Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the contributors to this debate, but I will respond to what the speakers in the coalition and you, Mr President, have had to say. To go straight to the Deputy President's contribution just now, where he contended that this was in no way a matter that could be seen as criminal, what he conveniently overlooked is that the Privileges Act 1987 made a breach of privilege subject to a potential jail sentence and/or very heavy fine. If the Deputy President does not find that to be a very serious matter which takes these references to the Privileges Committee right into the domain of being equivalent to criminal accusations in the court then his logic is of a different kind to that which the ordinary person would levy.

You, Mr President, and the Deputy President have portrayed to this chamber that you were in fact judicious in referring the proposal from Senator Abetz, which came through Senator Kroger—and that is where it came from; there has been no denial of it—concerning matters impugning Senator Christine Milne and me to the Privileges Committee. But that decision involved similar issues as the proposed reference to the Privileges Committee concerning Senator Boswell which I then put to you for consideration—and on that matter you did not take the same position. Quite clearly there is a double standard involved. You made your decision against the Leader of the Australian Greens and the Deputy Leader of the Australian Greens on a matter analogous to the one which Senator Boswell has now said is causing him great difficulty, which creates great upset, which he thinks is unfair, which he thinks has no merit, which he thinks has no substance, which he thinks should not have been brought into this Senate in that way and which he thinks derogates from the standards of the Senate.

Every one of those things applies to the proposal Senator Kroger put to you, Mr President. The only difference here is that you decided, in the case of Senator Milne and me, to propose that the Senate give precedence to a motion for the matter to be referred to the Privileges Committee. I do not think the merits of the case of Senator Boswell or, consequent upon that, of the proposals put to you by me regarding Senator Cash and Senator Joyce are different in any significant way from the merits of the proposal put to you by Senator Kroger relating to Senator Milne and me. You have apparently applied a double standard in giving precedence to the matter relating to Senator Milne and me but not to the matters relating to other senators. History will judge you for that double standard. Because you turned down my proposal that you should give precedence to the matter relating to Senator Boswell—I did not want to bring this up and never have, Senator Boswell—history will judge you as having made a biased and wrong decision, one you should never have made.

The other thing the Deputy President failed to consider was that, in matters of presidential recommendation to the Senate—when a Presiding Officer recommends that a matter be given precedence—as the 1984 report of the Joint Select Committee on Parliamentary Privilege found, it is then almost invariably adopted by the relevant house—be it the Senate or House of Representatives. If the President says, 'Yes, I accept it,' it will go to the Privilege Committee. If the President says no, it does not. You said yes in the matter relating to Senator Milne and me. You said no in the matter relating to the three opposition senators where I contend that, in each case, the merits of a reference were higher than those relating to Senator Milne and me. Senator Boswell, quite correctly, said that he had put his case on the record. And so had Senator Milne and I. In fact, the donation involved was quite proper and legal. It has been highly publicised. It has been on the front page of the Australianand, of course, the only journalist here in the gallery is from the Australian. And quite proper and legal too, of course, is the fact that it was spent on the election. And through you, Mr President, to Senator Boswell, the donation went to the Australian Greens, not to either Senator Milne or me. And so too was it posted by the Australian Electoral Commission—and, under the electoral laws, that was a year before it needed to be. And I might add that not a penny of that went to either Senator Milne or me.

The other matter I raised in the speech I gave yesterday was this. On a serious matter like this, Mr President, it would have been prudent of you, having received Senator Abetz's accusations and time line through the letter to you from Senator Kroger, to have asked Senator Milne or me whether there was some response that would put your mind at rest that this matter should not go to the Privileges Committee. But you did not. You had time to consider it. Again, the report of 1984 says that the applicant—in this case, Senator Kroger—should have time to consider it and so should the Presiding Officer. Well, you did not do that. You did not even extend to Senator Milne or me the simple courtesy of asking us if we could make a response to this. There was nothing to have prevented that course of action except your failure to take it up.

Moreover—and I put this to your deputy, who seems not to have understood the importance of the time lapse involved—I read out to the Senate yesterday that the committee report of 1984 underscored that there should not be an unreasonable delay between the events that effectively lead to the allegation of contempt taking place and a request to the Presiding Officer being made. But, in this case, five months elapsed. Mr President, if you can show where in history such a time lapse has occurred and a Presiding Officer has then accepted a proposal of a reference to a Privileges Committee, then your studies will have gone further than mine—because such an occurrence does not exist. You were derelict in your responsibility to turn down the application from Senator Kroger because of that efflux of time.

What in fact happened, as Senator Milne and I have both explained to this chamber, is that Senator Abetz, who I note is not present in the chamber, through Senator Kroger, wrote to you in the last week before Christmas, effectively through a slap writ process, to have this matter dealt with unduly hastily so that there could be no adequate response from Senator Milne or me. And nor could the matter be dealt with by the committee before the months of efflux of the Christmas break. In doing so, you facilitated an ambush from the several senators opposite, to the detriment of Senator Milne and me and also to the great and quite disgraceful detriment of the long upheld Senate tradition of fairness not only being seen to be done but actually being done.

There must be the appearance of a reasonable case that you should consider before you make the sort of decision that you made—but there was not. For any reasonable person who reads the proposals that I consequently put forward to you with regard to Senator Cash, Senator Boswell and Senator Joyce, the differences in the charges, when compared with the matter relating to Senator Milne and me, are not real. If you take up one, you take up the lot. If you turn down one—as you should have—you turn down the lot. I think your decision to effectively reject my application in the matters regarding Senator Boswell, Senator Cash and Senator Joyce was correct. But what that process has done, Mr President, is highlight your unprecedented double standard in accepting this ambush from the vexatious Senator Abetz, through Senator Kroger, to have Senator Milne and me put before the Privileges Committee.

Finally, I say this. One of the things that the joint committee was very concerned about in 1984—and that concern has not changed—was that, if such matters as these are not dealt with expeditiously, it may lead, quite unfairly, to the impugning of the reputation of senators in the public arena. And that is just what happened. Mr President, when you got up on 23 November to give your adjudication on Senator Kroger's application against Senator Milne and me, by allowing Senator Kroger to know you were going to speak, you facilitated the Australian committing to the editorial destruction of the Greens in the press gallery. You did not have the courtesy and you did not use your office to inform Senator Milne or me that you were about to make this extremely serious decision on charges that we were unaware of. You did not have the courtesy, let alone the judgment, to inform us. I find that lapse of judgment or that failure of courtesy to your fellow senators, while at the same time giving Senator Kroger the ability to tip off the hostile press, a remarkable failure.