Doug Cameron (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Human Services) Share this | Hansard source

It is not only my view, Senator Macdonald; it's the view of people that have worked with Mr Parkinson. Mr Parkinson was seen to be so effective that he was appointed secretary of Prime Minister and Cabinet.

Let's get a bit of reality here. It's no wonder the Prime Minister calls this lot 'muppets'. These are the extremists in the coalition. They deny climate change, and they went out and knifed their last Prime Minister on the basis that they didn't think that he should have even been mentioning the words 'climate change'. This is an appalling situation. Senator Macdonald epitomises the nonsense that goes on in this divided government that is on its last legs and cannot focus on the real issues for working people in this country. It's an absolute disgrace.

We had the current Prime Minister, when he was Treasurer, commission and selectively release Treasury work that purported to attack Labor's economic and tax policies. A number of examples of that have been seen over the last year. This is an example of the politicisation of the public sector.

It is just unacceptable that we have to wait this length of time to get answers from the government to reasonable questions. I know why they couldn't give the answers—they were too busy knifing each other. They were too busy putting the numbers together to try and get rid of former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull. But, when they got the numbers together, the Leader of the Government in the Senate couldn't even count and his preferred candidate couldn't get up. This is the nonsense we have here.

A public service should be professional. A public service should be impartial and accountable. When you put your mates in there, when you put an ex-adviser like Mr Gaetjens in as Treasury secretary, then you know there is a problem. How can Mr Gaetjens be impartial and accountable? He can't do it. Scott Morrison appointed his chief of staff as Treasury secretary. What a joke. How can Labor and other parties in the parliament have confidence in a Treasury secretary who spent the last few years attacking the opposition's policies? The main attack dog on Labor policies has now been appointed as secretary of the Treasury. It's an absolute disgrace.

Treasury is supposed to put together a blue book for an incoming government. If we are fortunate enough to win the next election then Mr Gaetjens, the person put in there to basically run the government's agenda in Treasury, will be putting together the advice to the Labor opposition. How can we accept advice from a partisan player? How can we accept advice from someone who has—and I use the word loosely here—the pedigree of being the adviser to the worst Treasurer this country has ever had, former Treasurer Peter Costello? How can we have any confidence in this Treasury secretary? He's supposed to provide frank and fearless advice. He's supposed to be frank and fearless in what he does for government. We can have no confidence in that. This is a partisan political player. This is typical of this government.

The Public Service is supposed to be ethical. It's supposed to be values driven and it's supposed to act in the public interest. Mr Gaetjens cannot operate in a non-partisan way. It's clear that he has been the behind-the-scenes attack dog on Labor's policy. The culture of this government is to politicise the Public Service. It is just unacceptable. I'll look with interest at the responses that we have from Senator Cormann in relation to the questions that we asked. We did ask a whole range of questions that went unanswered, so Senator Cormann's responses will make interesting reading. And I must say I think they will point to the problems that we have with this government. Not only did it sack one of the most prestigious public servants in Martin Parkinson; it has also given us Senator Cash, this disgraced minister who misled the Senate on at least five occasions, who will not cooperate with the Australian Federal Police and who has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to cover up her involvement in the raid on the AWU offices and the use of the Registered Organisations Commission to attack her political opponents and the union movement. How can we trust this government when it gets down to that level?

You've only got to look at Senator Cash's appointments in the past. To the Australian Building and Construction Commission she appointed Nigel Hadgkiss. Nigel Hadgkiss spent years attacking the trade union movement on a massive salary, appointed by this government. This is a supposedly independent public servant who breached his own legal requirements as a commissioner. These are the types of people that this government appoints in senior Public Service positions. He had to resign in disgrace, but not before Senator Cash and this government, with the ABCC, ploughed, again, hundreds of thousands of public dollars into trying to cover up the breaches of the act that this public servant was supposed to be the guardian of. What a joke. What an absolute joke.

Then we had the appointment of the Public Service Commissioner, John Lloyd, who was nothing more than a partisan political player in all of his appointments ever in this parliament. He led the attack on working people in Western Australia through his appointments to the public sector in Western Australia. This is the modus operandi of this government: put your mates and your ideological attack dogs in senior public service positions and ensure that they deliver the government's agenda to attack their political opponents. It's an absolute disgrace. When the Public Service was closing in on him and his actions were being exposed, the Public Service Commissioner John Lloyd resigned in disgrace and resigned in ignominy. These are the types of people that this government appoint to positions.

Then we've got the Registered Organisations Commission itself. The Registered Organisations Commission are supposedly an independent organisation, but now we see quite clearly that they are nothing more than another attack dog for the Liberal Party and the coalition against the trade union movement, workers' rights and workers' capacity to actually bargain effectively. The coalition appointed Mr Mark Bielecki as the head honcho of the Registered Organisations Commission. This guy couldn't even tell me in estimates where the offices of the Registered Organisations Commission were. He is nothing more than a figurehead and a front for the Registered Organisations Commission.

The person who is in there to do this government's bidding is a Mr Chris Enright. Mr Chris Enright is the attack dog in the Registered Organisations Commission to attack working people, to attack their trade unions and to try and make sure that the union movement is on the defensive continually under this government. Mr Chris Enright is the very Chris Enright who put together, while he was a member of the Australian Crime Commission, a secret file on a Labor frontbencher.

These are the types of disgraceful appointments that this government make continually, and what they do is they diminish the Public Service. They mean that Labor and the public generally can have no confidence in what the Public Service does in terms of fearless advice. The ethics of the Public Service get dragged down with these types of appointments. You've just got to look at what some of the press have been saying about these appointments. Bernard Keane says that the appointment of Phil Gaetjens has degraded the Public Service to 'a partisan think tank'. Imagine the Treasury being seen as a partisan think tank—one that, as Bernard Keane says, 'contributes little to the polity and the public life of this country'. Bernard Keane goes on to say:

The many problems of Costello's treasurership -- the short-term and long-term fiscal indiscipline, the corruption of the retirement incomes system, Costello's inability to see anything outside the leadership prism—

were all done when Mr Gaetjens was a senior policy adviser to Mr Costello. What Bernard Keane says is that there were some impeccable candidates.

I've been on the economics committee. I've been on estimates committees. I've seen some of the Treasury officials—highly competent, non-partisan—bring the position that they should have impartiality and accountability—even though it's difficult to get them to be accountable sometimes at estimates! But they do bring the position that the Public Service should bring—impartiality—to the table. When you put someone like Mr Gaetjens in as the Treasury secretary—who has been a political warrior, a political attack dog, a political friend of the coalition—in a senior position, the highest position in economic thinking in this country, then it is a disgrace. That's why we can have no confidence in Mr Gaetjens. We had no confidence in Nigel Hadgkiss, and he ended up resigning in disgrace after being given a golden handshake by the coalition to give him a reward for breaching the legislation that he was supposed to enforce! You can't trust these political attack dogs and you can't trust the muppets across this chamber. You cannot trust them. There is Mr John Lloyd. Instead of the government taking action to make sure that he applied himself in an impartial way, they simply allowed him to resign. They allowed him to resign over his disgraceful behaviour. His partisan behaviour, in handing information to the Institute of Public Affairs, was a disgrace.

So here we are. Those are the types of people that this government is putting in key positions in the Australian Public Service. This has diminished the Australian Public Service. It's good to know that the shadow Treasurer, Chris Bowen, has said that one of the key things that he has to do is restore the independence and non-partisan nature of this most important body: the Treasury. It is a disgrace that the coalition would plant political partisan appointments in key positions in the Australian Public Service to actually push their agenda and attack their political opponents.