Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

I would like to speak briefly to the motion moved by Senator Collins. This report deals with a matter that goes to the very heart of Australian democracy, which is parliamentary privilege. As Senator Collins said, an analogous report in relation to Mr Clare's claim for parliamentary privilege was published yesterday, I think, or maybe earlier this week.

An honourable senator: Monday.

Monday, thank you. That is how quickly the week has gone! I want to make some remarks on this matter. I look forward to reading the report, but I will take the opportunity to make some remarks about parliamentary privilege first because I think it is extremely important that we again reassert the importance of and the centrality of the principle of parliamentary privilege.

As you know, Madam Deputy President, 'parliamentary privilege' refers to the special legal rights which apply to the houses of parliament, its committees and members. The principal legislative basis in Australia is the Parliamentary Privileges Act 1987, which was enacted following a number of privilege issues raised during the 1980s. The power to legislate stems from the Constitution at section 49. However, the powers incorporated into Australian law have their origins in the 1688 Bill of Rights. Parliamentary privilege has a history dating over 300 years and came as a fundamental response to the grievances of Westminster against the Crown.

Fundamentally, parliamentary privilege is designed to protect the rights of the legislature from incursion by the executive and by the judiciary. It ensures that all of us enjoy a right to freedom of speech in the debates and proceedings in parliament that ought not to be impeached or questioned in any court or place out of the parliament. It is a fundamental right that ensures that all of us can raise issues in this place and hold the government to account without fear of reprisal, without fear of arrest and without fear of prosecution. It is a right that has been jealously guarded for a very long time, and rightly so, by all members and senators—indeed, by all members of parliaments in the Westminster tradition. Without this right, this parliament would be a facade of democracy, and it is for this reason that this Senate has always carefully guarded its privileges.

Odgers' Australian Senate Practice provides a comprehensive outline of the history and implementation of parliamentary privilege. There is also a chapter in House of Representatives Practice. The Senate has also a number of privilege resolutions designed to assist with the handling of matters of privilege.

Senator Collins in her speech spoke about the protocol which exists to help govern the interaction between police action and parliamentary privilege. I note her comments in her contribution which suggest that it may be timely to consider whether or not the protocol deals with the full extent of the matters it ought to, given the circumstances of the matters that her committee has been considering. It was a protocol developed to ensure that privilege is not compromised in circumstances such as those that are the subject of both the House report and the Senate report. Protections under the protocol were of course utilised by members of parliament in order to protect their privileges.

I do want to say this. The circumstances which gave rise to both the House and the Senate committees' inquiries were extraordinary. Televised raids on the offices and homes of a Labor shadow minister, a former Deputy Leader of the Opposition and an opposition staffer in the middle of the election campaign were not a sight I think any of us ever expected to see. It was not just a raid on the opposition party in the context of an election campaign, which was hotly contested. I would also assert that it was a direct result of a Prime Minister who sought to go after those who sought to embarrass him, to cover up his failings.

The government insists that there was no political aspect to these raids, that it was the police doing their job. We fully accept that it was the police doing their job. We make no suggestion of political partisanship by the Federal Police. They were doing their job as a direct result of a request from the government to investigate material about the NBN which had exposed many of the things being said by the Prime Minister about the NBN as not being accurate.

The problem we have is that there was no similar request resulting in a televised public raid when vital national security information was leaked. There was no similar request resulting in televised public raids when major security breaches embarrassed former members of this government about the handling of submarine construction. There was no similar request resulting in televised public raids when journalists received highly confidential cabinet documents in the effort to embarrass the Australian Labor Party about policy costings. And yet, in the middle of an election campaign, we saw, as a result of the government's actions, the unprecedented spectacle of the raids on offices of Labor parliamentarians. It does raise the question that Labor raised previously about consistency. Why is it that the government is happy to call in the police in some circumstances but not others?

I am happy to speak at length on another occasion about some of the matters that the Prime Minister was extremely embarrassed about. They include the fact that the NBN, we now know, will cost far more than Australians were told before the election. Mr Turnbull promised that the maximum funding of the second-rate NBN would be $29.5 billion. That cost has nearly doubled. It has blown out to $54 billion. He promised Australians world-class faster broadband, yet Australia's internet speeds have actually fallen from 30th to 60th globally, I believe. So it is understandable that the Prime Minister was extraordinarily sensitive about having his failings exposed. But instead of being shamed into action and instead of fixing those problems, the government was intent on targeting those who were disclosing those failings.

Parliamentary privilege is, as I said, an extremely important principle—one that has been an aspect of our Westminster democratic tradition for some three centuries. I am pleased that this matter is being appropriately handled by the Privileges Committee. I look forward to their continued sensible conduct of this matter.