Matt Burnell (Spence, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Ministers of State Amendment Bill 2022. A few years ago, the Prime Minister, the Treasurer, the Minister for Finance, the Minister for Health, the Minister for Home Affairs and the Minister for Industry, Energy and Emissions Reduction walked into a bar. He ordered a drink. As much as that is a joke, at its crux it was certainly no laughing matter. It turned our relatively young democracy into a laughing-stock in front of an international audience. That conduct turned our institutions of executive government into a laughing-stock to the public at large. It also showed just how close we as a country can get to being in the state of constitutional crisis when those entrusted with the highest offices in our land do not follow established practices or conventions.

It is indeed true that the events that caused us to need to enact this legislation occurred prior to my election to this place. It certainly has allowed me to see this through the lens of how I would have reacted as a private citizen had I, along with the rest of the public, known what the member for Cook had done in the years or months prior to last year's collection. As a member of this place and of the legislative branch of government, I, along with all members of this place, shoulder a great duty and responsibility to foster public trust in this institution. But, due to the actions of the member for Cook, we do so from a position of weakness. This begins to form the basis as to why I rise today to speak in support of the Ministers of State Amendment Bill 2022.

This is not formed from an explicit election commitment, as the circumstances that brought this about only come to light publicly later, through investigations conducted by our Solicitor-General Dr Stephen Donaghue KC. The advice provided to government and subsequently made public led to another review, conducted by former High Court Justice the Hon. Virginia Bell AC, into the appointment of the former Prime Minister to administer multiple departments. As a result of these thorough investigations, the facts that brought us here are thankfully quite settled and established. They ultimately revolve around the actions of the member for Cook.

The member for Cook, between 2020 and 2021, when he was Prime Minister, was secretly appointed by the Governor-General to administer multiple portfolios or departments of state. The portfolios or departments of state in question I alluded to in my opening remarks: Treasury, Finance, Home Affairs, Health and Industry, Science, Energy and Resources. It would shock nobody to know that, at the time the appointments were made, there was no cause for the ministers that were publicly listed to be replaced with an acting minister, whether it be on health grounds or any other number of reasons that could cause a minister to temporarily relinquish their powers or to be required to stand aside from exercising their powers as a minister of state.

In my research on this bill, I also took note of the explanatory memorandum to this bill. I can see that this bill's passing has no financial impact. Therefore, it would have cost the government of the member for Cook zero dollars to have safeguarded responsible government, yet the member for Cook chose secrecy instead. Secrecy was definitely the modus operandi of the previous government, but you would never have speculated that that would have been the case in such a profound way to the very machinery of how the government operated. Secrecy has its own costs, some of them intangible, such as the damage caused to the reputation of Australia's government, to our democracy. Despite these events, I feel that Australia can pride itself on its democracy, one of compulsory voting and of independent electoral commissions federally and in our states and territories. In some respects it is very robust, taking pages out of the Westminster system and out of the Washington system, but I digress, and I will soon sound like a civics teacher.

The fact that the executive sits within our parliament, the legislature, is important. It means we have the ability to access executive government, to ask questions of it and to hold it to account. Exemplifying that, this place sets aside time out of every sitting day—question time. Some may refer to it as political theatre, but it is an extremely important part of our democracy, the part that is underpinned by the principle of responsible government. A member of this place can stand up during question time and ask a question of a minister of state concerning a matter involving a policy or a function of a department the minister has the powers and functions to administer. How would a member direct a question to the right minister if some of the ministerial appointments had been made in secret, secret from the parliament, from the public and even from the members of the cabinet itself. The Solicitor-General, Stephen Donaghue KC, noted in the advice he provided to the government on this matter:

… it is impossible for the Parliament to hold Ministers to account for the administration of departments if it does not know which Ministers are responsible for which departments.

The Albanese Labor government was elected with a mandate to restore public trust in the institutions of government and in government itself. The cornerstone of this is the establishment of the National Anti-Corruption Commission, whose legislation passed through the parliament late last year. The Ministers of State Amendment Bill 2022 follows the same core principles that underpinned the establishment of the National Anti-Corruption Commission, but there was no election commitment to enact this legislation. One might ask why that was. This legislation is a degree reactionary, as the catalyst for it was uncovered only after election day.

I can only begin to speculate on what would have happened if the conduct of the member for Cook had entered the public domain prior to election day. I'm sure some out there would have put on a more full-blooded defence or expressed more strongly that there was nothing to see here. I wonder whether we would have had similar comments from the member for McPherson, who called the conduct of the member for Cook unacceptable and calling for the member for Cook to resign and to leave the parliament. She then said she felt that the conduct of the member for Cook was a betrayal of the Australian people. You can't get much more unequivocal than that. Would we have had former prime minister Tony Abbott call the conduct of the member for Cook 'highly unorthodox' and say it shouldn't have happened?

