Sharon Bird (Cunningham, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I suggest to the member that there is a great deal of care out there. That attitude is exactly the one that I am referring to, and I would suggest that it is probably not a good line to interject with, as it will go down on the record. None of the ministers has taken any responsibility. Each of them trot out the line that no-one told them anything. None of them see any evil, hear any evil or dare speak of any evil they may encounter.

The government has so effectively trained the Public Service over the last 10 years in the methods of handling controversial issues that it appears nothing is ever written on such matters and nothing is ever processed through any channel or in any form that makes an accountability trail. Everything is designed to allow plausible ministerial denial. No minister takes responsibility for anything. They are never told; they never see documents. It appears that they also never speak to anyone, nor allow anyone to speak outside school. Public servants are even gagged from answering questions to the Senate.

Ministers rely on legal speak to provide information in question time which, while perhaps strictly accurate, is purposefully designed to not allow the truth of the matter to be exposed. National papers have to resort to FOI applications to simply access advice provided to ministers about matters of general public interest and importance, such as broad policy advice on the impact of various options in industrial relations. It appears that ministers climb out of their cars in the morning, stomp into the office, shut the door and put on the headphones and blinkers. Administration and decisions just happen by chance, apparently not only in the absence of ministerial oversight but also in the absence of ministerial direction.

The Australian editorial a couple of weeks ago said:

This Government has crippled the concept of ministerial accountability.

Day after day this week and in previous weeks media reports, editorialists and cartoonists identify the truth: that plausible deniability is going to be exposed to the light of day and that this government will be increasingly held to answer for its tricky tactics designed to avoid scrutiny, avoid responsibility and avoid difficult decisions. The only thing it is not worried about avoiding is incompetence, regardless of how this could have a devastating effect on Australian lives.

When some form of scrutiny cannot be avoided, it is conducted in as limited a way as the government can contrive. In the Melbourne Age this week, Michelle Grattan wrote of the gagging of public servants in Senate estimates:

This is just one more strike in the Government’s poleaxing of the Senate committees’ investigative process. Since the Coalition got the numbers in the upper house, the Opposition and minor parties obviously cannot set up embarrassing full-scale investigations. Even the inquiries into legislation (such as the industrial relations bill last year) are quick and dirty.

Quick and dirty indeed. The article goes on to describe the government’s excuse as ‘lame’, and its arrogance as ‘palpable’. It also describes it attempts to create an attitude in bureaucrats and independent authorities to do ‘whatever it takes’ to meet government wishes.

Michelle Grattan is far from alone in these observations. Another senior journalist with years of experience in observing governments, Laurie Oakes, had an article in the Bulletin this week titled ‘Serial contempt’ which says in part:

The government says it has nothing to hide in the AWB kickbacks-to-Saddam affair, and that may be true. But the way it is attempting to block parliamentary scrutiny hardly bolsters the claim. John Howard dismisses the Opposition’s concerns as ‘gratuitous criticism’ and argues that the Labor Party should shut up and wait for Terence Cole, QC, to complete his inquiry and deliver his report. But that is not the way the Westminster system is supposed to work. Ministers are answerable to parliament. The establishment of a commission of inquiry under a retired judge does not change that. Yet in this affair—as is increasingly common the longer the government is in office—parliament is being treated with contempt.

I would add that this means that the Australian public is being treated with contempt. Australians cannot rely on lack of knowledge to avoid complying with the laws of the land. For them, ignorance is no defence.

The article goes on to identify a pattern of behaviours it identifies as stonewalling replies, excuses, glib evasions and fudging. Mr Oakes concludes:

If the intelligence agencies really did nothing after receiving a tip-off like that, the PM should be demanding to know why, not making excuses.

Whilst this assessment is applied by Mr Oakes to the AWB scandal currently under investigation, it could equally apply to so many of the other scandals that this government has faced.

The truth is that if the government does not rein in its arrogance and its intimidation of free and frank public service advice it will continue to blunder into scandal after scandal, and its excuses will become less credible each time. It is terminal behaviour for a government. We are far away from the days in 1995 when the then Leader of the Opposition told Australians that he would establish new standards of accountability and trust in government. The Prime Minister in one of his first acts tabled in this place a document establishing these new standards. It has since never been looked at again. It is certainly never enforced.

One need only go back to scandals such as the MRI scandal involving the former minister for health, where confidential budget information was provided to radiologist businesses. There was never an admission that the then minister was loose with his mouth, which compromised public policy. There was certainly no apology or resignation. Then there was the scandal involving the former minister for Aboriginal affairs, who revealed that he still continued practising surgery while a minister of the Crown. He was quickly shunted off to a comfortable diplomatic posting in Ireland.

