Christian Porter (Pearce, Liberal Party, Attorney-General) Share this | Hansard source

The government doesn't support this motion to suspend standing orders and obviously we do not support the substantive motion. The substantive motion is self-evidently a call to refer a matter to a royal commission—so to create a royal commission. There are reasons that that is completely premature and not the appropriate course of action at this point in time. Nevertheless, it's fair and reasonable that the member for Clark makes his submission that it should be the subject of a freshly created royal commission—and I'll address why we take an alternative view.

But what the member for Clark should not do, as he continually does in those submissions, is take the extra step into what are, frankly, quite outrageous statements. He finished his contribution with words to the effect: 'How can people have faith in the AFP when they treat differently crimes committed by Crown?' That is a clear and direct imputation that the good men and women of the AFP are turning some blind eye at an investigative level to known criminal conduct. You just cannot say things like that under privilege in this place without good evidence to support it. It is quite wrong. It is a slur on the people who work at that organisation. It demonstrates a step way too far in making what otherwise is a submission which we disagree with but is reasonably put. In fact, Member for Clark, it significantly detracts from the strength of your submission. It makes it look a bit crazy, to be honest, to make a statement like that about the AFP without any kind of backing-up of the statement.

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