The conduct of the member for Cook also received heavy, condemnation from former prime minister John Howard, although the comments were akin to: 'I don't think you should have done that.' That translates to significant criticism, when it's being levelled at its own side of politics. The member for Cook received condemnation from former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull—to be fair, he's said worse about the member for Cook, both publicly and privately. He called the actions of the member for Cook 'sinister stuff', 'secret government' and 'one of the most appalling things he has ever heard in our federal government'. You could definitely tell he was holding back, which comes as a surprise to no-one. The bill itself is rather simple in its design but, crucially, it would have prevented the situation where the member for Cook was sworn in secretly to administer several departments beyond Prime Minister and Cabinet, even without the knowledge of the ministers who served concurrently in those portfolios, meaning the member for Cook was serving as a parallel minister to a department of state—not a shadow minister but a minister in the shadows.

The bill seeks to amend the Ministers of State Act 1952. The amendments to the act would require the official secretary to the Governor-General to publish a notifiable instrument on the Federal Register of Legislation, which will advise of when the Governor-General has sworn in an executive counsellor to the Federal Executive Council or—in layman's terms—when a minister has been sworn in to administer a department of state, or when they have been directed to do so in whatever capacity that has been prescribed, or when an appointment of the nature I have just described has been revoked. This would appear to be largely uncontroversial on its face value, unlike the circumstances that required us to bring about codifying these conventions that have served us well for decades.

Throughout the time between today and when the revelations about the member for Cook's multiple ministries came to light, one of the most lamentable moments has been as a result of the defence put in place to deflect or, at times, mitigate the gravity and severity of what his actions meant to our democracy, to our system of government. However, I am, going to skip over the defence proffered by the member for Cook himself in this chamber and in the media, as many parts of it are nonsense. To say that he would have revealed the truth had someone asked him is, suffice to say, a little rich for my taste.

Putting the member for Cook's words to one side, we have seen a number of arguments being made by a member of the opposition, senior or otherwise, and by a number of sympathetic members of the commentariat. The arguments being made have been relatively similar. The main argument being made in defence, perhaps at times not directly of the member for Cook himself, is that getting to the bottom of this issue is not one that everyday voters would care about, not a bread-and-butter issue. I don't know whether these are vestiges of a defeatist attitude or one that is running a beleaguered defence of the member for Cook but this needs to be something that the average voter cares about because, if it is not now, it once was. Sometimes apathy is worse than red-hot anger, for it proves a disconnect, a certain acquiesce of this sort of conduct. It breeds comments that many of us have all heard before: politicians are all the same. We shouldn't to an extent, for this very debate, be all the same. We should want the Australian voter to view us better than what they do, regardless of how they do so at any given time. To say that the trustworthiness of the holder of the office of Prime Minister is not something that is relevant to the everyday voter is either laughable or upsetting to our profession, if it were to be true.

The other argument being put is that the line in the sand should be drawn and, as these are matters of the past, we should all move on. It is almost as if we are talking about actions taken during ancient history, as if relics from the secret ministries scandal are now held by the British Museum. But as a jolt of reality, these actions took place within the past two years, and the truth of what took place came out for public consumption roughly half a year ago. Even in the age of the 24-hour media cycle, this is reason enough to warrant investigation, to warrant the government to seek expert advice on how to rectify how it operates to prevent this from happening ever again.

As the paraphrased saying goes, we are doomed to repeat history, contemporary or otherwise, if we do not learn from it. It is not a mistake I or the Albanese Labor government are willing to make. It is my hope, and I'm sure the hopes of all members present, that this bill, when passed, will help to close one of the final loops of this sorry saga, and we can move on from this as a parliament, as a nation.

Lastly, I could note many contributions in this place on the Ministers of State Amendment Bill 2022 but I would like to take particular note of the brief contribution made by the member for Hume. That very succinct statement made on this bill gives me a bit of hope. It is indeed my hope that, although I did not hear full-throated support of the bill, I did hear support—a bit lukewarm, but it was supportive nevertheless. Just as with the establishment of the National Anti-Corruption Commission, the public will see a new page turned by our democratic institutions with the support of all sides of politics, particularly the two parties of government. I would encourage all members of this place to support this bill and take one further step forward to restoring public confidence in government, for, with the passage of this bill, the chapter we move on from cannot be repeated. I thank the House.

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