Murray Watt (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I also rise to speak in this debate, and I welcome the fact that this government has finally come to its senses as to how to handle the citizenship fiasco that has completely engulfed this government.

Only a few days ago, the Prime Minister met with the opposition leader and Senator Wong to try to resolve this matter, and the very reasonable requests that Labor made at that meeting were rejected by the Prime Minister. We now, finally, see the government coming to its senses today. It recognises that Labor's requests were entirely appropriate and reasonable, and the government has now agreed to support this process. This is a sensible way forward, and it should have been adopted by the Prime Minister on the day it was put forward. Yet again, we've had to see Senator Cormann come in and save the day, talking the Prime Minister around to a commonsense approach here. It's notable that the government's leader in the Senate, Senator Brandis, was completely excluded from these negotiations. I think that everyone in the government has now recognised that everything Senator Brandis touches turns to something you don't want to touch, and the citizenship fiasco is yet another example of that.

This disclosure regime will deal with the various claims and counterclaims that have been thrown around over recent weeks regarding citizenship and involving numerous senators. What the Prime Minister and his representatives in the other chamber should do immediately is commit to following exactly the same procedure in relation to members of the House of Representatives. If this process is good enough for the Senate, it is good enough for the House of Representatives.

This resolution is good as far as it goes. It does put forward a sensible approach to deal with the range of questions involving citizenship that have arisen in relation to senators in recent weeks. But as good as this resolution is it leaves unresolved a number of other questions regarding other senators in this place and their eligibility to remain serving in this chamber. In fact it leaves unresolved similar questions in relation to various government members of the House of Representatives. While most attention about section 44 of the Constitution in recent times has focused on the matter of people's citizenship, there are other strands to section 44 that potentially leave a senator or member of parliament ineligible to sit in this place. The most obvious one is that if a senator has a direct or indirect pecuniary interest in any agreement with the Public Service of the Commonwealth they are ineligible to sit in this chamber.

I'm very pleased to see one such senator—Senator O'Sullivan—in the chamber to hear yet again the issues surrounding his ineligibility, because he seems not to want to listen but to want to put his head in the sand about this. There have been three instances now where Senator O'Sullivan, through his family companies and their activities, appears very likely to have fallen foul of section 44(v) of the Constitution, which would make him ineligible to serve in this chamber. We've learned over the weeks gone by that Senator O'Sullivan's family company, Newlands Civil Construction, was making a dollar out of Commonwealth funding that was directed, first of all, through contracts to work on the Toowoomba second range crossing and, secondly, through a contract and funding provided to Central Highlands council in Queensland under the government's NDRRA program. What we learned in the last two weeks, when the Senate was not sitting, was that there is now a third instance where Senator O'Sullivan's private, personal companies have benefitted from contracts awarded by the Commonwealth and funding from the Commonwealth. It involves a contract of Commonwealth funding awarded to Balonne Shire Council in regional Queensland. The work that Balonne Shire Council contracted Newlands Civil Construction to perform was funded directly by the Commonwealth. The argument that Senator O'Sullivan has put up is that there is no state middle man in this contract. I don't accept that argument, but even if we do that argument does not apply here. This is a situation where Commonwealth funding is going through Balonne Shire Council and straight into the pockets of Senator O'Sullivan and his family through their family company.

What make it worse is that this Commonwealth funding program, the drought program, was absolutely lobbied for personally by Senator O'Sullivan. So we have the chair of the Senate's Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport Legislation Committee out there lobbying for government funding to create a program and then with his family company putting his hand out to take benefit from it. If that is not an indirect pecuniary interest in a Commonwealth contract, I do not know what is. This resolution deals with citizenship issues. There are other senators, particularly Senator O'Sullivan, whose matters are unresolved. We intend to continue to pursue these matters, because he shouldn't think that just because we have dealt with the citizenship matters he is off the hook.

It's very unfortunate that neither the Prime Minister nor Senator Brandis seems to take this matter seriously. Some weeks ago I wrote to both the Prime Minister and Senator Brandis asking that Senator O'Sullivan be removed as the chair of the rural and regional affairs committee. To this date, I have not received a response to that letter from either Senator Brandis or the Prime Minister. That's how seriously they take these issues. That's how seriously they take an indirect conflict of interest involving one of their own senators who has his hand out and his family company's hand out to benefit directly from Commonwealth funding. They need to take these matters more seriously. It goes to the character of this government and what is appropriate behaviour from senators, but it also goes to the eligibility of Senator O'Sullivan to remain in this chamber.

Debate interrupted.