Gavin Marshall (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I congratulate the opposition on their new-found interest in openness and accountability, because that is something I never saw demonstrated in the six years that I was over there in opposition when the then government time and time again shut down debate, did not allow time for proper investigation and ignored questions. There were probably only two occasions in question times that I thought ministers had genuinely attempted to answer a single question. I think it is a little bit rich for them to come here with these accusations of hypocrisy and allegations: we have had three months in government, so why haven’t we got everything absolutely right yet? The problem with that argument is that they left the position about transparency and accountability so devoid of any value that it is taking us a considerable amount of time, longer than we would like, to get to the point where we have proper guides and procedures to enable the public to have confidence in the work of politicians so that we all—the public, the politicians and everybody else—understand where the line should be drawn and how there should be accountability to this parliament and to the public in general.

This argument that the opposition is throwing up today is absolutely phoney. In order to get a few headlines, they come in here with allegations that have not been made before and are not known to the government. They use the fact that a new member of parliament has his photo in an advertisement in a local Queensland newspaper and then ask the government to guarantee that no government funds were used in the advertisement. How would we know that at this point in time when this is the first time the allegation has been made?

Senator Evans made a very succinct observation to Senator Ronaldson that, if this was such a concern and the opposition were worried about it, had they had actually asked the new member, Mr Trevor, whether or not funds were used? But, instead of asking to find out, they simply tried to make some headlines in a very amateurish way by trying to ambush the government into a position where they could not possibly give an answer to those questions. It was merely a political stunt, an absolutely prime example of sheer opportunism, and it is a phoney argument. There is no suggestion and, now that this ad has been tabled, there is no indication, as Senator Evans rightly indicated to the Senate, that government funds were used in this advertisement.

Then we hear Senator Abetz say that the problem was that we should have expected this sort of an attack because of our attacks on Mr Vaile. If my memory serves me correctly, I think most of the attacks on Mr Vaile came from the opposition. I have a report here from the newspaper that said:

The Opposition Leader, Brendan Nelson, was angry Mr Vaile had not told him of the trip and said his actions were inappropriate.

The last time I looked, even though Dr Nelson has been a member of the Labor Party, he was actually Leader of the Opposition. The Leader of the Opposition is attacking Mr Vaile. He then went on to say:

Had he consulted me about this before he had gone, I most certainly would have advised him in the strongest possible terms that it wasn’t appropriate for him to be overseas doing the kind of thing that we understand he’s doing ... He should be in Australia and he should be working and be available to his constituents.

And strangely enough in the same article it goes on and says, ‘Senator Minchin agreed.’ I have never accused Senator Minchin of once being a member of the Labor Party.