Kevin Rudd (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

is to get to the Lodge and to get to Kirribilli for the purposes of being greeted by the Prime Minister. Prime Minister, in your ministerial code of conduct you say:

Ministers are provided with facilities at public expense in order that public business may be conducted effectively. Their use of these facilities should be in accordance with this principle. It should not be wasteful or extravagant. As a general rule, official facilities should be used for official purposes.

Prime Minister, what did you mean by that? What did you mean by this provision of the ministerial code? If it says, ‘Their use of these facilities should be in accordance with this principle’—this principle being that they should be used for public and official purposes—then using the national estate for fundraising purposes is in gross violation of the ministerial code you have laid down for your ministers. Is the Prime Minister asserting that he is not governed by the ministerial code he has put out there for his ministers? Obviously he believes he is beyond it and above it.

Then there is the final element of the saga: the panic here yesterday as they sought to get on the phone to the AEC and make sure there was no problem—through the Special Minister of State’s office, via his Chief of Staff, trying to nobble poor old Mr Bodel, who is responsible for disclosure matters at the AEC, to make sure that that individual was not going to cause a problem for the Prime Minister.

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