Michael Ronaldson (Victoria, Liberal Party, Shadow Special Minister of State) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answers given by the Minister for Immigration and Citizenship (Senator Evans) to questions without notice asked by Senator Ronaldson today relating to the code of conduct of members of Parliament.

When Senator Evans was answering my question this afternoon he unfortunately finished off with a comment which I think he will live to regret—that was, that I should go and make inquiries of the member for Flynn in relation to this matter. What an extraordinary statement to make at the end of an answer. What it very clearly indicates is that Minister Evans is treating this matter with contempt. What he should have done today was to say, ‘I will go out, and come back to the Senate at the earliest possible moment, and make sure that there were no Australian government resources, Australian taxpayer resources, used to fund this ad.’

Senator Evans can say, ‘I’m not too sure,’ and ‘I’ll have another look at it,’ but it is very clearly an advertisement by a sitting member of parliament for his conveyancing company. I will not hold it up again, having been quite rightly admonished by the President. I seek leave to table this advertisement.

Leave granted.

This is an advertisement that clearly indicates that this member of parliament is actively involved in his business. That is to a certain extent to one side. It is the utter hypocrisy of the Australian Labor Party in relation to these matters that led to the questions today—their complete and utter hypocrisy. It is all right to go out and openly attack the member for Lyne, but it is not all right when they are pursued about the matter to try to get them to acknowledge that they are doing some work, as the Prime Minister did when he first got in. These questions did not reflect on those matters; these questions clearly asked the government about whether it is appropriate for a member of parliament to advertise his business in the paper. The second question was: were any Australian government resources used to fund these advertisements? When you go out and spend all week and all weekend on all the news services talking about people such as the member for Lyne from the other place, you have to be prepared to accept that if your hypocrisy is as gross as this you will be caught out and it will come back to bite you—as it has in this particular case.

All this coalition opposition wants is the openness and transparency that this Prime Minister has talked about since he was first elected. Where, for example, is the lobbyist register, which we were promised two months ago as an example of openness and transparency? Where is the ministerial staff code of conduct that we have been promised for a month and a half? It is not there. Where is this Prime Minister when it comes to electoral donation and campaign reform? Has he agreed to the opposition’s view that we should get the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters to have a thorough look at this? No, he has not. Every time something else comes out about the Wollongong City Council and sex and donation scandals and his friend ‘President’ Iemma in New South Wales he goes along to another press conference and plucks something else out of the air to talk about to keep the press happy for another day and a half. Let us have some openness and transparency from the government.

Helen Coonan (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Human Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

And accountability.

Michael Ronaldson (Victoria, Liberal Party, Shadow Special Minister of State) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

And some accountability. Why doesn’t someone stand up in this place today and say, ‘We are going to make sure that there is fair dinkum electoral donation and campaigning reform and we are going to support the coalition’s reference to the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters’?

Let us have no more of your gross hypocrisy. If you want to play games, you are going to be caught out playing games. You have been caught out with the member for Flynn advertising in the paper. You prevaricated about it and called it a hypothetical. This is no hypothetical; this is absolutely real. Let us have some real answers to a real question about a real situation. Let us also have some acceptance of responsibility from those opposite so that, rather than talk about it, you actually do something about it. You have had three months to do something in relation to openness and transparency, and you have done nothing. (Time expired)

Glenn Sterle (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I look forward to taking note of answers to questions today. I find it absurd that the coalition opposition, led by Senator Ronaldson, dare lecture us on transparency, decency and hypocrisy. How dare they. If you want to talk about hypocrisy, Senator Ronaldson and all you senators opposite, we will talk about hypocrisy. The member for Flynn, Mr Trevor, a very well respected member of his community, has had a longstanding ad in the local newspaper supporting his business. What evidence is there that there is anything illegal or improper about that? You come into this chamber and throw accusations around like grenades and dare to bring down the good name of Mr Trevor.

Let us talk about hypocrisy, shall we? Let us talk about people who are on the taxpayers’ drip while they are supposed to be representing their electorates. That brings to mind the member for Lyne, Mr Vaile. Let us talk about hypocrisy and Mr Vaile, shall we? He is on the government payroll and yet was financed by a company to go to the Middle East. He got paid for that as well as drawing a wage from the Australian taxpayers. And you come in here and lecture us about hypocrisy. How dare those opposite. No-one has explained Mr Vaile carrying on in the Middle East and getting two incomes. I am sure that after Work Choices there would be numerous Australians who would kill for two incomes. How dare those opposite stand there and keep straight faces when they look at us and throw those accusations at Mr Trevor.

