Joe Hockey (North Sydney, Liberal Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

Lucky John. What a privilege it must be for him to have the personal attention of the Treasurer, the personal attention that involves a mobile phone call with the Treasurer. How many we do not know, because this mob does not want to answer those questions. How many times did the Treasurer speak to John Grant? Well? It’s a good question, isn’t it? What about a good answer? That would help. But the Treasurer would have us believe that John Grant was treated like everyone else, except not one other car dealer received a personal telephone call from the Treasurer. And what about updates directly to the Treasurer’s home so that there is no doubt the Treasurer would have read it. How many car dealers out of 240 received that sort of treatment? Just one: John Grant from John Grant Motors, the mate of the Prime Minister, the benefactor of the Prime Minister. He received those updates, not once but four times. The emails went directly to the Treasurer’s home.

Then Treasury officials have the opportunity to engage in a discussion with a company on its hands and knees—Ford Credit, a company that comes directly to the government to beg for $500 million of guaranteed money. Do you know what, Madam Deputy Speaker: according to the leaked email—not leaked but actually released and tabled at a Senate hearing—in that meeting where they are begging for money Ford Credit were on its financial knees. They were desperate for money and would have fallen over but for the support of the government. It is now fact that, in that same meeting, Treasury officials handed over the mobile phone number of just one car dealer: John Grant from John Grant Motors, the Prime Minister’s benefactor, neighbour and obviously a mate of the Treasurer as well. The mobile phone number was handed over with a message: ‘He is an acquaintance of the Prime Minister. So, if you want $500 million, here is the mobile phone number of this acquaintance of the Prime Minister. Please take care of it.’ What does that smell of? That is what Ford Credit saw and they were the ones that came in begging for government help. Fair dinkum.

And it is not over yet because it is now emerging that all of these other dealers were provided with some form of financial advice and some of them were providing financial information to the government. Today we start to ask questions. Did John Grant have to do that? Did he have to provide detailed financial information to the government? It seems that he did not. It seems, from the government’s own tabled emails, that John Grant did not have the same financial reporting requirements as other dealers. What a surprise! In all of this, the reason we want a full open judicial inquiry is that there is a whole lot more to come out about John Grant, about John Grant’s relationship with the Treasurer and maybe even about John Grant’s relationship with the Prime Minister. There is a whole lot more to come out.

The Labor Party is running a distraction about leaks and emails and is running this scare campaign about the opposition having access to leaked cabinet documents. I have a joint press statement from Jenny Macklin and Wayne Swan dated 12 February 2004: ‘Leaked Cabinet Documents Show Family Squeeze’. It says ‘Leaked Cabinet documents obtained by the opposition’. Wayne Swan with a leaked cabinet document! He was in opposition, but now he is the Treasurer. What about these words in his own press release:

Clearly frustrated with the cover-up, government bureaucrats have taken matters into their own hands by leaking key cabinet-in-confidence documents.

What a fraud the Treasurer is. What a fraud. What a hypocrite. He needs to come into this place to stop lying to the Australian people about his role. He needs to defend his reputation.

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