John Faulkner (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answers given by the Assistant Minister for Health (Senator Nash) to questions without notice asked by the Leader of the Opposition in the Senate (Senator Wong) and Senator McLucas today relating to potential conflicts of interest for ministerial staff.

In last night's adjournment debate Senator Nash provided what she described as additional information to the Senate following a question that she was asked by Senator Wong about the removal of the Health Star Rating website. Of course, it was not additional information. Senator Nash had earlier misled the Senate in question time. She said in question time yesterday:

There is no connection whatsoever between my chief of staff and the company Australian Public Affairs.

She tried to correct the record last night by stating that her chief of staff 'was APA's chairman and because of that previous position he has a shareholding in the company'. In question time today we learnt more. It appears that the chief of staff has a shareholding in APA but receives no income from it.

The real questions here are: is there a conflict of interest and is there a breach of appropriate ministerial and ministerial staff standards and obligations? Of course, I have no personal animus towards Senator Nash at all, so I am genuinely disappointed to have to say that these revelations represent serious negligence in her conduct with respect to her ministerial responsibilities. We now know that the government's statement of standards for ministerial staff has been breached. It is an open and shut case.

In another life, as a minister, I established the first Code of Conduct for Ministerial Staff. I am pleased that, with very minor amendments, it has been retained by the Abbott government. Clause 4 of that code says that ministerial staff must:

Divest themselves, or relinquish control, of interests in any private company or business and/or direct interest in any public company involved in the area of their Ministers’ portfolio responsibilities.

This just was not done. This critically important obligation has been ignored by Senator Nash and her chief of staff. The standards have been breached; they have not been enforced by those responsible for enforcing them. And we now know, from the response to Senator McLucas's question today in relation to Senator Nash's obligations at the Legislative and Governance Forum on Food Regulation that she and her chief of staff attended, that, again, there was no declaration of any interest held by her chief of staff, even though such a declaration is a standing item on the agenda of that forum and has been for a very long time.

This is a serious matter. This is a serious breach. I would strongly counsel, in these circumstances, that the minister, Senator Nash, make a ministerial statement to the Senate about these matters. She said in question time she was not going to inform the Senate of internal discussions in government. That is no longer good enough. What is required now from Senator Nash, and I hope that Senator Abetz and senior ministers in the government will ask her to do so, given these facts, is a full explanation. Nothing less than a full explanation is an option. (Time expired)