While we are at it, I will bring up another person: the longstanding member for Mayo. He called himself the longest serving foreign minister. He just decided that he is not going to turn up for question time. Talk about arrogance and ignorance. After all those years in government, you cannot handle the fact that the people of Australia have uncovered you and found out what you stand for. And you attack a new member, a new member who has a longstanding commitment to his electorate. And I am still waiting for the substance. If Senator Ronaldson is going to come into this chamber and make wild accusations and wave bits of paper around, he should do his homework. For the tactics team over there, it is all very fancy to have these wonderful accusations with no substance, but back them up. After the carry-on of some of your former ministers, you should be ashamed.

Those senators opposite should hang their heads in shame. They want to talk about decency, openness, fairness and transparency. What an absolute joke that is. As I said, I am still waiting for an explanation, as I am sure most of Australia is, as to how Mr Vaile dared to get two pay cheques. What was he doing over there? Was he bettering Australia’s future or was he looking after his own interests while still attracting a backbencher’s salary? With the greatest of respect, I do not subscribe to the argument that Mr Vaile, like Mr Abbott, runs: the pathetic excuse to the Australian people that he cannot afford to live on a backbencher’s pay.

I am quite proud to say that we are well remunerated. I am sure there are 20 million Australian workers who would absolutely love a backbencher’s pay rate. But Mr Vaile has probably been talking to Mr Abbott, because he is probably finding it so hard to go from his ministerial pay packet to a backbencher’s pay packet. How condescending and how sickening is that. Get out there and tell the Australian public that you think that that is a good argument. You should be absolutely ashamed. I am ashamed to sit in the same chamber as some of you; to me you are a disgrace. In fact, Senator Abetz, you kept very quiet about it because you could not justify Mr Vaile’s and Mr Downer’s disgraceful behaviour and arrogance towards Australian taxpayers.

Kay Patterson (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy President, on a point of order: I give credit for a very healthy debate but I think Senator Sterle should direct his comments through you and not directly to Senator Abetz.

John Hogg (Queensland, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yes, that should be done. Also, people should not call personally across the chamber. That might assist the conduct of business in the chamber as well. Senator Sterle, you have 47 seconds left, if you wish.

Glenn Sterle (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would be very interested to hear other senators opposite get up and defend the disgraceful misdemeanours of the member for Lyne and the member for Mayo, because they could not put their hands on their hearts and look Australian workers in the eye and say: ‘We have a right to get two pay cheques. We have a right to go out to lunch because we do not think we have to be in the chamber.’ What they should be doing is apologising to Mr Trevor for the disgrace of dragging his name out with absolutely no proof and no substance to the wild allegations. I am sure Mr Trevor will speak for himself, but it is very easy to attack someone who is not in this chamber. You should be ashamed. Hang your heads and hang them low.

Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The undermining of the leader of the Labor Party has begun in earnest by the contribution of left-wing Senator Sterle, because one thing is very clear: in his attack on the member for Lyne, he must have known that we on this side would respond with the information that the Labor leader himself moonlighted whilst in opposition and earned consultancies of $130,000. Talk about two pay cheques; talk about duplicity. That is exactly what the Australian Labor Party does: don’t do as we do, just do as we say because we will always do differently to that which we say.

Here we have the Labor leader, whilst in opposition, moonlighting with a consultancy, which is something that Senator Sterle condemned. Hello! Did we ever hear him condemn that whilst they were in opposition. Talk about earning a second pay cheque for his family. One hundred and thirty thousand dollars is more than a backbencher earns in a full 12 months. If Senator Sterle is so upset about that, where was his condemnation of Mr Rudd?

Indeed, if he was so concerned about people not being here for all of question time, he might like to explain why the now leader of the Labor Party, Mr Rudd, was squired around the world, courtesy of Chinese companies, to Sudan, to China, to the US and to England. And do you know what? He missed one question time after another because he went on these trips whilst the parliament was actually sitting. There is no condemnation of Mr Rudd there. What we have is another clear example of Labor saying, ‘Do as we say, but don’t do as we do.’

But let us come back to the member for Flynn. I can understand why those opposite would not want to hear that the massively wealthy Guangzhou based property developer Zhou Zerong paid for one of Mr Rudd’s trips. He also paid for the Treasurer to visit China. Woodside, the Perth based energy company, also paid for Mr Rudd to go to China. A company called Beijing AustChina Technology Ltd funded Mr Rudd’s trip to England, the US, Sudan and China in June-July 2006, and the last trip happened when parliament was sitting. Mr Rudd missed not one but several question times, all while being funded by a telecommunications company. On top of all that he got $130,000 in extra consultancy fees.

