Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

The government has claimed that the opposition has been responsible for fabricating an email, creating a fake email. The second lie has been that the government has claimed that the opposition based its criticism of the Prime Minster and the Treasurer on this fake email. That too is false.

The only reason the government wants to talk about the fake email is that there are so many real emails that contain so many details about the OzCar scheme that are so damaging to the government. The Prime Minister has been dishonest and hypocritical in his desperate attempts to protect his Treasurer and the government over the $550 million OzCar affair. The Treasurer has been caught out misleading the parliament over the special treatment he gave the Prime Minister’s Queensland mate John Grant. Remember this, the Treasurer arranged for Mr Grant’s finance request to be presented to the Chief Executive Officer of Ford Credit by Treasury officials at a meeting in which Ford Credit were seeking access to a $550 million government guarantee—$550 million of finance that was vital for Ford Credit’s survival. This leverage that the government found itself with was deployed for the benefit of the one man who gave the Prime Minister a free car, John Grant—the Prime Minister’s friend and benefactor.

We have made it very clear in response to these Labor lies and smears they have presented against us that we have had nothing to do with the creation of any fake email. I see the Minister for Finance and Deregulation here. He said in the House yesterday that this allegedly fake email was created where? On a computer in the Treasury department. It is perfectly obvious that we could have absolutely nothing to do with the creation of that email. The insinuation has been—first it was an allegation, but now it is just an insinuation—that the opposition were involved in the creation of that email.

Secondly, we have never sought to base our criticism of the government on that email. Last Friday, after Godwin Grech, a senior Treasury official, the man the government put in charge of this OzCar financing vehicle—and there was $2 billion of funding committed towards it—gave sworn testimony that contradicted the evidence the Prime Minister had given in the House, was when I criticised the Prime Minister and said that, unless he could justify his actions and reconcile the contradiction between the evidence of the Treasury official and his own statements, he should resign. We did not base our criticism on any reports of an email—fake or otherwise. The only criticism that was based on emails was the continuing criticism of the Treasurer, which was based on a slew of emails that were produced by his own department and given to the Senate.

The opposition’s calls for the Treasurer to resign rely on the solid, incontrovertible evidence drawn from those emails presented by Treasury. All of that evidence is authentic and beyond dispute. The Treasurer says that Mr Grant was treated like everybody else. Well, that is not the case. There was a personal phone call from the Treasurer, there were updates faxed to the Treasurer’s home—and there were none about any other dealer—there was a mobile phone number handed over to Ford Credit, there was no financial assessment of Mr Grant’s business and, most importantly, there was that incredible pressure on Ford Credit to look after Mr Grant when they were after $550 million of government support. They were told he was a mate of the Prime Minister. Imagine the pressure put on Ford Credit to help Mr Grant.

We will continue to pursue the Treasurer for his improper conduct in the OzCar affair, but before I proceed to speak further about that let me say something about the question of character. The Prime Minister has sought to say that this is a question of character. What do we say of the character of a Prime Minister who makes unsubstantiated allegations against the opposition? What do we say about the character of this Prime Minister who, when he was in opposition, accused the Prime Minister, the foreign minister, the trade minister and half our frontbench of criminal activities and said that the Howard government had been underwriting Saddam Hussein’s activities, financing suicide bombers? He accused the government of corruption and when it was established in a judicial inquiry that all of those claims he made were false, he gave no apology whatsoever.

Our accusations against the Prime Minister were based on the evidence to the Senate committee but clearly that particular evidence must now be under question because of the assertion that there was a fake email produced in the Treasury and the inference that it may be connected with the witness. That is the inference and that is why I have said—and this is the test of my character—that the criticism of the Prime Minister that we made last Friday, in the light of those developments, cannot be sustained. That is what we have said. That is a concession the Prime Minister never gave to us when he was in opposition and we were in government.

The only way for the Prime Minister to enable us to get to the bottom of this OzCar scandal is to have a full independent judicial inquiry. We have moved to set one up twice today and on each occasion the government has knocked it back. That inquiry would have the full cooperation of the opposition. It is vital that there be some sunlight let into these activities. How could it be that the financing arrangements of one Queensland car dealer, John Grant, became a personal mission for the Treasurer of our country? How could it happen that the Treasurer’s private office on 20 February sent an email to the senior Treasury official responsible for the $2 billion OzCar financing scheme, Godwin Grech, urging him—indeed instructing him—to make representations on behalf of that Queensland car dealer, and then, only three days later, for Mr Grech to go into that meeting with Ford Credit, at a time when Ford Credit was so desperately seeking $550 million of Commonwealth financial support, and spend a significant portion of the time at the meeting making the case for Ford Credit to take up the financing needs of Mr Grant, who was not in any event a Ford dealer?

