Jenny McAllister (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Mr President, congratulations on your new role. It brings me no great joy to take part in this debate, because we hear, time and time again, that what the Australian public want us to do is debate the issues that confront them in their daily lives, and I do wish that we were spending more of our time in this chamber talking about those questions. However, we need to have this debate and we need to do so despite the fact that the facts which drive today's debate were entirely avoidable.

This debate is a direct result of senior members of the government deciding that it was better to damage the institution of the Senate than to face the public embarrassment of having to refer a member of the Liberal Party to the High Court. The government and members of the government sat quietly and watched other parties' MPs being referred off to the High Court. This issue was discussed in this chamber for months. It is difficult to think of a recent sitting week, when we were all here, when citizenship wasn't on the agenda. Senator Parry was in the President's chair as this chamber referred six of its own senators to the High Court, and the facts of those cases were almost exactly the same as those of Senator Parry's. It now seems likely that, as those referrals were being made by the President, he was aware that his own name should have been added to the list.

As other people have said this morning, he was a good man who made a bad decision. But the point I would make is that he was a good man who made a bad decision on the basis of terrible advice from his colleagues, who really ought to have known better. He was actually put in quite an invidious position. He found out he had an issue—it must have been quite worrying for him—and he went to his colleagues for advice on how to handle it. From what's been reported so far, the only conclusion that I can draw is that he was told that it was better for him to remain silent and wait for the outcome of the High Court cases. What's now clear is that he should have come forward right away. Even the Prime Minister thought this, before he worked out what a tangled web had been constructed over here on this side of the building. What did the Prime Minister say? He said:

He chose to delay his reporting of it, he should have reported it much earlier …

The Prime Minister's comments should now be seen as a rebuke not, actually, of Senator Parry but of those colleagues who did not urge him to step forward with his own concerns. They were complicit in their silence.

Senator Fifield made a brief statement earlier in this debate, and it's striking in its lack of detail. Senator Fifield gave a vague indication of the date on which his conversation with Senator Parry took place. He needs to provide a great deal more information. He needs to tell us when Senator Parry communicated his concerns to Senator Fifield—a date, not just a range of weeks around a High Court decision. He should communicate what exactly Senator Parry told him and what facts were provided about Senator Parry's own circumstances. He should tell us what advice he gave Senator Parry, not merely the conclusion of their conversation, which apparently was that they both agreed it was Senator Parry's burden to carry alone. He should be more specific about the nature of the advice that he provided, and he should explain on what basis he provided that advice to the President. He should explain who else he spoke to—something else he was silent on in the statement. He should explain if he spoke to the finance minister, to other senior colleagues or to the Prime Minister, and, if not, why not.

If I were a backbencher in this government, I would be fuming. The Nationals have been rightly upset about the Liberals hanging them out to dry in this first set of citizenship referrals whilst sitting very quietly on their own troubles. But the spectacle of senior members of the government ducking responsibility in ways that strain the credulity of the ordinary person should trouble backbenchers. If I were them I would be thinking: what else are they hiding from us? What else are they hiding from each other?

It is really odd that this was not communicated to the Prime Minister. I find it very, very hard to believe, in fact. This would never have happened under Prime Minister Howard. If the story that has been put to us is to be accepted as true, it suggests an absolute breakdown of control by the Prime Minister. If it's true, I would be very worried if I were a government backbencher. What other time bombs are members of cabinet sitting on? Are there other problems out there that even the Prime Minister doesn't know about? For months Senator Parry, the Minister for Communications and who knows who else sat and talked about the citizenship dilemma with their colleagues in the party room, here in the chamber, elsewhere and on telly and said nothing about the dilemmas confronting the President. The question I would be asking, if I were a member of the backbench, is: what other secrets are the members of my party keeping from me?