Mark Dreyfus (Isaacs, Australian Labor Party, Cabinet Secretary) Share this | Hansard source

As the Prime Minister explained in reading out the relevant passage from the ministerial code of conduct, it is absolutely in order for ministers to own shares in publicly listed managed investment trusts—I'd hope that some of those opposite would know what they are—where the minister concerned has no control over the investments made by that managed investment trust. That is my position.

What's extraordinary is that the level of transparency that we have provided as a cabinet, as a ministry and as members of this parliament in the register of interests that these people opposite have been raking through—that level of transparency was never provided by those opposite while they were in government. Indeed, those opposite, when they were in government, permitted shareholdings in private companies, permitted shareholdings in public companies, because they didn't care about any conflicts of interest. They didn't care about the appearance of conflicts of interest and they didn't care about the actual conflicts of interest. We do. We are a government of integrity, and those opposite would do well to have a look at how this should be done, because you didn't know in office how this should be done.

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