education. There are plenty of decent folk who would make brilliant representives.) Political parties as well as individuals need to be accountable. It’s time to clean up politics. It’s not hard, we just need the will and some spine.
Any person representing the public should be automatically sacked if they have been found to have breached the integrity code. Leaving it to politicians to decide is akin to leaving a fox in charge of the hen house. Who will sack the fox?
In a democracy it’s up to the people to decide who will represent them, surely that’s not too hard to understand?
Sure, have the AEC “vet” people and have the information freely available, but at the end of the day, elected representatives are fundamentally different to other positions – they are selected by the people as their representatives and the people have the right to select total ratbags if they so choose.
In Britain, over the last decade or three, several local councils have been graced with representatives of the Monster Raving Loony party.
Like Ricky Muir, Jacqui Lambie and the Greens in general most have proven to be sufficiently effective to be re-elected.
Not sure about the Greens. They get re-elected because enough people are stupid enough to vote for the Green Party (just like rusted-on voters of the majors). Lambie, Patrick, et al are re-elected because they honestly do try to represent what the voter actually wants/needs.
Re your evaluation of Greens voters – citation required.
Agreed, only if the candidate has been up front and declared themselves a ratbag, many politicians don’t reveal their true colours until they have been elected.
I’d be happy to outlaw public lying, but it’d have to apply to everyone, not just pollies.
I agree – look at the corporates it is ingrained – the recent spate of Royal Commissions uncovered the tip of the iceberg
Pretty sure the machinations of the NSW/Fed Liberals over pre-selections is a glaring example of candidates being pushed on the people, not chosen by them. If vested interested are involved in stacking branches for particular candidates, the process is skewed from the start. The best aren’t put forward, just the most malleable to the vested interest.
Yes, politicians may once have demonstrated they had more of a moral compass – and the public expected them to have one. For me this dilemma shows the gaping holes in the pre-selection process for (the major) parties, and the apparent lack of ascertaining that candidates are really ‘fit and proper’ persons to be representing an electorate. Politicians now consider politics is a career. If that’s the case then they should be obliged to adhere to employment standards that are normal for every other workplace. The entire system needs a complete review, and a code of conduct established for all MPs of whatever persuasion. Bad and/or inappropriate behaviour that wouldn’t be tolerated anywhere else in a workplace shouldn’t be condoned in our parliament. If it is then there should be an option to boot them out. These people are supposedly role models for our young people. Currently too many of them fail on several levels, and it reflects badly on the country, never mind themselves.
what preselection processes – you mean the Party appointment process – lot of process no substance
You hit the nail, so to speak. People now think of politics as a career. Best way to disabuse them of that notion is to restrict them to two terms maximum, unless a party leader, in which case three terms. US Presidents are limited to two terms, so it can be done.
There’s a lot of truth in all that, but also some failures of reasoning. All that Keane says about employers anywhere else facing heavy criticism if they don’t act when employees go rogue does not help when the so-called employers of MPs – that is, the voters – are not really employers except by a rough and inaccurate analogy. Voters are not getting an employee, they are collectively appointing a representative. They do not have any recourse to the typical methods of disciplining an employee. Voters only have elections, and they can only act against a sitting MP if that MP chooses to stand for re-election. It’s not much of a sanction. But some proposed solutions are worse.
If somebody else removes the voter’s representative without the consent of the voters it is obviously denying the voters their will in picking their representative. We have already seen some of this nonsense with Tony Abbott’s absurd hysteria during the Gillard government about the ‘tainted votes’ of some MPs. Abbott was ignoring the fact that the vote exercised by an MP is not the personal property of that MP. The vote is held and exercised on behalf of the constituency. No matter how atrocious the MP and the MP’s conduct may be, the vote must be recognised or else all the voters in that constituency no longer have any say or any representation.
If the proposed federal integrity commission can sack MPs it really will be the kangaroo court the Morrison Gang liked to moan and wail about. Even if somebody else gets the power to remove MPs there will be a great risk of it either being abused, or a perception it is being abused. What government would not relish the power to get rid of MPs it regards as trouble, or at least the coercive power of that threat? What lengths might a government go to get its hands on that power? We all know how the Liberals have shamelessly made political appointments to bodies that are required to be independent. How long would they resist the temptation to stack the appointments to a body that can sack MPs?
This issue come back to something I’ve commented on before. Picking MPs by elections inevitably results in parties dominating the elections and the parliament and that’s the source of these problems and many more. If MPs were simply picked a random from the whole adult population of citizens, similar to a jury, we would have a representative parliament free of the corrupting influence of parties. It would also be a parliament likely to enforce proper standards on its members because there would be no party loyalties over-riding all other considerations.
There is a valid case for treating MPs as employers in respect of their staff. All the rules that apply to other workplaces should be equally applicable in this respect. The way MPs run their offices should be independently regulated and inspected; any breaches of employment law should be subject to enforcement. Any MPs not running their offices properly and not ensuring their staff are safe and treated with respect should not have any staff. Those MPs could instead have access to APS personnel who report to APS managers under normal APS rules.