Now, as both the Prime Minister and the Treasurer have said, this has been a time of great uncertainty for the motor vehicle industry. Yet how was it that so much of the focus of the Treasurer, his private officials and, on instruction, senior Treasury officials should be devoted to the business interests of that one Queensland car dealer? Why amongst all the car dealers in Australia having difficulty obtaining finance earlier this year was Mr Grant’s mobile telephone number the only one provided by Treasury officials to Ford Credit? Why was it that the Treasurer took time out from the global financial crisis in the frantic lead up to his trip to Britain for the G20 finance ministers meeting to phone Mr Grant to discuss whether and to what extent Mr Grant might be able to access OzCar finance? Why did the Treasurer then have his own office provide Mr Grant with Rolls Royce treatment by setting up a direct phone conversation with Mr Grech? Why was Mr Swan, the Treasurer, kept constantly in the loop, with regular updates on all email exchanges relating to Mr Grech’s work on behalf of Mr Grant copied directly to the Treasurer’s home fax?

The reality is that the treatment accorded to Mr Grant was very, very special indeed. It was absolutely Rolls Royce treatment. He might have been a Kia dealer but he certainly got the Rolls Royce treatment from the Treasurer. How special was it? Let us make some comparisons. Mr David Purchase, the Executive Director of the Victorian Automobile Chamber of Commerce, which represents 350 car dealers in Victoria and Tasmania, writes in a letter that he is: ‘unaware of any of our car dealer members receiving any direct assistance from Treasury or any other government department to directly access the special purpose vehicle OzCar’.

So rather than having their cases represented by Treasury officials directly to the CEO of a major finance company, Victorian and Tasmanian car dealers were without exception instructed to run their own race—contact the finance firms directly, with no special pleading from officials. Which would have carried more weight, we ask. A direct representation to the chief executive of a finance company by the very same Treasury officers who were also determining whether that finance company should gain access to a half-billion-dollar Commonwealth backed line of credit or a cold call without any official support? The answer is clear: it cannot be denied; the Prime Minister’s mate and benefactor Mr Grant received extraordinary and unmatched access, consideration and representation.

Plainly, the Treasurer has not told the truth. Plainly, the Treasurer is seeking to hide the truth. Australians are not fools; they know all about the culture of favours for mates that we have seen all too many times before from Labor—cronyism and preferential dealing. That is the Labor style. Instead of dealing with that issue, forcing his Treasurer to resign and agreeing to our calls for a full judicial inquiry, the Prime Minister is desperately trying to distract the country by making wild allegations against the opposition. All of these claims, all of these smears against the opposition are to the government’s knowledge completely and utterly baseless but they have continued to make them relentlessly because they are a smoke screen to protect the Treasurer.

On our side of the House we remember how the Prime Minister went about winning headlines in 2006; how he went about day after day as shadow minister for foreign affairs making wild and scurrilous accusations against a prime minister, a foreign minister and a trade minister; and how on 15 different occasions at 15 different press conferences he demanded that heads must roll. Not only did he call for resignations, not only did he accuse those ministers of corruption but he made the outrageous allegation that they were feathering the nest of Saddam Hussein. And when, as I said earlier, a judicial inquiry found those smears and insinuations to be utterly baseless, when it vindicated those three senior ministers he had so wrongly accused, he did not apologise, he did not retract; he showed not the slightest remorse. He simply accepted the reward of his Labor mates—they made him Leader of the Labor Party.

The feigned indignation that we have seen from this government this week is a measure of its dishonesty and of its Prime Minister’s hypocrisy. The fact is that we in the opposition have been asking the questions that are being asked by millions of Australians across the country: has this Treasurer used the enormous advantage of the Commonwealth to try to secure an advantage for a mate and benefactor of the Prime Minister; has there been an attempt by this government at the highest levels to cover this up? These are vital questions that go to the probity of the government. They must be investigated. They must be investigated independently and openly, and the best way to do that, the only way to do that, is with an independent judicial inquiry. It says much about the attitude of the government and their determination to avoid scrutiny that they have twice resisted a judicial inquiry when it has been proposed to them today.

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