Christian Porter (Pearce, Liberal Party, Attorney-General) Share this | Hansard source

In the Prime Minister's previous answer he did note that, with respect to standards and the standards in this case that apply to disclosure on the ministerial and parliamentary interests register, there seems to be a standard that the opposition apply exclusively to the government—or, indeed, one or two ministers in the government—but don't apply to themselves. In this interest and in this matter, it's simply a question of the way in which traditionally members of both sides of the House as ministers have disclosed matters on the parliamentary register and to the Prime Minister. The way in which that disclosure has always occurred is, where there is a trust or where there is a company with interests in subsidiaries, the trust is declared and the company is declared but those things inside the trust or the subsidiaries are declared by virtue of declaring the head company or the trust. In fact, if applying that standard or the standard that members opposite now seem to think applies or should apply, the member for Spence and the member for Makin have both disclosed shares in BHP, a company with interests in close to 400 subsidiaries.

Now, according to the standards of the Leader of the Opposition, if they were to apply their own standard to their own members, they would be required to list every single one of those subsidiary companies. The member for Gellibrand has declared an interest in Telstra but failed to list the subsidiaries. The member for Sydney has disclosed a family trust that holds shares but has not disclosed the shares—

See this speech in context