Mark Dreyfus (Isaacs, Australian Labor Party, Cabinet Secretary) Share this | Hansard source

I will repeat: few are in any doubt that the former Prime Minister's conduct was indefensible. The shadow minister for home affairs even called on him to leave the parliament. But there are still many questions that remain unanswered, and that is why the inquiry that the Prime Minister announced with me on 26 August is necessary. What precisely were the facts and circumstances surrounding these secret appointments? The only account we've had is a self-pitying, self-serving and self-justifying account by the member for Cook, who appears to remain pathologically incapable of accepting responsibility for his own behaviour, let alone showing genuine contrition. What precisely were the implications arising from these appointments on, for example, the functioning of relevant departments and statutory bodies or on the accountability of the executive to the parliament, and what steps can the current government take to make sure that this never happens again? Distinguished jurist and former High Court Justice the Hon. Virginia Bell AC is very well placed to answer these and other questions, which is why she has been appointed to this inquiry. She will be supported by my department in undertaking the important work that she is going to do.

This sorry saga does speak poorly to the culture of cover-up and secrecy inside the former coalition government. Most Australians were well aware of the former coalition government's addiction to cover-up and secrecy, but what this particular scandal tells us is that the culture of cover-up and secrecy inside the former government was so insidious and so corrosive that senior ministers, including the Prime Minister, couldn't even keep each other informed about significant—

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