Andrew Wallace (Fisher, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

When I spoke on the Electoral and Other Legislation Amendment Bill last July I said, 'I'll be back,' and now I'm pleased to finally be able to fulfil that promise. I'm proud to be part of a government that passed that bill, and now I'm determined to be part of a government that sees through the second crucial plank of this reform.

After hours of debate, we know what this legislation, the Criminal Code Amendment (Impersonating a Commonwealth Body) Bill 2017, will achieve. In short, it will make it clear that it is a criminal offence in Australia to impersonate a Commonwealth entity and will give affected parties the right to secure an injunction to prevent such an impersonation—crucial on election day. It will also introduce a maximum penalty for this offence of two years imprisonment or five years in circumstances of aggravation. But before this debate got underway we all knew that this legislation was necessary, because we all knew that impersonation of Commonwealth bodies does occur. We know that it occurs when it can have the most corrosive effects on our democracy, especially during our national election campaigns. Members opposite, in particular, know that that occurs. They know that their party and their friends in the union movement are among the nation's leading perpetrators of this kind of impersonation.

During the 2016 federal election, an older lady came up to me at a polling booth and she asked me: 'Andrew, what are you going to do? Are you going to take Medicare away from us?' She wanted to vote for this government, for the coalition government, and its vision for Australia, but not if we were going to take away Medicare. When I told her the truth, that we would not be selling or privatising Medicare, she was willing to vote for the coalition government. But why did she think the Turnbull government was going to privatise Medicare, despite the Prime Minister's repeated assurances to the contrary? She believed that Medicare would be sold, because that's what she was told. She thought Medicare would be privatised by the coalition government. In Queensland, text messages from a phone number that identified itself on recipient's phones as 'Medicare' read:

Mr Turnbull's plans to privatise Medicare will take us down the road of no return. Time is running out to save Medicare.

But it was not Medicare that sent that text; it was in fact the Labor Party. It's hard to think of a clearer case of an organisation impersonating a Commonwealth entity.

This impersonation was assisted by the friends of members opposite in the ACTU. The ACTU distributed one million replica Medicare cards which suggested that voters should preference the Liberal Party last and lied about the Turnbull government's proposed policies. How do I know it was a million? Because the ACTU crowed about it in a media release. These cards didn't just bear a passing resemblance to a Medicare card, didn't just look a bit like a Medicare card; they were identical do a Medicare card—the same green colour, the same Medicare watermark, the 10-digit code, the font and the validity date. Most damning of all, the Medicare logo was used without any permission, obviously, from the federal government. Is it any wonder that little old lady constituent of mine thought that Medicare was going to be privatised by the government? This is a clear case of impersonation and it can't be allowed to happen again.

Let's face it, the Leader of the Opposition, members opposite and their union mates don't need any more help to spread lies about the government and its healthcare policies. They were doing a pretty comprehensive job of that before they started impersonating Commonwealth entities. During the last election the ACTU sent voters in marginal electorates robocalls suggesting that a Turnbull government would reduce access to Medicare, while women over the age of 65 were targeted with late-night phone calls repeating the same lies. Meanwhile Labor ran TV campaigns with the completely baseless claim that the Prime Minister wanted to privatise Medicare.

In case there is anyone in the country who is left in doubt, who has not yet seen through this rank dishonesty, let's take a second to review the Turnbull government's actions on Medicare since the election. This government is spending more on Medicare than ever before: $23 billion in 2017. Under Labor it was $19½ billion. This government restored the indexation of the Medicare rebate after the now Deputy Leader of the Opposition froze it in 2013. That restoration began in July last year and included the retention of bulk-billing for pathology and diagnostic imaging. In 2013 we saw the highest-ever GP bulk-billing rate for a March quarter: 85.6 per cent.

