Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Education, Apprenticeships and Training) Share this | Hansard source

The key point made by the member for Isaacs in relation to this matter of public importance is that it is outrageous for the parliament to be considering the matters to do with the member for Dobell. I would point the member for Isaacs to one of his own very respected and senior colleagues in past parliaments, Senator Robert Ray, from his own state of Victoria, who, when matters were being raised in 1997 to do with another person in another place, wrote to Peter Reith, at that stage the Leader of the House. He said in that letter:

… your intervention is an affront to the principle that there is no authority superior to Parliament in the determination of its own procedures and actions. Indeed, an earlier Speaker of the House of Representatives has relevantly observed that there is no authority superior to Parliament which could arrogate to itself the power to appoint any commission or other tribunal to invade the sphere of Parliamentary jurisdiction in the conduct and direction of its own business.

In other words, the parliament had every right in 1997, as it does today, to consider, vote upon and deal with the matters to do with the member for Dobell. It is simply a convenience put forward by the member for Isaacs in this debate today to try to continue the racket that has surrounded the member for Dobell for a very long time in this place to stop him from being held to account for bringing the parliament into disrepute.

On 9 September last year, the member for Dobell told the Australian, 'I will make a comprehensive statement in the near future.' Eight months ago the member for Dobell indicated that he would make a statement to the parliament in relation to what at that stage were allegations—now findings of fact by Fair Work Australia that have engulfed him. After many attempts to get him to do so—all opposed by the Prime Minister, the Labor caucus and, until two weeks ago, the members for Lyne, Melbourne and New England, voting again and again in this place—he gave a statement yesterday. He was given one hour to justify himself. The opposition was not given even one minute to test his claims. But he did not give a comprehensive statement. He gave a statement that was an exercise in self-justification, blame-shifting and heaping of conspiracy upon conspiracy. His statement, to many, sounded like pure fantasy, an alibi for the Prime Minister, a fig leaf for what we all know to be true—that the Prime Minister failed to act until too late. By rejecting his vote in the caucus but accepting it in the parliament, she has exposed her own hypocrisy. While she is prepared to be judge and jury when it does not affect her, she will cling to her vote in this place because her No. 1 priority is in fact to hang onto power.

The member for Dobell's claim was that he was set up by a tormentor in the Health Services Union. For his story to be believed, the following must be true: his tormentor was able to break into his hotel room and use the hotel room, leaving undetected, on numerous occasions; his tormentor knew the code to his mobile phone and was able to use it moments after the member for Dobell made legitimate business calls and get it back to him moments before other legitimate business calls, without being detected; his tormentor stole his credit card and drivers licence from his home on the Central Coast, drove to Sydney, passed himself off as the member for Dobell, forged his signature, drove back to the Central Coast, broke back into the member for Dobell's home and put his credit card and drivers licence back into his wallet, and left undetected—

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