Michael Ronaldson (Victoria, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Veterans' Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I quote from the transcript of a press conference in Canberra on 29 April. In it the Prime Minister says:

Australians are entitled to expect that people in public life uphold the highest standards.

Among the highest standards which must be upheld in public life is trust. The Prime Minister herself has failed the fundamental requirement of upholding the standard of trust. But it is not just me who is saying so; her own side is also saying so. I quote from comments about trust made by Senator Doug Cameron in an interview on 27 February this year. Referring to the Prime Minister, he said:

You know, she has blamed Kevin Rudd for every problem she has got. I don't accept that proposition. It wasn't Kevin Rudd who caused the problems during the election campaign. It wasn't Kevin Rudd who made promises that were unfulfilled. So I think we have an issue of trust, and people trust Kevin Rudd …

Unmistakably implicit in that comment from Senator Cameron is that this Prime Minister is not trusted. According to Senator Doug Cameron, this Prime Minister is not trusted. What have been some of the breaches of the highest standards of trust that we have seen under the watch of this Prime Minister? The first of them was the promise given by the Prime Minister before the last election, 'There will be no carbon tax under a government I lead.' I wonder whether that was the comment Senator Cameron was referring to when he said 'caused problems during the election campaign' and 'made promises that were unfulfilled'. So the first breach of trust by this Prime Minister occurred before the last election.

The second breach of trust relates to the Craig Thomson affair and the start of the prime ministerial protection racket, a prime ministerial protection racket which has breached that fundamental element of leadership—trust. The community is well aware of the matters raised about Mr Thomson back in 2009. The public is aware of the sordid details of his behaviour and I will not go through those today. But we know this affair commenced in 2009 and we know that it was back then that one of the senior staff members of the Prime Minister, then the minister responsible, contacted Fair Work Australia or its predecessor about it. That was the start of the Prime Minister's involvement in the Craig Thomson affair. The protection of Craig Thomson was about protecting a wafer-thin majority—and the standards applied in attempting to achieve that were also wafer thin.

I will very briefly go through the details of how the Prime Minister's protection racket has operated in the other place. On 16 August 2011, the Prime Minister said:

It gives the opportunity to say I have complete confidence in the member for Dobell. I think he is doing a fine job …

On 17 August, she again said:

I have complete confidence in the member for Dobell.

On 18 August 2011, she said:

As I expressed in the parliament yesterday I have full confidence in him. I will happily repeat that today: I have full confidence in the member for Dobell.

On 22 August, again in question time, the Prime Minister said:

… I do have full confidence in the member for Dobell.

I turn now to the second part of this Prime Minister's protection racket, the second breach of trust in relation to parliamentary standards—and that of course revolved around the former Speaker. This is the second element behind Senator Doug Cameron's reflections on what the perceptions of the Prime Minister are. I will not go through the allegations made against Mr Slipper because, again, they are on the public record—as sordid as they are, they are on the public record. But I will refer to the Prime Minister's ongoing protection of both Mr Slipper and Mr Thomson.

I wonder what drove the extraordinary turnaround on 29 April this year, when these immortal words were used by the Prime Minister:

To put it at its most simple, I think there is a line which has been crossed here.

The only line which was crossed here was with the Labor Party's internal polling. The protection racket had been going on for years. This is a Prime Minister who had stood up day after day, who had supported the member for Dobell and who had supported the member for Fisher. She only moved when it became too hard, on the back of internal Labor Party polling, to continue the protection racket. Then and only then did the Prime Minister move. I thought it was interesting that, at that press conference, Michelle Grattan asked the Prime Minister:

Prime Minister, do you accept that you have made a serious error of judgement in both these matters? Did you consult widely with your cabinet in coming to these decisions, and haven't you left Anthony Albanese out to dry after defending Mr Slipper up hill and down dale over the last few days?

This Prime Minister, as part of the protection racket, did indeed leave Mr Albanese hanging out to dry. It was only when she got Labor Party internal polling indicating that they were suffering that she moved. She had had the opportunity to do so months before—if not years.

I will move on now to some comments made by Mr Warren Mundine after his retirement. I think Mr Mundine summed up this Prime Minister, summed up her approach to politics and summed up her absolute obsession with the retention of power. He was talking about Indigenous issues—the disparity between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. He said:

It became more about the politics than actually achieving anything. And I began to start losing faith.

