Deborah O'Neill (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I say as the duty senator for the seat of Hume that the people of Hume deserve so much better than what they're getting from Angus Taylor. I can tell you, from visiting that electorate many, many times and meeting with farmers myself, that the access that this minister has sought for properties that are of interest to him and his family, in terms of a direct benefit to him, is an extraordinary abuse of the position which the people of Hume have bestowed on him. The best thing you can do if you're a member of the citizenry of the great seat of Hume is find a way to be related to be Angus Taylor, because it seems to me he is able to get access to the information that he wants, access to the services that he wants and access to compliance officers at meetings that he wants, with regard to how he manages his land, and he does it in his own self-interest in a way that other farmers working that land in the seat of Hume are unable to do—because Mr Taylor expects privilege. Mr Taylor has exercised privilege in his own interest in the way in which Senator Wong and Senator Carr have outlined here.

Mr Taylor, you'd have to say, has been extremely evasive about answering the questions that we have been asking. His statement this morning is what Minister Birmingham, under the tutelage of the Leader of the Government here in the Senate, stood behind today, referring the Senate to 'Mr Taylor's statement', 'Mr Taylor's statement'. Mr Taylor's statement is not worth the paper it's written on, because we have found, day after day, that Mr Taylor is doing anything but telling the truth clearly and cleanly to the Australian people and to the people in the seat of Hume about exactly what's going on. He has been involved, in recent months, in that outrageous case of 'watergate', with $80 million involved. People were outraged then. People in the seat of Hume were outraged to find out that, for a local forum in the middle of the election period, Mr Taylor was given access to questions on local matters that would be asked, for which he had prepared speaking notes done for him by his office. The people against whom he was debating, participating in a democratic process, were not given those questions till hours after Mr Taylor and certainly didn't have the benefit of prepared answers done by staff. Mr Taylor is used to advantage, and that's why he has taken the steps that are on the record with regard to the grasslands that are owned by a family company that he jointly owns—with one-third of the shares—called Jam Land.

What I think is extraordinary is the scale of the snow job which Mr Taylor has determined he has the capacity to do on the entire Australian population, and this Senate and the House of Representatives. Just last Thursday, Labor were so concerned about this attempt at a layer cake of deception we have seen from Mr Taylor that we tried to get up a Senate inquiry. The way in which Mr Taylor and the government avoided that getting a positive vote here in the Senate last Thursday was to provide some documentation to some members of the crossbench. Sadly, they didn't act quite deceptively enough, and the reality is the dates on those letters reveal that a letter on which they relied to get crossbench support, to hide this from the public and to avoid the scrutiny of a Senate inquiry, was dated seven months after the date on which this incident occurred. So, Mr Taylor is relying now on a letter dated well after the event in which he sought to intervene, in his own personal interests, and he's also relying on comments from members of an adjoining seat, the seat of Eden-Monaro, and from a commentary that he says is a conversation he had with a farmer in Yass.

Now, there are many good farmers in Yass, but not all of them have access to the offices of Mr Frydenberg. There are many good farmers in Yass, and Goulburn, who want to do the right thing, who are doing the right thing, who are farming properly and who deserve far better representation than this minister, who could not get exercised about anything with regard to these particular grasslands and the management of those grasslands until he received notification that it was going to affect him personally. Now, that is a lazy member. That is a deceptive member. That is a member who deserves the scrutiny of this Senate. And this afternoon, when a motion is presented to provide that scrutiny, the crossbench in this place should support it, because Mr Taylor does not deserve the support of the colleagues who are standing up for him—(Time expired)