Janet Rice (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the need for a royal commissioner to appear to be unprejudiced and impartial, which is clearly an important thing. What we are debating today goes to the very heart of the integrity of our legal system—that justice should not only be done, but should be seen to be done. To quote a 2011 judgement in British American Tobacco Australia Services Limited and Laurie:

It is fundamental to the administration of justice that the judge be neutral.

Those words are very applicable today, as they come from Justice Dyson Heydon during his time as a justice of the High Court of Australia. The principle applies to judges, tribunal members, and, yes, royal commissioners. It is crucial to maintaining public confidence in the system.

Let us look at some facts here. The Trade Union Royal Commission was established in 2014 by the Abbott government. The same Liberal government appointed former Justice Heydon as the royal commissioner. Under the watch of Commissioner Heydon, the commission has investigated the operations of the Liberal Party's political opponents. In April 2014, there was an email exchange between Mr Heydon and the organisers of the Sir Garfield Barwick lecture in which the connections between the event and the Liberal Party were spelled out. The invitation promoting Heydon's appearance clearly said:

Cheques should be made payable to the Liberal Party of Australia.

And

…all proceeds from this event will be applied to state election campaigning.

Let us put aside our opinion of whether the royal commissioner is in fact biased; it is the appearance of bias that is important here.

The royal commission certainly appears to be politically motivated. It comes as the party of WorkChoices has waged an attack on people's rights at work. This royal commission was meant to lay the groundwork for further attacks on things like penalty rates. The royal commissioner has got to be considered alongside the government's other attacks on trade unions—the attempts yesterday to reintroduce the ABCC, the attempt yesterday to tie unions up in red tape. This is the context of the appearance of bias.

The event in question, the Sir Garfield Barwick lecture, is clearly a partisan event. It is a New South Wales Liberal Party fundraiser. Then we find out that Mr Heydon—himself a Rhodes scholar—was on the panel that gave the Rhodes scholarship to one Mr Tony Abbott. David Mann has written one jibe at the time was that the scholarship was given to a second-grade footballer, third-rate academic and fourth-class politician. What should happen now?

As Justice Heydon said in 2002:

The law compels judges who have such a bias or may reasonably be thought to have such a bias to disqualify themselves from sitting on cases.

Let us now look at the words of Attorney-General George Brandis:

The political impartiality of the commission [has] been fatally compromised.

That was not about this case; that was about the Australian Human Rights Commission President, Gillian Triggs. Imagine if Ms Triggs had attended a fundraiser for one of the parties opposed to this government? Imagine the calls from the government for the commissioner to step down. Similarly, if a judge was discovered to be raising money for the prosecution, there would be a mistrial and the case would be over. That is what has to happen here. Any pretence of independence of the trade union royal commission is now gone. The royal commission must be immediately terminated.

We have got to stop this tit-for-tat pushing of party political agendas. Australians do not want this government to operate in this he-said she-said manner. We have got to get back to a situation where people have trust in government and trust in the impartiality, particularly of royal commissions. Royal commissions sit there at the pinnacle of our system of inquiries. It is absolutely critical that they are held above reproach, at the highest levels of community regard. They have got to be impeccable otherwise there is such a corrosive influence on the public's assessment of the impartiality of royal commissions and of government itself. The government must put politics aside and focus on governing.