So, we know that Labor and the unions will happily impersonate Medicare during an election in the pursuit of their dishonest political agenda. What we don't know is what's next. Impersonating a Commonwealth entity was the last stage in a 'Mediscare' campaign that began with simple, old-fashioned misrepresentations. What other impersonations might we see in the future, without this law? Will Labor and the unions perhaps impersonate the Department of Education and Training? In that regard, too, their lies and misrepresentations have in fact already started. At the end of April 2017 the Leader of the Opposition claimed that the government was making $500 million in cuts to TAFE. In fact, there were no cuts to the TAFE budget. Rather, there was an additional $360 million a year in the budget to fund 300,000 more apprenticeships. Apprentice numbers, in contrast, collapsed under the Leader of the Opposition when he was a minister. In May 2017 the Deputy Leader of the Opposition, standing next to her leader, claimed that the government was going to cut $22 billion out of the education budget over the decade—a disgraceful line that she continues to push to the media, right up to this week. As we know, the Turnbull government is actually committing $23½ billion in extra funding during that period.

Will Labor or the unions perhaps impersonate the Fair Work Commission? Once again, the misrepresentations have already begun. The ACTU said in March 2017 that nurses, teachers and disability workers were all at risk of having their penalty rates cut following the Fair Work Commission decision. They weren't, as the commission themselves said and as has proved to be the case. Not long after that, ACTU President, Ged Kearney, said that the independent umpire had never before reduced people's pay, in 100 years. In fact, they had done so twice in the past decade alone. And of course we all remember 'Trent the Battler', supposedly a worker, presented by Labor, who was supposedly gutted by the Fair Work Commission's decision. In fact, he was a union delegate who was completely unaffected—a Labor member. It could be others. Their track record in the Department of Veterans' Affairs, the ABCC and many other agencies is consistently dishonest.

It is ironic that this Leader of the Opposition started the year suggesting that he wants to introduce a federal ICAC—a national integrity commission. Purportedly, it would be set up by a man who, without doubt, was present when the dishonest 'Mediscare' campaign was created. This is a Leader of the Opposition who has never apologised for the Labor Party's impersonation of Medicare. The Leader of the Opposition is the same man who fought tooth and nail to stop the Heydon royal commission. He called it politically biased and claimed it was a witch-hunt. He's the same Leader of the Opposition whose evidence to that commission was described as evasive and whose credibility as a witness was called into question by the commissioner himself. Is this the man we want setting the terms of reference for a national integrity watchdog? I don't think so.

We all know that that sort of conduct Labor and the unions indulged in at the last election is wrong. I suspect that members opposite would even agree with that themselves. After all, when the Minister for Human Services' office discovered that ACT Labor had been distributing replica Medicare cards and asked that they cease, it took nine minutes for ACT Labor to apologise and promise to stop. If even ACT Labor can tell that this is wrong, why can't the Leader of the Opposition and the Australian Labor Party? As parents, we all tell our kids that honesty is the best policy. How, then, can Labor get away with these fabrications?

If we do not pass this legislation, there is every reason to believe that Labor and the unions actually intend to continue this kind of conduct. ACTU's secretary, Sally McManus, was, after all, in a previous role, the architect of the 'Mediscare' campaign. She was rewarded for her base achievement by being promoted to secretary. She believes, as is well known, that obeying the law is optional for unions, and she appears to believe the same about telling the truth. In May 2017, she said, in a column in TheSydney Morning Herald and The Age, that 2.3 million Australians earn minimum age. At the time, it was actually 196,300. That's a fabrication by more than a factor of 10. In March 2017, she said, of CFMEU law breaking, that it was done quite often when a worker was killed on a building site, when, of the 47 matters that were then before the courts relating to illegal action by the CFMEU, not one was in direct response to a workplace fatality.

Labor has never apologised for the 'Mediscare' campaign. In fact, exactly the same lies about 'Mediscare' continued in the recent Bennelong by-election and will, no doubt, be repeated in the Batman by-election. The Leader of the Opposition in the House has already suggested that they intend to take a number of their current scare campaigns all the way to the next federal election.

We know that this legislation is necessary now and so does the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters, which wrote:

The committee considers that impersonating or purporting to act on behalf of a Commonwealth officer, or an entity, is unacceptable and that steps should be taken to ensure that neither occurs in future.

Everyone, with the exception of the Leader of the Opposition, would agree that we need this legislation, just as we need the Electoral and Other Legislation Amendment Act. We cannot allow a repeat of the outrageous dishonesty and deception that we saw in the 2016 election. We must act now. For that reason, I commend the bill to the House.

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