Brendan O'Connor (Gorton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I guess the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for the Environment and Heritage wants to debate this issue. He can get up after me and defend his ministers. I am sure he will—probably starting with the Minister for Foreign Affairs. He can defend his ministers all he likes, but the reality is that there have been breaches. Since 1998 the Howard government has chosen to turn a blind eye to those breaches. Any of the members here who take any interest whatsoever in these matters would know that between 14 October 1996 and 26 September 1997—less than a 12-month period—there were no fewer than seven ministers who resigned from the Howard ministry for alleged improprieties in expense claims and travel expenditure. I think people generally know what that was about.

It must be difficult to come into this place and aspire to such high office and then have to make the decision, as a matter of honour and in abiding by long held principles, to tender your resignation. But in all of those cases—I will not name the particular ministers—they terminated their office and effectively offered their resignation to the Prime Minister in good faith, and I think they did so in good honour. They followed many others prior to the election of the 1996 government who also resigned for breaches of ministerial responsibility.

What seems to have happened since then is a blatant disregard for any accountability by ministers for such important events including, of course, the ‘children overboard’ affair. It seems now—at least since I was elected to this place in 2001 and some would argue from the commencement of the term previous to my election to this place—that there is a government that refuses to accept these principles. As I say, there was no doubt that significant matters arose from the ‘children overboard’ affair. I accept that the then Minister for Defence, Peter Reith, during the election campaign was no longer running for office—indeed, the parliamentary secretary at the table was his successor—but there is no doubt in my mind and, indeed, in the minds of the majority of Australians, I would say, that he acted dishonestly when he confirmed that they were photos—

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