Helen Haines says there have been "too many political scandals" to justify a Parliamentary committee's decision to reject a proposed national integrity bill.
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The bill was first introduced by Cathy McGowan during her time as Indi MP, reintroduced by the Greens and supported by cross-bench MPs.
But a committee of mostly Coalition and Labor members this week rejected the bill, which would have created a code of conduct for MPs and their staff, to be overseen by a parliamentary standards commissioner.
In its report, the committee stated there was not a strong argument to introduce a the code of conduct and in a democracy, politicians should be kept accountable by the voters.
"The best scrutiny mechanism for the conduct of parliamentarians is regular free and fair elections," the report stated.
"Parliamentarians are ultimately answerable to their constituents, not each other."
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But Dr Haines said voters in 2019 chose a government that had made a federal integrity commission an election promise.
"The voters have already spoken - they want this," she said.
"There are too many political scandals I could choose from to illustrate why we need this."
She said the "irony is breathtaking" that the government had chosen to not fulfill an election promise on integrity.
When Parliament returns at the end of August, the Indi MP will give formal notice of a new bill to again create a federal integrity commission.
"I hope it can stand as a constructive contribution to this debate, as a consensus bill that attracts the support of all my parliamentary colleagues," Dr Haines said.
"This year has shown us more than ever why we need trust in democracy.
"We must do this because our politics has never needed it more and we must do this because it is what we were elected to do."
Labor senators on the committees maintained their opposition to what they claimed was an "inadequate" bill, but issued a separate statement as part of the report, saying they were committed to a different national integrity commission.
"Labor senators do not believe that the solution to legitimate and well-founded public concerns about integrity in government is for parliamentarians to bury their heads in the sand and wait for those concerns to dissipate. They will not," they said.
"The impact of the COVID-19 on unprecedented government expenditure requires a high level of scrutiny in circumstances when sittings of Parliament have been scant at best."