Unfortunately MPs were picked like juries then the public service would effectively run the country and Parliament would be a rubber stamp – on reflection, isn’t that the case now?
I have not the faintest idea how you come to that conclusion.
Yep, it’s far too risky. Don’t want to throw the baby out with the bath water! As you say “What government would not relish the power to get rid of MPs it regards as trouble, or at least the coercive power of that threat? What lengths might a government go to get its hands on that power? We all know how the Liberals have shamelessly made political appointments to bodies that are required to be independent. How long would they resist the temptation to stack the appointments to a body that can sack MPs?”
Maybe its time for a participatory democracy where the representative can be immediately recalled and replaced by the people that they actually represent. We have the technology to do this, the only thing we lack is a political party that is willing to intentionally give up power to increase the voice of the Australian people
How silly, Bernard.
Parliamentarians aren’t “employed” by us, they are democratic representatives. Codes of conduct could easily be manipulated to keep out “undesirable” political views.
Let the electorate sack a representative they don’t like at an election.
True, but there does need to be some means of removing a disgraced MP between elections. Sometimes waiting for the next election can mean waiting too long. One example would be an MP who is found to be using taxpayer resources to run a business from his electorate office and refusing to represent the electorate. That’s extreme, but an MP who has been found to have behaved badly could still sit at home until next election day collecting his salary because people “yell nasty things at him in public”.
Perhaps we could have a recall system similar to that in California?
I sort of agree because of the danger the cure is worse than the disease, but the electorate can only ‘sack’ an MP at an election if the MP chooses to stand for re-election. Even then, not re-electing the MP only removes the MP’s opportunity to continue whatever the MP was doing wrong and does not amount to any penalty or sanction on past behaviour. And when deciding which MP to vote for, even when the voters are paying close attention they are still often not given relevant information about candidates, such as their financial interests, their other jobs and much more, so there is little chance to spot a bad ‘un before they are elected.
If the pollie has broken the law, they can be subject to the law just like anyone else, without being removed from office.
As Bolivar, above, suggests, a recall system would seem to be a good approach to rotten behaviour – perhaps even with the AEC or parliament having a role in forcing a bye-election in which the sitting MP had to re-contest the seat.
The main thing is, the will of the voters should remain supreme. If they want to vote for an unethical, rotten ratbag, that’s their prerogative. Any criminal wrongdoing can be addressed through the justice system, the same as for any citizen.
Agree entirely that because an MP is appointed by voters it is only those voters who should remove the MP. My main point was your reference to ‘sacking’ an MP at an election. As things are, that is a false description. For a start it assumes the MP is seeking re-election. And then because the MP has already come to the end of the previous term, the MP is not in post so cannot any longer be removed from it. The only question is whether the MP gets re-appointed. If I complete a fixed-term contract and do not get another contract I have not been sacked. In a smilar way, there cannot be any question of voters ever sacking an MP.
If there was a power of recall for sitting MPs it might be a step in the right direction. There should also be robust standards of conduct with some way of applying serious sanctions to MPs who are found to transgress, so long as these sanctions do not interfere with the right of voters to be represented by their choice.
My use of “sack” was not meant to be so precise! I just meant if people don’t like their rep, they can not vote them in again.
As far as sanctions for transgression – if MPs break the law, they, like all citizens, should be punished. By law.
If a transgression isn’t bad enough to be against the law, then it shouldn’t be bad enough for some non-democratic method of removal.
Fair enough. Several comments here have mentioned the law as a method of removing of removing the worst cases. It could work, but let’s remember that investigating criminal cases is the job of the AFP, which has never shown the slightest interest in bringing ministers to account. If such a case comes up it might first spend months or years with the proposed integrity commission before it gets passed to the police. If the AFP persuades itself to do its job for once it will still be unlikely to get a brief of evidence to the DPP in less than another two or three years; it is appalling how long it takes. Then it will have to go to court, which takes time since the courts are desperately clogged up, and if there’s a conviction there will almost certainly be appeals, so maybe another two or three years.
Let’s not be too hopeful about the criminal law saving us from bent politicians. They will be long gone from parliament before the law catches up.
If a politician breaks the law seriously enough the Constitution will get rid of them. Perhaps section 44 could be expanded to include lesser bad behaviour.
Well, sort of. We have a rather poor set of laws in this area with big gaps so many sorts of bad conduct are still legal. Allegations are investigated by the AFP, which has shown a marked reluctance to go anywhere near serious enforcement against politicians and almost never against government ministers, and then prosecutions must be approved by the DPP, which takes much the same view as the AFP. Even when all this works, it typically takes several years to get a verdict in a serious criminal case, and then there are often appeals, by which time it might be moot because the MP has probably moved on to better things long ago, cashing in all the lovely opportunities that the more self-serving retiring politicians expect.
So let’s put it this way:
“If a politician
breaksis convicted of breaking the law seriously enough and so quickly that the politician is still in parliament, the Constitution will get rid of them.”