Nick McKim (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to take note of responses given by Senator Abetz to questions that I asked him today. The simple facts of this matter, as far as we know them, are abundantly clear. We know that under the handbook, which is the amended constitution of the Liberal Party of Australia, Tasmania division, at the time the then state director, Mr Damien Mantach, fraudulently misused his Liberal Party credit card in Tasmania—an offence for which he was effectively sacked. We know that, under part 71H of the constitution, there was a Tasmanian member of the House of Representatives and of the Senate elected by and from the Tasmanian members of the federal parliamentary party and we know that that person was Senator Abetz. We also know that, when Senator Abetz was first questioned about this matter a few short weeks ago, he ran for cover by suggesting that it was a matter for the organisational wing of his party in Tasmania when, in fact, he was part of the organisational wing of the party in Tasmania by virtue of his position on the state executive committee, which is responsible for the affairs—these are the words of the constitution—of the division.

After being called out on that matter, Senator Abetz then had to attempt to answer some other questions from the media. At that time he basically stated, or claimed, that no sum of money was mentioned at the briefing that he received at the time in relation to Mr Mantach's offence. If someone came to anyone in public office and said, 'We've got to tell you there are some dodgy dealings around a company credit card,' what is the first question that any responsible person would ask? You would ask, 'How much are we missing off the credit card?' But Senator Abetz is asking the Australian people to believe that he did not ask the obvious question: how much was missing off the credit card that belonged to the Tasmanian division of the Liberal Party of Australia? Quite frankly, I do not believe that he did not ask that—either he is misleading or he is grossly incompetent. He cannot have it any other way—

Sam Dastyari (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

He could be both.

Nick McKim (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Or he could be both. As Senator Dastyari quite correctly points out, he could be both misleading and grossly incompetent.

But the matter gets worse for Senator Abetz because we now know that what transpired is that Mr Mantach went across and was employed by the Liberal Party in Victoria. He is alleged to have defrauded the Liberal Party of Victoria of $1.5 million. They apparently did not know about Mr Mantach's issues in Tasmania. Senator Abetz knew, on his own admission, that there were irregularities in relation to Mr Mantach and his use of the credit card in Tasmania, but somehow that information was not properly communicated to the Liberal Party in Victoria. At the very least, Senator Abetz owes an apology to his Victorian Liberal colleagues and to the party members in both Tasmania and Victoria for treating them like mushrooms.

The other matter that Senator Abetz has to come clean about in the Senate—and I will be raising these issues further as we move through the rest of this sitting year—is that, on his own admission, he knew the real reason that Mr Mantach left his position in Tasmania but he allowed the lie, that Mr Mantach left the Tasmanian division of the Liberal Party for personal and family reasons, to stand for seven years. He made no attempt at all to correct the erroneous record for seven long years, and that says an awful lot about his capacity as an office holder in the Liberal Party.

Question agreed to.