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

I am, Mr Acting Deputy Speaker. In order to be able to debate the MPI, in order to debate the importance of public confidence and public trust in the Australian parliament, we need to examine the believability of the statement the member for Dobell made yesterday. If it is found to be unbelievable, it goes to the second part of the MPI, which is about how the parliament should respond to the matters that are related to the member for Dobell. I thank the member for Lyne for putting the matter of public importance into debate today to give the opposition the first opportunity it has had to do so.

I continue. His tormentor was able to pull this off not just to purchase the services of escort agencies but also to purchase personal items such as running shoes; to dine at restaurants such as 41 in Sydney's CBD; to travel interstate and overseas; to hire staff to work on the Dobell election campaign in 2007; to pay for printing for the election campaign; to make $100,000 of cash withdrawals from ATMs; and otherwise to live the high life—all without the member for Dobell suspecting that there was something going on.

But if that is not enough to strain credulity, we need to suspend reality to believe that, in spite of the member for Dobell suspecting he was being set up, when each of the credit card statements was presented to him for payment he ignored the suspicions in the back of his mind that he was being set up and simply signed off on them being paid. That is odd, really. You would think that, if most people received their credit card statements and names like Miss Behaving escort agency appeared on them, it would cause them to pause before they signed off on the payment of such credit card invoices—not so the member for Dobell. It reminds me of the words of Jack Palance, from Ripley's Believe It or Not'believe it or not'. And the opposition does not believe it.

In the statement the member for Dobell made yesterday, which he claims to be a comprehensive statement, he left out some of the very key issues that this House has been questioning the government about for some time and that were clearly needing to be dealt with yesterday in his statement. He failed to explain to the House the finding of Fair Work Australia that he misused $457,000 of funds on all the other matters besides the escort agencies, that he dealt with yesterday. How does he account for the finding of Fair Work Australia that he advanced false and misleading evidence to the authority in that investigation? Did he receive a credit card from the printing firm employed by the Health Services Union for his own personal use that would amount to receiving a secret commission if true?

When did he receive the benefit of the payment of his legal fees from the New South Wales Labor Party and loans from the New South Wales Labor Party, and why were they not declared on the Register of Members' Interests until media inquiries were made about them? Why until recently has he declined to assist both the New South Wales and Victorian police with their inquiries into his own actions and the operations of the Health Services Union when he was its national secretary? On what basis did he claim to Mike Smith last year that $15,000 was repaid by a third party to the Health Services Union for unauthorised expenditure on escort services, a claim specifically refuted in the Fair Work Australia report?

These are the key issues that the member for Dobell failed to address in his statement yesterday. I and the opposition believe, as do the member for Lyne and other independents in this House, that these key issues need to be explained by the member for Dobell in a further statement to the House—a statement to the House that is genuinely comprehensive. He needs to not only cover the matters that he covered yesterday but deal explicitly with the questions that I have placed on the Hansard today in this matter of public importance. Until he does, this matter cannot be resolved. Until he does, the parliament still has a right, as outlined by Senator Robert Ray in 1997, to protect its own interests, its own integrity and the reputation of every member in this House.

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