Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Finance) Share this | Hansard source

I seek leave to move the following motion:

That the House:

(1) notes that:

(a) the Royal Commissioner, the Honourable Dyson Heydon AC QC, agreed to speak at a Liberal Party fundraiser on Wednesday, 26 August 2015 at the Castlereagh Boutique Hotel in Sydney;

(b) the invitation to the Liberal Party fundraiser states that "cheques should be made payable to: Liberal Party of Australia (NSW Division)";

(c) the invitation also states, "All proceeds from this event will be applied to State election campaigning"; and

(d) that Mr Heydon has failed to rule out addressing Liberal Party fundraisers in the future; and

(2) censures the Prime Minister for failing to immediately sack his Royal Commissioner and establishing a Royal Commission that was biased from the start.

Leave not granted.

I move:

That so much of the standing and sessional orders be suspended as would prevent the Member for Watson from moving the following motion forthwith—That the House:

(1) notes that:

(a) the Royal Commissioner, the Honourable Dyson Heydon AC QC, agreed to speak at a Liberal Party fundraiser on Wednesday, 26 August 2015 at the Castlereagh Boutique Hotel in Sydney;

(b) the invitation to the Liberal Party fundraiser states that "cheques should be made payable to: Liberal Party of Australia (NSW Division)";

(c) the invitation also states, "All proceeds from this event will be applied to State election campaigning"; and

(d) that Mr Heydon has failed to rule out addressing Liberal Party fundraisers in the future; and

(2) censures the Prime Minister for failing to immediately sack his Royal Commissioner and establishing a Royal Commission that was biased from the start.

We have no choice but to suspend standing orders when we try to pursue a situation through questions and the Prime Minister cannot even maintain the same answers within the space of 30 minutes. What is the point of trying to pursue this issue through question time? It is one thing when the Prime Minister cannot agree with his Attorney-General; but he cannot even agree with himself between his first answer and his most recent answer. We have somebody before us who is willing to mislead this parliament, who thinks that he can get away with saying one thing and then saying the exact opposite only 30 minutes later and maybe no-one will notice. Well, people will notice, and people need to, because of the situation that has emerged today.

The events of today have exposed three things. In the first instance, the royal commissioner is conflicted. He is biased and he is conflicted. Second, if we are to take into account the argument that he has put in his own defence and that others have put in his defence, that maybe he was unaware it was a fundraiser, then he is incompetent. In his job, he is meant to be the person who knows what questions to ask. Checking who is organising an event is not a bad question to ask. So, the royal commissioner is conflicted and biased, or, at best—the best we can end up with out of this—he is incompetent.

But the third thing is what this says about the Liberal Party. What we have learnt today is what this says about the Liberal Party. We had the situation previously—and it was a sign that we should have taken notice of—where Ian Harper, at the same time we had the Harper review, was wanting to attend fundraisers for the member for North Sydney. Maybe we should have realised then that the Liberal Party know absolutely no shame when it comes to misappropriating the requests and doing things the wrong way by having statutory officers engage in fundraising events for their party, because the one group that definitely knew the whole way through how inappropriate this was was the Liberal Party. The Liberal Party knew it was a fundraiser when they issued the invitation. The Liberal Party knew exactly what they were doing when they put this request out. When the front cover of the document has the Liberal Party logo, it is probably a hint that it is a Liberal Party function. But, if the Prime Minister does not get the hint at the Liberal Party logo—and we are working on the basis that he may have seen it before—the reason that we have to suspend standing orders and cannot pursue this simply through questions—

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