Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Manufacturing and Science) Share this | Hansard source

This matter of public importance is about accountability. We know that the greatest honour, other than being a member of this House or the other place, is to be a minister. It is a great honour. It's a great responsibility, because you hold great power—the power of the state and its agencies. We also know that parliament is the sentry to this extraordinary power. This is the heart of the Westminster system. The parliament reigns supreme. It is not just a tradition. It is not just a debating point. It exists in the Statement of Ministerial Standards. If you go to page 9 of this statement—and I recommend those opposite have a look at it—it says in clause 4.4:

Ministers are required to provide an honest and comprehensive account of their exercise of public office, and of the activities of the agencies within their portfolios, in response to any reasonable and bona fide enquiry by a member of the Parliament or a Parliamentary Committee.

Now, we know that what's actually happening in this building today is that we've got a minister who will do anything but turn up to the parliament and account for her actions and the actions of her office and her agencies.

You think about the consequences of this. I know some members opposite think about the consequences of this. This is more than just the life of one government. It's about the standards that ministers are held to in this parliament. It is an important standard. Instead, we have a minister presiding over this mess, setting out to get the Leader of the Opposition, setting out to get the unions and setting out to embroil the government in this witch-hunt. In the process, the minister is creating this omnishambles, which is now consuming the actions of this government. We know what an omnishambles is. For those opposite, I will give you the definition: it is a situation that has been comprehensively mismanaged, characterised by a string of blunders or miscalculations. What better way to describe a minister who misleads the Senate and misleads the estimates five times, and then has to come back into the Senate and say, 'Oh, actually, a member of my own staff tipped off the media as to a police raid on a union office.' Now, she's in hiding behind whiteboards. She is in witness protection!

We know that this is a deliberate strategy of the government because in The Sydney Morning Herald article on 19 December 2017, entitled 'The winners and losers of Malcolm Turnbull's reshuffle', it says:

Michaelia Cash: despite a recent stumble when a member of her staff tipped off media about a police raid, she goes from Employment Minister to the new portfolio of Minister for Jobs and Innovation.

The Prime Minister set out, as a deliberate design, to reshuffle his government to avoid ministerial accountability and to avoid this parliament looking at this minister's conduct. This is an outrage. It is an absolute disgrace. I can't believe that we have ministers coming into this place and talking about jobs, talking about this and that, and not accounting for this minister, who is like Marcel Marceau behind the whiteboard. It is a joke. You are making this government, these ministerial standards and this Prime Minister a complete joke. I bet you were all hiding under your desks and you did not watch the press conference, but it was a cracker. The Sky News ticker said:

Senator Cash: I had nothing to do with the whiteboard. You think you were surprised …

The poor minister! It is everyone else's fault! It is the big mean unions, it is the nasty old Labor Party, it is the Department of Parliamentary Services! How cowardly do you have to be to blame the attendants in this building? It's the journalists! It's everyone else!

It is time for her to rock up to estimates and account for her actions. It is the bare minimum that a minister needs to do. If she can't do it, then the way open for her is just to resign. That's the Westminster tradition. That's what you should do. That's how you protect the government. Those opposite absolutely know that. They know that it's only a matter of time before this minister had to resign. Get it over with, because otherwise we'll deal with it parliamentary week after parliamentary week. It will cost this government more and more until election day, and then they'll be accountable to the Australian people.

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