Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Education, Apprenticeships and Training) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That so much of the standing and sessional orders be suspended as would prevent the Manager of Opposition Business from moving the following motion forthwith:

That the Prime Minister is called on by the House to make a statement immediately to reconcile her:

(1) statement that Fair Work Australia ‘will be independent of unions, business and government...Labor will remove all perceptions of bias’ with the fact that Fair Work Australia’s investigation of the Member for Dobell is now in its fourth year with seemingly no end in sight and may not even be released to the public; and

(2) assertions that there has been no political interference in the Fair Work Australia investigation of the Member for Dobell with the fact that her Chief of Staff contacted Fair Work Australia at the beginning of its investigation, one of the staff of the then Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations colluded with Fair Work Australia over the media management of statements to the press and she is unable to rule out that the Member for Dobell has been in communication with her or her office over the investigation.

There is a protection racket that surrounds the member for Dobell and we all know why: it is not to keep him in his job, it is to keep the Prime Minister in hers.

There is a smell about this government that reminds me of the smell at the back of a fridge full of old food and the smell is not going away, it is going bad and it is getting worse. It is a smell that is only going to get worse unless the Prime Minister ends the culture of cover-ups, half-truths and dirty tricks that characterises this government. The Prime Minister is damned in this matter by her own words about the Fair Work Australia investigation. Today she had a chance to reconcile them by supporting this suspension of standing orders and speaking to this motion, passing the motion and then debating in the House her previous statements about perceptions of bias and about no political interference. Instead the Prime Minister has left the chamber yet again. She has scurried out of the House to the Chief Government Whip's office to have a cup of tea and eat a Tim Tam to avoid answering questions that the public wants answered about this very grubby matter.

In the parliament today we had the very unfortunate experience of the Prime Minister being clearly on edge, being clearly rattled, being clearly incapable of telling the truth about the investigation by Fair Work Australia and about the member for Dobell. If she had told the truth she would have had to mislead the parliament and so instead she refused to answer the question. The Prime Minister has refused to answer question after question, from the Deputy Leader of the Opposition, from the member for Farrer and from me as the Manager of Opposition Business in the House. And we know it is because if she answers them truthfully she will damn herself and she will damn her government.

In 2007 the Prime Minister said that Fair Work Australia must get rid of all perceptions of bias. The Fair Work Australia investigation into the member for Dobell is now in its fourth year. It has taken longer than the Watergate inquiry into President Nixon, longer than the Korean War took from start to finish, longer than it took to build Sydney's Olympic Stadium, longer than the Rudd government's duration, even longer than it took Pat Farmer to run from the North to the South Pole! If you want some examples of royal commissions that were wrapped up earlier than this inquiry into the member for Dobell, we have the Royal Commission into the New South Wales Police Service, the Royal Commission into the Building and Construction Industry, the HIH Royal Commission, the Fitzgerald inquiry into Queensland police corruption and the 2009 Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission. Even the royal commission into the Chamberlain case and, in the United States, the commission into the 9/11 bombings were completed in a shorter period of time than this investigation and we know why. It is because there is a protection racket that surrounds the member for Dobell and it is run out of the Prime Minister's office.

There is an old mafia saying, 'A fish starts to stink from the head.' If the Prime Minister wants to avoid the perception that this government stinks from the head she must act now. She must act to give confidence to the Australian people that her office is not run on the basis of half-truths, that it is not run on the basis of cover-ups and that it is not run on the basis of dirty tricks. Far from avoiding the perception of bias, there is now a very real concern amongst the Australian public and amongst the press and the political fraternity that there is a deliberate, institutional go-slow about this investigation. But don't just take the opposition's word for it; people who have been personally involved in this case and people who know how these cases run have got plenty to say about it.

Take Mr Doug Williams, the former Commonwealth Industrial Registrar. He said it was difficult to comprehend how a regulator could be seen to be properly regulating when such an inquiry was so protracted.

He is absolutely right. John Lloyd, the former head of the ABCC said:

You have to do things expeditiously. That is the basic good service you have to give when you are using taxpayers' money.

Finally Kathy Jackson, who is very much at the centre of this controversy—she had the courage others in the Labor Party and the Labor movement did not have, the courage to take these matters to Fair Work Australia and to New South Wales Police, and my how she is paying a price as the Labor movement closes around her and tries to shut her down, but she will not be shut down—said only recently:

Why has it taken so long? Why are we still waiting for answers? And why are we in this position? We need this to end.

She is absolutely right. But we all know why it cannot end: because, should it end, should an adverse finding be made against the member for Dobell, and should he face any charges, the Prime Minister's survival will be at risk, the Prime Minister will be the one who will be in trouble, her government will come to an end—and that is why this will never end.

The Prime Minister must also reconcile her continued assertions that there has been no political interference with the Fair Work Australia investigation into the member for Dobell with what we already know. In 2009 her chief of staff contacted the Commonwealth Industrial Registrar to inquire about the investigation they were doing into the Health Services Union. Quite properly, he was rebuffed at the time by the Commonwealth Industrial Registrar—and all of that comes from the record. But Fair Work Australia knew from that moment that they were on notice, that they were being watched by the Prime Minister. The red flag went up in Fair Work Australia—and that was the purpose of the call. The call was not to inquire about the investigation into the Health Services Union; it was to let Fair Work Australia know that the Prime Minister's office new about it and they were watching Fair Work Australia.

And the warning shot that was fired across the bow of Fair Work Australia had its effect. What happened? An institutional go-slow happened. That is what happened. Almost four years later we are still waiting for the completion of that investigation. The Prime Minister's office's phone call had the desired effect: it stopped the investigation dead in its tracks. It did not matter what the conversation was about; the point was that the Prime Minister's office wanted Fair Work Australia to know, 'We are watching'. That is why there is a smell that hangs over this government like bad food getting worse, and it will continue to hang over this government and be a stench until the matter is dealt with.

We also know there was collusion between the then minister's office and Fair Work Australia about massaging the media. The phrase was used: 'Awesome, that should ensure it doesn't get any run in the morning'. That was a clear indication again, from the government, that they were pleased with Fair Work Australia's work, they were pleased that Fair Work Australia were running it the way they were—they ticked off the media statement; they were colluding with Fair Work Australia to ensure this matter went away.

If it is not bad enough that the Fair Work Australia investigation is perceived to be in institutional go-slow, to sandbag the government in power, it is even worse that claims of political interference hang over the investigation and taint the government. But the worst aspect of this is that the interests of 170,000 workers in the Health Services Union, who are members who pay their dues, are not even being considered. These are amongst the poorest workers in the workforce—170,000 Australians want answers to what happened to their money when the member for Dobell headed up their union. Those 170,000 people deserve answers to how their money was spent when the member for Dobell headed up the Health Services Union.

And there are members on that side of the House who I know agree with me. There are good Labor members from old union backgrounds, like the minister for resources, who must cringe at having to defend the member for Dobell in this place and having him as part of his government—and worse, having to rely on the member for Dobell to stay in government, because without his vote the government will fall. That is what this is all about: protecting the member for Dobell in order to protect the Prime Minister.

See this speech in context