Larissa Waters (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on what was meant to be a debate about the disclosure of documents related to a phone call that the Prime Minister made to a former neighbour—who happens to be the police chief—who happens to be investigating one of the Prime Minister's ministers, but we don't have those documents. Because what the Senate was given by the Prime Minister's representative in this place was one page saying—and I will paraphrase—'The rules don't apply to us. We're not going to tell you.' I will be a little more specific. At one point the letter says:

Plainly, any documents of the kind requested, if they existed, would not be able to be produced, as they would probably be the subject of public interest immunity. That immunity would arise because the matter concerns police inquiries by State authorities.

So let me get this right. It's not in the public interest to disclose something about police inquiries but it's okay to interfere in police inquiries by phoning the guy doing the inquiry to see if that inquiry is actually happening and if your minister really is in strife? You can't have it both ways. It's either in the public interest and should be disclosed or it's in the public interest and you shouldn't have interfered in the first place. So I'm afraid Senator Cormann and the government he represents in this chamber are once again thumbing their noses at the rules. They don't want to comply with this order for production of documents, much like with the ministerial standards.

Although others previously would have been stood down for smaller indiscretions, if you look at the long and sordid history of still Minister Taylor, he has, sadly, a very long history of transgressions. We know he was the subject of serious questions about his relationship with Cayman Island companies back when Mr Barnaby Joyce's water buyback scheme was on foot. I think the figure of $80 million was discussed in that session. There are also those allegations that Minister Taylor, when his family company was being investigated for illegal land clearing, phoned the environment minister to try to find a way of secretly delisting the protection for that grassland, and sussing out where the investigation was at and if it could be stopped somehow. He then pretended he was doing that on his constituents' behalf when it wasn't even in that electorate. That one's still under investigation. In fact, the Senate will be reporting on that matter tomorrow.

But now Mr Taylor has either forged figures or caused them to be forged. Someone's forged them; that's why it's being investigated. We don't know who actually forged the figures. He made the outlandish claim that the City of Sydney and the councillors and Lord Mayor somehow spent millions on travel, and he tried to say that they're therefore hypocrites because they believe in climate neutrality when, in fact, the figures are wildly inaccurate. Scandal continues to surround this minister, yet he remains a minister. The ministerial standards, which are the Prime Minister's document—they don't have legislative force, but they are meant to be standards that the Prime Minister enforces—are either simply too weak or not being enforced. Frankly, I think it's both. The ministerial standards require the highest possible standards of probity. Well, I really don't think we're seeing that here, are we? That list of scandals is most unedifying.

Another point: the Minister for Energy and Emissions Reduction is not doing very well at reducing emissions, or energy prices for that matter, but how does this guy have the time to check City of Sydney council records? How does he decide that that is worth his time, as a federal minister for an important issue nationally? He somehow found the time to write a letter about the Lord Mayor of Sydney, and got the figures wrong anyway—or possibly made them wrong deliberately. Doesn't he have anything better to do with his time as the minister for emissions reduction and electricity prices reduction? Perhaps that's why electricity prices have not reduced on his watch—and nor have emissions. I suggest that Minister Taylor actually do his job, and do it better than he has been, rather than write letters to local councillors. The whole scenario is entirely unedifying, not just for Minister Taylor but for this government.

What has the Prime Minister done? Rather than take action and enforce his pretty flaccid ministerial standards, he actually just phoned a friend and potentially tried to exert influence—we don't know because they won't tell us what was said during the phone call—rather than simply saying: 'Okay, Minister Taylor, enough is enough. This is four strikes. You'll have to have a bit of time on the backbench, buddy. Don't worry, we'll bring you back as soon as it blows over.' That's what you would normally expect from this government; that's what they've had to do in the past. They haven't even done that. All of this goes to show exactly why we need actual standards that aren't just at the discretion of the Prime Minister but actually apply to the Prime Minister as well and are independently enforced.

The Greens have been calling for a parliamentary code of conduct for many a year. In fact, I've got some legislation that has been referred off to inquiry. What happens in this building is in the bubble—I certainly agree with the Prime Minister on that one—but we are paid to represent the public interest, and what is happening is scandal after scandal that only serves to reinforce the low opinion held by members of the public of what we do in this place. We should be here tackling real issues like homelessness, like the climate crisis that we're in, like financial inequality. Those are the sorts of things Australians expect this parliament to be doing. Instead, because of Minister Taylor's constant transgressions and the Prime Minister's refusal to bring him to task and to ask him to stand down while this police investigation is underway, we're now having to talk about the fact that the government won't even disclose what was said during a phone call between the Prime Minister and a chief of police, a phone call about which every man and their dog has said, 'I wouldn't have made that phone call.' Former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull distanced himself and said he wouldn't have made the call. It turns out the Attorney-General, who's meant to uphold the law, was in the room at the time and presumably didn't say: 'Dude, no, put the phone down. That is not an appropriate call.' Does this government have no shame? Does it not understand that the rule of law actually means that everybody has to comply with the rules? We're not seeing any enforcement of the prime ministerial standards, and they are too weak as it stands.

There have been so many excuses from Minister Taylor and others: 'Oh, well, I didn't have to disclose that corporate interest, because it's a subsidiary or a subsidiary of a subsidiary.' They are using this corporate web to deliberately not disclose their own private interests, and they are then interfering in processes that might impact on those private interests. The Greens think that's why we need an anticorruption body federally. It's been more than a year since the Prime Minister was dragged to that commitment. It's been 10 years since the Greens first successfully passed a motion saying we need a federal anticorruption body. It's been 10 years that we've been working on this. We've had bill after bill. I'm pleased that in September this year the Senate passed our Greens bill to set up an independent and strongly resourced watchdog, with teeth, that would apply to politicians. It's sitting on the Notice Paper in the House. It's going nowhere. The government keep saying they are working on their own version, but they've been saying that for more than a year. Perhaps the Attorney-General shouldn't be sitting in the room while the Prime Minister is making inappropriate phone calls; maybe he could get on with his job—like bringing forward an integrity commission that his government committed to a year ago. But maybe he should expand the scope so it applies to politicians and to ministers and to the Prime Minister. Perhaps we wouldn't be in this situation if we had a national anticorruption body. Instead we see obfuscation and delay. We see rumours of a flimsy ICAC proposal that won't even cover politicians and won't, therefore, change the bad behaviour this place has been so riddled with.

And again we see Minister Cormann saying, 'No, soz, I'm not going to comply with this OPD. Even if anything was written down, it wouldn't be in the public interest to tell you'. It is not wonder that the Australian public think less and less of this parliament every single day. It's what all the surveys show. And what is this government doing to restore confidence and trust in the integrity of our democracy? It's doing absolutely nothing. It's delaying its ICAC bill; it's protecting ministers who really should have voluntarily stood aside a long time ago; and it's allowing corporate interests, and the private interests that ministers still have, to be concealed. It's about time we saw this government subjecting itself to the rule of law, complying with its own standards, strengthening its own standards and stopping the rot of corruption. We live in hope.