Yet the Australian Labor Party seek to condemn those on the other side. The only reason they have thrown Mr Vaile into the equation is that they have been caught red-handed, with the new member for Flynn still appearing in advertisements trying to trade on his parliamentary career to boost his conveyancing business. One of the slogans of his advertisement is: ‘Fixed fees, no surprises.’ Well, I have got a surprise for the member for Flynn. Whilst his motto may be ‘no surprises’, there is a surprise, and that is that his own Labor colleagues condemn the double pay cheque. I am sure Senator Sterle will be around to the office of the new member for Flynn as soon as this debate is over to condemn him for double dipping and for breaking the Labor Party’s standard of having two pay cheques coming in to that family from Mr Charles’s own resources.

What we have here is an abrogation of duty and responsibility. The Leader of the Government in the Senate, upon being questioned by Senator Ronaldson, should have immediately said that he would check up on the allegation and come back to this chamber. The Labor Party talks about running surpluses. The only surplus we have seen thus far is a surplus of arrogance and abrogation in relation to the duty to the people of Australia.

Gavin Marshall (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to 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.

Nick Minchin (SA, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

No way!

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

I am glad he has confirmed that. That puts it beyond any doubt, and we can trust Senator Minchin that he has been very consistent in his alignment for all the time I have been here. But he said:

I suspect the public don’t take kindly to the idea that serving members of Parliament travel overseas for lobbying activities …

I think that puts a lie to the allegations and assertions that Senator Abetz makes that this is an attack in response to our attacks on Mr Vaile. It simply does not pass the laugh test, quite frankly. The two most senior people in the Liberal Party are the ones that have been attacking Mr Vaile about his actions. These are things that ought to be debated. There ought to be some public discourse about it, and these issues ought to be resolved. Don’t simply come in here with a phoney position making cheap shots to take some heat off—(Time expired)

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary Assisting the Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What a sad and unfortunate speech from Senator Sterle, raising the issues of morals in this particular business and asking what right we have to lecture the Labor Party. We did not lecture anyone—and we do not—but we might have had good reason to if you think about these names: Brian Burke, Keith Wright, Bill D’Arcy, Dr Theophanous, Mr Orkopoulos and Mr Gordon Nuttall—just to name a few. I was very disappointed to hear Senator Sterle enter into that.

It is quite clear that the Deputy Prime Minister, Ms Gillard, has been criticising Mr Vaile for allegedly having an overseas consultancy job. How is that different to the issue raised by Senator Abetz that Mr Rudd had a $130,000 consultancy overseas a few years ago? Can someone explain to me the difference between Mark Vaile and Mr Rudd? I would be very keen if one of the Labor speakers could tell me what the difference is. What is the difference? The Deputy Prime Minister criticised Mr Vaile. Why does she not criticise Mr Rudd for doing exactly the same thing? In relation to Mr Trevor, I am not sure that any allegation was made. There was a question asked whether there was improper use of Commonwealth activities. I might give Mr Trevor a word of advice. When I was elected to this parliament on 1 July 1990, I resigned from my legal practice on the same day because, as a senator, I had a view that 100 per cent of my time should have been spent serving my constituents. If Mr Trevor is still in practice in his very busy practice in Gladstone—

Chris Evans (WA, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Government in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Ambulance chasing.

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary Assisting the Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I take the interjection about ambulance chasing. I was often accused of it but it was not an area of law I ever practised—I always found it too difficult—but it was something the Labor Party concocted many years ago.

Mr Trevor’s practice is one of those that one refers to as ‘ambulance chasing’. It looks after all the unionists who have a fall at work and then sue their bosses. Mr Trevor has a very big and busy practice. I have no idea whether Mr Trevor is still in practice. If he is not then using his photograph on an advertisement for his former firm would seem to be misleading in the extreme. That would presuppose that he is still in practice.

I happen to know the electorate of Flynn very well. I campaigned there a lot during the campaign. We did very well in the Senate vote there. It is a huge electorate. It goes from Gladstone right out to Winton and Longreach, with all the places in between. There are the big cities of Emerald, Biloela and Barcaldine. I was talking to a journalist in Longreach the other day. I said, ‘I suppose Mr Trevor has been out here quite a bit since the election three months ago?’ The journalist said to me, ‘We haven’t seen him yet, but we understand he is coming.’

I will just give Mr Trevor this advice: people out there expect to be represented. I do a lot of representation in that area because the people there obviously do not have a great deal of confidence in their current member. You cannot sit in Gladstone running a legal practice when you have a huge electorate with a very diverse range of issues to serve. If Mr Trevor is still in practice, he should give it away straightaway, as I did. If he is not in practice, his advertising needs to be checked a bit further.

I want to go one further. What is the difference between Mr Trevor earning an income from his legal practice in Gladstone and Mr Vaile’s situation? I am not defending Mr Vaile, and I do not want to defend Mr Trevor either. But I would like those people in the Labor Party, who seem to raise the hypocritical argument that it is wrong for Mr Vaile but not for Mr Trevor, to explain to me the issues of consistency and lack of hypocrisy in the attack they have made on Mr Vaile.

Question agreed to.