Kerry O'Brien (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Transport) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to talk about a speech presented in the other place and some other matters tonight. On 28 March this year the member for Bass, Mr Michael Ferguson, rose during the adjournment debate and spoke about honesty in politics. In what someone described to me as his ‘boohoo’ style, Mr Ferguson moaned about an advertisement published in the Launceston Examiner. This advertisement was published on 27 March, the day most elements of the Howard government’s extreme industrial relations legislation commenced. It drew the attention of Examiner readers to Mr Ferguson’s complicity in the government’s extreme industrial relations agenda. It also detailed the pay and conditions enjoyed by Mr Ferguson as a member of parliament—pay and conditions which, it goes without saying, remain unaffected by the Work Choices legislation.

Most people who make it to parliament have got a bit of intestinal fortitude; the ability to cop criticism on the chin; skin thick enough to withstand more than glancing blows from opponents—not Mr Ferguson. The Liberal member for Bass has got skin that is about as thick as—well, use your own imagination. Like most people, I do not pay a lot of attention to what Mr Ferguson has to say, but others have drawn certain things to my attention.

For that reason I paid attention to the speech he delivered on 28 March, because it revealed a few things about Mr Ferguson that I do not think do him much credit. First, he cannot cop criticism. Mr Ferguson did not respond to the advertisement in the Examiner on 27 March by methodically rebutting it. Instead, he labelled it part of a ‘dishonest campaign’ involving ‘dishonest tactics’. He said the people of Bass were being ‘lied to’ as part of a personal ‘smear campaign’. It was an emotional and petty response that says more about Mr Ferguson than he might wish.

Second, the speech revealed that Mr Ferguson likes to avoid facts he finds inconvenient. He told the other place: ‘I am unable to tell you who wrote the ad, who paid for it or who placed it.’ Perhaps his office fax machine was low on toner that week, because the advertisement clearly displayed the Your Rights at Work campaign logo. The Your Rights at Work website, www.rightsat-work.com.au, says:

Your Rights at Work is a community campaign run by the ACTU. The campaign brings together the hundreds of thousands of hard working Australians who want to protect their rights and conditions in the face of a massive attack by the Coalition Government.

There was no mystery about the advertisement that ran in the Examiner on 27 March. Heaven help Mr Ferguson’s constituents if it is beyond his wit to identify the Your Rights at Work campaign logo when it is published in his local newspaper. In any event, I am pleased to fill him in tonight, because he will see a lot more of the logo and the campaign between now and the next federal election—I can assure him of that.

The third thing Mr Ferguson’s speech revealed is that he does not apply the same standard to himself that he asks of others. He protests about the honesty of others, he condemns their failure to tell the ‘whole truth’ and he challenges the Labor Party and the union movement to focus on moral character and honesty in our campaign to unseat him. I want to do just that in the few minutes that remain.

In the dying days of the last election campaign it was revealed that a company of which Mr Ferguson was a director was in serious breach of section 205B of the Corporations Act 2001. That section requires notification to the Australian Securities and Investments Commission of the name and address of company directors within 28 days of appointment and resignation. Section 205A of the act explicitly provides that a director may notify ASIC of a resignation. Mr Ferguson was a director of Studio 19 Imports (Australia) Pty Ltd from 8 May 2002 to 17 June 2004. ASIC was not informed of Mr Ferguson’s directorship during this period. In fact, ASIC was not notified of Mr Ferguson’s appointment and resignation until September 2004—three months after his resignation and 28 months after his appointment. According to a Mercury newspaper report on 2 October 2004, Mr Ferguson blames the company’s auditor for the breach of the Corporations Act. The auditor pointed out that it was his—that is, Mr Ferguson’s—responsibility and not theirs. Not good enough, Mr Ferguson. So much for the ‘whole truth’.

A further matter I want to raise tonight does not concern a breach of the law—at least as far as I know. It does concern a breach of trust. A biography currently published on the website of the Tasmanian Division of the Liberal Party and on Mr Ferguson’s personal website makes a claim about Mr Ferguson that I do not believe can be substantiated. The claim is:

Michael was awarded the Order of the British Empire award for community service in 2000 …

The best that can be said about this statement is that it does not bear any relationship to the truth. The Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry established in 1917. Many Australians have been honoured with membership of this order in various ranks. Many of those have received that honour for outstanding community service. I do not believe Mr Ferguson has received such an honour.

Australian governments agreed to cease making recommendations for British honours in 1992, the year Mr Ferguson turned 18. When he was an electorate officer for Senator Guy Barnett, and simply the Liberal candidate for Bass, Mr Ferguson made another version of his biography available to voters. This revealed what was probably the truth in this matter. It said that Mr Ferguson was the recipient of the 2001 Order of the British Empire Association award for service to the community. The year of award, as I said, does not match his current biography—but good on him nonetheless.

It is not the award I have a problem with; it is the transition of the award into what appears to be an honour Mr Ferguson has no right to claim. An award given by OBE holders is not what Mr Ferguson claims to possess today. He claims possession of an ‘Order of the British Empire award’. Obviously, when Mr Ferguson’s status was upgraded from candidate to member of parliament he thought his biography deserved an upgrade as well. But, instead of earning the honour that he implies he has, he has appropriated it.

The words ‘morality’, ‘honesty’ and ‘truthfulness’ roll off Mr Ferguson’s tongue quite well. I ask the question: are these standards demanded of others or is Mr Ferguson prepared to apply them to himself? Tonight I call on Mr Ferguson to accept responsibility for, and to explain why, his directorship of Studio 19 Imports was not notified to ASIC in compliance with the Corporations Act—an act of this parliament. I call on the Tasmanian Division of the Liberal Party to remove Mr Ferguson’s claimed honour from its website. I also call on Mr Ferguson to remove the OBE claim from his website and provide an explanation for his actions. I do believe that Mr Ferguson owes the people of Bass an apology and he also owes an apology to genuine recipients of Order of the British Empire awards.