Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the statement.

That was a very lengthy and detailed statement. One does wonder why it took a front page of The West Australian before the Attorney-General and the government fronted up on this. Why did it take the front page of the papers before the Attorney-General came into this chamber and told the truth about what happened in relation to the Bell litigation? Let us recall that this is not the first time that this matter has been raised in this parliament. There were questions in question time and questions before the legal and constitutional affairs committee about these matters and yet it took a weekend, the front page of the papers and, frankly, a lot of media concern about what has occurred to have the Attorney-General come in here.

I also make the point that the Attorney-General declined to comment over the weekend in response to the allegations, telling everybody, 'We don't comment on matters to which the Commonwealth is a party.' Well, he has certainly commented at length today. I wish a few more of his colleagues were in here to listen to his statement today, commenting at length on the litigation. The one thing you can say about that statement is it throws Joe Hockey under a bus. How convenient that you go after the bloke who cannot defend himself. How convenient that somehow it was all the bloke who has left. It was all him. All of this constitutional advice and this kerfuffle that Senator Brandis was involved in—all the discussions with lawyers and the Attorney-General from Western Australia—was actually all Joe's fault. It is very convenient.

I suppose the first question is: are you going to recall him? Are you going to recall him from our most important ally? He is the ambassador to the United States, our most important ally. That is our most important security and defence relationship. If you do not have confidence in him because he did a dirty deal, are you going to recall him? We wait to hear. How convenient.

Senator Cormann interjecting—

I will take that interjection from Senator Cormann. He said that we have not got much to say. Do not worry, we will be going through this statement very carefully and comparing it with what has been said in the Western Australian parliament because, as always with Senator Brandis, you have to look at what he does not say. You have to look at what he does not say. You have to look at all the careful things he says and does not say.

There were a couple of things he did not tell us about. One of them was why he put in place the direction to the Solicitor-General. If you look at the sequence of events—and I am sure my colleague Senator Watt will go to this—it is very interesting that it appears we have this dispute between ministers. There is discussion about how you put in place this political fix for a few hundred million dollars. What are a few hundred million dollars between friends anyway? It is very interesting that out of that appears the direction that requires Mr Justin Gleeson to get this bloke's permission before he acts for people, before he provides advice. Where was that in the statement? It was all of a sudden. Did it just come out of the ether?

The second point I want to make is in relation to the GST. We do not know yet what relevance the GST debate had to this political fix.