Chris Evans (WA, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

Senators on the other side will want to raise all these other issues and that is fine, but the question is: why didn’t the Prime Minister become open and transparent with the public when he discovered Senator Santoro’s conflict of interest? Prime Minister Howard had the opportunity to issue a press release, mention it publicly or insist that Senator Santoro come clean. But in October, when he was told of Senator Santoro’s clear breach and clear conflict of interest, he said, ‘Just fix it up quietly, put in a return and don’t you worry about it.’ So two months later Senator Santoro updates his declaration but, interestingly, is it a full and frank declaration? No. Does it come clean on when the shares were bought? No. It deliberately set out to mislead about when the shares were purchased, and the Prime Minister was involved in that declaration. In fact, the Prime Minister’s office a couple of days later had to get him to fix it up because he confessed to share trading, which is another clear breach. So the PM’s office fixed that up as well.

But why didn’t the PM come clean when his mate came and said, ‘I’ve breached your guidelines’? He had the opportunity to make a public statement. He had the opportunity to ask Senator Santoro to come into the parliament. He had an opportunity to ask Senator Santoro to make it public but, no, he asked him to put in the fix, put in a declaration, which was not open and honest and transparent, a declaration which sought to mislead about when the shares were purchased submitted two months later. That is what John Howard says are the high standards of accountability for his ministers. What nonsense! And we have Senator Minchin trivialising what has occurred.

As with Senator Lightfoot’s previous dealings, I accept that mistakes can be made. Senator Lightfoot came in and said he had made a mistake on a previous occasion. I accepted the fact that it was an honest mistake on the basis of his declaration, but 72 failures to declare shares, 72 failures to remember that he was trading in shares, are clearly not inadvertent; clearly there was an attempt to set out to mislead. That has got to be taken seriously.

I am pleased to hear that Senator Santoro will come into this place eventually and make a personal explanation, but there is a lot of ground he is going to have to cover. The test for him is not only that of a minister; the test for him is as a senator: whether he is fit to hold the office of senator—that is, whether he has complied with the requirements of a senator or whether he has set out to deliberately mislead the Senate. It is a very serious charge and a charge that can be fairly laid against him at the moment. He has to prove why he should not be judged to have deliberately misled the Senate and then be assessed on that. (Time expired)