Then there was the telecard scandal involving the former Minister for Defence, who later went on to promote—quite disgracefully—the dishonest impression that children were thrown into the seas by their asylum seeker parents. The former minister blatantly lied to the parliament and the media—infamously on ABC radio while the television cameras were focused on the sweat of his brow.

Then we have the public bullying of the Australian Federal Police Commissioner, who in answering a question on the Sunday program sensibly said that Australian involvement in the Iraq conflict had made us an increased terrorist risk. So ruthlessly public was the bullying of the commissioner that he, it was reported, considered resigning. Then we had the disclosure of secret national security documents deliberately made available to a Herald Sun journalist to discredit an officer from the Office of National Assessments over Iraq. Currently there are court proceedings under way against two journalists for publishing the details of a cabinet submission on veterans’ affairs issues, and a public servant has also been charged. But there has never been a resolution to the disclosure of a secret briefing on national security to the Herald Sun journalist. This government, in its ruthless arrogance, will use any means to discredit and slander any person who seeks to hold it accountable. But none of its ministers has any courage in walking the plank when incompetence or scandal engulfs them.

The Prime Minister in waiting appears to be enjoying question time these days. He sits there with that infamous smirk as the AWB Cole inquiry revelations roll out day after day, pinging this minister and that minister. Naturally, he will not forget his own incompetence and humiliation of last year over the Gerard affair. But, again, that old standard line was put about that he knew nothing. Nobody bothered to tell him that his appointment to the Reserve Bank board was compromised and unsuitable.

This endless list of scandal and incompetence might appear to be a joy to the media and perhaps it could be argued to the opposition, but there are very serious consequences to this soap opera of scandal. Already public trust in all politicians is extremely low. I saw a Roy Morgan opinion poll late last year which ranked professions on the basis of trust. It is always the case that politicians score very poorly in these polls, but journalists and the media generally are these days taking a substantial caning too. The Australian editorial shortly after made the point:

Once ... people have good reason to assume the powerful think they are above the law, or can act independently of community standards to suit themselves, the trust that ensures people willingly pay their taxes and obey the law inevitably unravel.

The continued erosion in public trust will inevitably continue to crack the foundation of our institutions and decision-making processes. We will all pay a substantial price in the long term.

This government is not a conservative government: it refuses to take action to conserve the traditions of our parliamentary democracy. Indeed, many of its own party members have expressed grave concerns about these developments. If we are to continue to argue for economic and social reforms, Australians have to be able to trust what all politicians are saying in these debates. With that trust it inevitably follows that we must take responsibility for decisions, processes or events that go wrong. Ministers are charged with that high standard; the Prime Minister of the day is charged with custody of enforcing that high standard.

The Howard government has failed to live up to the standards it established for itself back in 1995. The vacuum in accountability and enforcement of standards will, whether the government realises it or not, be filled at some stage as frustration grows in the handling of this government’s incompetence. There is actually a gentle threat contained in the same Australian editorial:

... if ministers refuse to accept responsibility, or even to explain the actions of their departments, The Australian will have no option but to ask, and investigate, the public servants who actually administer the country. And the same standard will ... apply to ministerial advisers ...

I suggest that, if the Australian comes good on this threat, it should start investigating right now because, as it knows, the government puts controversial public servants out to pasture, usually overseas, with haste. The latest example arose following the release of the Palmer report. Extensive changes were announced to the department of immigration. The head of the department conveniently resigned and was appointed to a diplomatic post.

This government claims to be ‘in touch’ with the electorate. If that were so, ministers would accept that Australians are mature enough to know that mistakes are made, stuff-ups occur, scandals erupt and administration has unintended consequences. They should accept that, if any of these incidents or events occur, Australians expect the truth and that the problem should be fixed and responsibility taken. Australians do not accept being taken for mugs, and they do not accept being lied to. They do not accept that, along with the car, the office, the staff and the perks, ministers are not told anything and do not receive briefings, correspondence or departmental files. They do not accept that somehow, when a scandal erupts, a problem is exposed or incompetence arises, ministers magically disappear into a bubble. Australians want the person with whom the buck stops to front up, disclose and cop it on the chin.

The AWB wheat-for-weapons scandal is the latest episode in the soap opera that is the Howard government. It is simply inconceivable that the Prime Minister, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, the Minister for Trade and present and former ministers for agriculture did not know that something compellingly smelly was taking place. The government says that, because it established an inquiry into this scandal, it should be congratulated for a display of accountability. Why, if it wishes this commendation, has it not included in the terms of reference scrutiny and examination of its own conduct?

I conclude by quoting a letter to the editor by a South Australian, published in the Australian, which sums up what I think many Australians feel:

I want to know who’s running the country because based on what John Howard and his ministers know, it isn’t them.

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