Claire Moore (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Women) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answers given by the Minister for Regional Development (Senator Nash) to questions without notice asked by Senators Polley, McAllister and Moore today relating to her status as a senator and a minister.

When the minister came in at the dying hours of the last sitting session and made her statement about the situation around citizenship, she must have been aware that there were going to be questions asked in this place. That would be no surprise to her.

Today, in question time, a number of questions were raised that had nothing to do with the actual issue of citizenship, because that's not our role. Indeed, as the minister quite rightly said, that is now an issue for the High Court. But what we needed to know and what we were asking about was the process that took place around the disclosure of the minister's situation with the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister and about exactly what would happen, what would be the process into the future, while this issue was referred to the High Court and there was uncertainty.

In her answers, there were two key points to a range of questions put to her, though she wasn't keen to answer any. Of the two key answers that came up, one was that strong legal advice indicated that the minister was able to continue in her position. Indeed, there was nothing to be seen here; there were no questions to be asked. I think that was the response we got. We have a long history in this place of being told by governments that they have strong legal advice. There is no history of that strong legal advice being tabled, and that would be a really straightforward process. If there is strong legal advice on why a position has been taken and there is interest in that, and I think there is, it is a straightforward position for that legal advice to be tabled. I know that governments of all flavours do not often share legal advice, but there is nothing to say they can't. In this case, as the minister has said clearly, a number of times, to questions today, the government has strong legal advice. What the parliament does not have is that strong legal advice.

The other argument that the minister put forward was that there are lots of other more important things that we should be asking questions about and that the community is just not interested in these issues around citizenship. I disagree. Whilst I know that the issues around the Constitution and constitutional law do not raise amazing passion across all areas of the community—this is a time when I really do miss having Russell Trood in this place, because this was the kind of issue that he would have passion about and would like to discuss; he is not here, but I know he is listening—what the community wants is consistency. This issue has been going on for weeks and weeks. While Senator Nash believes that the community is not particularly interested in these issues around citizenship, the media certainly are. They have been running stories on these issues around the Constitution and the constitutional entitlement of people to be in this place for weeks and weeks on a daily, in fact, in some cases, on an hourly basis. What the community wants to know is how we can get this right. They also expect some consistency in the way that these issues are handled in this place, in their parliament.

We have been asking a range of questions. When there were questions about the citizenship of Minister Canavan, a decision was made that he stand aside. Our questions are about consistency. If questions around citizenship that look at the eligibility of Minister Nash and also the Deputy Prime Minister—questions around their citizenship and their entitlement to be here—are now going to be taken to the High Court, why is it that the strong legal advice for them is different from whatever the strong legal advice was for Minister Canavan, which was very early in this process? We do know that, in other cases, senators have resigned from this place and are no longer with us. I don't know what the strong legal advice was in those cases. I think we have a responsibility as a parliament to have answers to these questions. I think we have a responsibility as a parliament to make sure that the community understands that there are issues being raised, there is a process being followed and there is a consistency in the way that people who are caught up in this process will be treated and will behave in the parliament while we are waiting for the result. (Time expired)