Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Finance) Share this | Hansard source

I'm not sure if this motion has been circulated, so it's probably best to read it. I move:

That pursuant to section 376 of the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918, the House of Representatives refer the following questions to the Court of Disputed Returns:

(1) whether, by reason of s44(i) of the Constitution, the place of the Member for Batman (Mr Feeney) has become vacant;

(2) if the answer to Question (a) is "yes", by what means and in what manner that vacancy should be filled;

(3) what directions and other orders, if any, the Court should make in order to hear and finally dispose of this reference; and

(4) what, if any, orders should be made as to the costs of these proceedings.

In moving that motion, I make clear that, as part of the disclosure process that we set up, there was a clear expectation that documentation would be provided. In the process of that disclosure, the member for Batman was in a position where he was able to refer to documents that he believed existed but was not able to produce them. I made clear that, when we got to the point of dealing with referrals, I would be moving—at his request, I might add—that the matter be referred to the High Court. When you enter a disclosure regime, the expectation is that full disclosure will occur, and in this case, by the time we got to deal with the debate, it could not be.

I would flag that I believe this is the only matter before the House that can be legitimately referred to as a self-referral. There are still a number of issues that members on different sides of the House have with respect to other individual members. If the government wants to come to the table in the manner in which was suggested by the crossbench, the opposition is certainly willing to try to find a way in which we can have a resolution that can refer a number of people to the satisfaction of the concerns in the public, that will go through this House in a fairly swift way and that will allow the High Court to do the job that we all have expectations it will do—we just have different people we're expecting it of.

But this one is different. This one is a self-referral. The only reason it's being moved by me rather than the member for Batman himself is that the resolution said that I'm the one to move it; therefore I am. But it was very much at his instigation that he came to me and made clear that he had not been able to meet the standards required in time. While he continues to search for relevant documents in a disclosure process, there was a deadline yesterday—where they're debating it now—and the matter should be referred to the High Court.

See this speech in context