Kerry O'Brien (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Primary Industries, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Hansard source

I am really disturbed at the way the government responds to the legitimate questions of the opposition in relation to the behaviour of a minister of the Crown, clearly and flagrantly in breach of the Prime Minister’s code of conduct. I know that the public hate these sorts of matters, but they do expect the opposition to pursue the government in relation to these sorts of matters in an appropriate way—and that is what the opposition has been doing today.

But what have we seen in defence from Senator Abetz and Senator Chapman? They have been dipping into the mud bucket and trying to throw the mud at whomever they think it might stick to. They have been trying to raise the hoary old chestnuts about Kevin Rudd—matters that he himself revealed months ago, which the government only recently decided to dredge up because it thought that there was a political advantage. The fact of the matter is that the public do not like this sort of behaviour from the government. We can see that the reaction of the public to this sort of behaviour has been to mark down the Prime Minister.

What have we asked in relation to the Prime Minister’s actions? We asked why, when he first became aware of Senator Santoro’s flagrant breach of his prime ministerial code of conduct, he did not make it public and indicate that he had required certain action, and, indeed, why he did not dismiss Senator Santoro then. He dismissed former Senator Jim Short from his portfolio because he had ANZ shares—shares that somehow impacted on his portfolio—and now the Prime Minister has the temerity to come out and say, ‘Maybe I should not have even done that.’ The only credible actions that the Prime Minister has ever taken were the dismissals of Jim Short and Brian Gibson from their portfolios because they breached the code. Subsequent to that, it was almost impossible to find a reason to dismiss a minister under the Prime Minister’s ministerial code of conduct.

In this case, when the truth finally came out, there was no choice—and all of this against the background of the government’s attempt to besmirch the name of the Leader of the Opposition for base political purposes. With the claims of occurrences in other states, the government has effectively been saying, ‘Because there are problems elsewhere, you have no right as an opposition to raise matters here in this parliament.’ I can assure the government and the public that the opposition will be raising matters, particularly where ministers breach the government’s own code of conduct—a code which, as I understand it, existed in the cabinet minutes under a Labor government and was observed. After trumpeting the code of conduct and trumpeting that there would be a new standard of government, this government has ignored that code for the best part of a decade after finding it inconvenient to have to enforce it against its own ministers.

In relation to Senator Santoro’s actions in particular areas in which there may have been a conflict of interest when he was a minister, I found it amazing that, as an aside during a press conference, the Prime Minister effectively said to the then yet-to-be-sworn new junior minister, Mr Pyne, that he was giving him the charter of investigating the case. Talk about policy on the run by the Prime Minister! And now we hear from Senator Minchin that, in fact, an investigation was underway. What does that mean? Does it mean that the Prime Minister was making it up as he went along; that he had no idea what was going on; that he was trying to get a glib answer to deal with a question from, I might say, my namesake on The 7.30 Report? Is that all the Prime Minister was doing? Why would you as the Prime Minister make a decision such as that on the run? In fact, why didn’t the Prime Minister make a decision earlier to order an independent investigation into all of the actions of Senator Santoro so that we could all be sure that a conflict of interest was not motivating decisions that this minister made when in office? It is, frankly, an unbelievable proposition to think that the government has not considered this. The public expects that there will be proper activity by this government in relation to the ex-minister’s answers so that we can all be sure that the buck can stop— (Time expired)

Question agreed to.