Mr Mundine knew it was about the politics and never about the policy. One of the great warriors of the Australian Labor Party felt motivated to leave his own party on the back of that.

The third part of the protection racket does not involve Mr Thomson or Mr Slipper; it involves the Prime Minister herself. This is the self-protection racket. This Prime Minister, on the back of one misused word in the Australianthey referred to 'trust fund' instead of 'slush fund'—has attempted to inoculate herself completely from answering any questions about the slush fund. She used that one word to run an hour-long press conference and has refused to answer any questions since. Thankfully there are those in the press gallery here and elsewhere who are prepared to stand up to the Prime Minister. There is, of course, the usual conga line of apologists who refuse to do so, but even they are now coming under enormous pressure to start asking the Prime Minister the questions she must answer.

On 1 November in the other place, deputy opposition leader Julie Bishop asked Ms Gillard:

Why did not the Prime Minister herself report the fraud involving the Australian Workers Union Workplace Reform Association that she helped establish?

Ms Gillard replied:

By the time the matter she refers to came to my attention they were already the subject of inquiry and investigation.

The self-protection racket is now failing—the defences are being proven false. It is time this Prime Minister stopped hiding behind the misuse of one word, hiding behind an hour-long press conference and hiding behind a refusal to answer any questions.

She must on Monday, some 50 metres from this place, tell the Australian people and explain to the House of Representatives why she has apparently misled both parliament and the Australian people.

George Brandis (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Attorney-General) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What about the missing files?

Michael Ronaldson (Victoria, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Veterans' Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As Senator Brandis says, there are the missing files as well as the missing money and the missing explanations. I want to demonstrate how low this government and this Prime Minister have sunk. I want to talk about a gentleman by the name of Mr McTernan. Andrew Probyn's article on 2 March this year went a long way towards explaining this. He quoted a comment made by Mr McTernan, who of course worked for former Prime Minister Blair in Britain for 12 years. Mr McTernan is quoted in the article as saying:

The key is to realise that you don't need to tell the whole truth, just nothing but the truth … Don't lie. Don't equivocate. But set out a defensible truth: one that you will not have to expand, modify or resile from.

Andrew Probyn goes on to say:

The thing about plausible deniability or defensible truth is that it encourages approximations of what really happened.

And when approximations of the truth are published or alleged, spinners like Mr McTernan delight in knowing the people they are handling—in this case Ms Gillard—can deny the veracity of the approximations without dealing with the underlying truth. Mr McTernan has clearly well briefed the Prime Minister in relation to those words.

I want to finish with Mr McTernan in the context of the Prime Minister's disgraceful misogyny speech. In the Weekend Australian on 6 October Chris Kenny made this comment:

The theme is hard to miss and the aim is transparent. Labor wants to portray conservative criticism of Gillard as attacks on women.

The genesis of this tactic is illuminating. McTernan, a former adviser to British Labor Prime Minister Tony Blair, was brought to Australia by former South Australian Premier Mike Rann.

He is now the communications director for Ms Gillard. The article goes on:

In a column for Britain's Daily Telegraph in 2010, McTernan declared: "The Coalition has a problem with women." He argued spending cuts proposed by the Conservative and Liberal Democrat Coalition in Britain were unpopular with female voters. "This gender gap is a real and pressing problem for (British PM David) Cameron, he wrote.

Last year another column on law and order issues was headed: "How many women today feel the Coalition is protecting them?" And just in case you missed the angle, a few months later McTernan focused on women promoted in British Labor's reshuffle, turning it against Cameron: "The PM has a problem with women and he knows it."

We know the depths that this Prime Minister and this party will sink to. We have seen the work of John McTernan in the last month. We know he was deliberately put on by this Prime Minister to achieve what he has tried to achieve in the last month, and it is not about good policy; it is about dirty politics. When you look at the comments he made about David Cameron, when you look at the comments he made about the Conservative Party in Britain and when you look at the comments made by the Prime Minister, two and two still equals four. I finish on this note: we all know the book by Graham Richardson, Whatever it takes. Well, the Prime Minister has written the Labor Party bible, and she stands utterly condemned. (Time expired)