Madeleine King (Brand, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Northern Australia) Share this | Hansard source

I rise in support of this motion. All of us who are elected to this place have a responsibility to contribute to decisions that will make a difference to our nation and to its citizens. That includes a responsibility to uphold our constitutional conventions and democratic norms which are the bedrock of our liberal democratic system of government. Students of Australia's political history will be aware that our federal constitutional arrangements borrow from the system of responsible government from Westminster, while also incorporating the notion of a strong Senate and systematic checks and balances from Washington. This arrangement is referred to in the political science textbooks as the Washminster mutation. There is an internal theoretical inconsistency between these two approaches. Responsible government suggest governments can act as they will but will be held accountable at each election. Checks and balances, meanwhile, constrain government power, meaning that the executive alone cannot be held solely responsible for decisions taken by the whole parliament. Even from our foundation Australia's political culture has tended toward the pragmatic rather than the ideological.

However, the member for Cook's behaviour and choices undermined both the Westminster and the Washington philosophical underpinnings of our constitutional arrangements, thereby diminishing our polity, to cater for his unabated hunger for power—the ultimate indicator of self-centred entitlement that took nearly everything for himself, an egocentric belief that no-one but the chosen could possibly be acting in the national interest quite so well as he. The other members and senators swore oaths to serve in the national interest. Each of those oaths was diminished by the actions of the member for Cook. Our foundation documents seek to set out the role of the legislature to constrain the worst excesses of the executive. As members of this place we cannot stand idly by when we witness such an affront to good governance and our democratic norms as has been displayed by the member for Cook as the former Prime Minister, the former Treasurer, the former Minister for Finance, the former Minister for Home Affairs, the former Minister for Health, the former minister for industry and science, and, of course, as he was, the former minister for resources. We cannot allow what he did to undermine democracy to go unremarked or set a precedent for any future Prime Minister to secretly govern in the shadows.

Mr Speaker, the former Prime Minister secretly had himself sworn-in to a number of portfolios, including resources. Whatever tenuous COVID continuity argument he may make about other portfolios, the principal reason for seizing the resources portfolio was to make a decision that he did not believe the publicly acknowledged and recognised minister, the member for Hinkler, would make. The only decision that the member for Cook appears to have made in any of his additional portfolios was in relation to the PEP-11 title in the resources portfolio. It's not just a matter of principle. The decision was a real one that has real-world consequences. The consequences are so significant that impacted parties have challenged the decision through the courts, and that case is ongoing. With that in mind, I will be very circumspect in my remarks and confine them to what is already on the public record, lest I add to the current contention before the courts.

The Bell report shows us that the member for Cook secretly appointed himself minister for resources on 15 April 2021, then called in the PEP-11 decision in December 2021. I want to express my sincere sympathies with the member for Hinkler. Those who have been undermined, who have worked in toxic workplaces, might be familiar with the kind of boss who gaslights one and undermines one's work. I commend the member for Hinkler for the grace with which he has responded to the revelations of the member for Cook's behaviour, and I thank him for his collegiality during his time as resources minister, when I was the shadow minister and, like the rest of the nation, entirely unaware that there were indeed two ministers for resources in this country.

The member for Cook and his government treated the resources portfolio and, by extension, the whole industry and all of its workers with contempt. The resources industry of Australia and its quarter of a million workers carried our nation through the COVID pandemic. While the world was in lockdown, offshore oil and gas projects in the north-west and the Northern Territory powered on, powering the west coast of this country and most of our region. Coal exported from Queensland and New South Wales made its way to Ukraine and powered economies in North Asia; Victorian gold fetched record-high prices as uncertainty led people to swap currency for bullion; nickel projects in Tasmania and Kalgoorlie provided a key component for batteries of electric vehicles; South Australian copper supported the world's growing need for electrification; and 916 million tonnes of iron ore left Western Australia, adding to the critical export earnings the resources sector delivers to this nation. Without this export wealth, our lucky country would never have been able to pay for the social health infrastructure that literally saved lives during the pandemic.

Meanwhile, the coalition undermined Australia's resources industry. They refused industry's calls to act on climate change, putting our key trade relationships at risk and setting our country back a decade in the effort to decarbonise. They failed to land an energy policy and risked our energy security, upon which minerals processing is dependent. They even dropped the portfolio out of cabinet due to internal Nationals bickering and a backroom deal to give the member for New England a promotion. They treated taxpayers' money as their own, creating colour-coded spreadsheets to favour their seats in the sports rorts scandal. And now there has been this sordid episode in Australia's political history. Mr Speaker, is it any wonder that the previous government consistently avoided introducing an anti-corruption commission? They voted against the banking royal commission 26 times. They concocted the robodebt scandal that destroyed lives. They used Australian Defence Force footage of flood disasters as a political fundraiser for the Liberal Party.

Perhaps those opposite are frustrated by accountability. Perhaps they find democracy inefficient. Like everyone in this place, I love Australia and I love our representative democracy—the fairest, most accessible egalitarian democratic institution in the world. Yesterday, scientists from Geoscience Australia showed me around the geological unconformity deep underneath Parliament House. I touched the 440-million-year-old sandstone upon which this House is built. But our freedom and democracy are built on a much more fragile bedrock that is at risk of erosion and decay by the actions of those who, craving power above all else, simply take it for themselves.

When trust in public institutions around the world has receded, I know I'm not alone when I say I was proud of how ours fared against the headwinds of the pandemic. Anything that seeks to circumvent or otherwise tarnish our precious democratic institutions should be called out for what it is: a fundamental undermining of the principles of responsible government and the sovereignty of the Australian people.

The standard you walk past is the standard you accept. Others opposite may now be claiming Stockholm syndrome had led them astray, as they were shocked by the member for Cook's grasp for the levers of power. But those members opposite now have an opportunity to reflect on how they may redeem themselves for enabling the member for Cook's democratic deceit. Those whose roles were diminished by these undemocratic acts have an opportunity to acknowledge this wrong, by supporting the motion—which leads me to ask: what legacy do those opposite wish to leave? How do they explain themselves to their electorates when they go to their mobile offices or when they have people on the phone? How will they explain that they enabled this wrong during the last term of government, and then they continued to not acknowledge it by opposing this motion? By opposing this motion, members are endorsing this behaviour that undermines our democratic system of government—it is no less than that. And it is their responsibility to acknowledge what has gone on. The member for Cook took us through his way of thinking, and that's entirely up to him, but the thing is: what he did reflects on us all in this place.

I signed an oath earlier this year when I became minister. The weight of responsibility when you are signing that oath is unbelievable. My signature is basically unrecognisable, because the weight of the moment and the pressure of it is overwhelming—and so it should be, because it is an extraordinary responsibility and I take it very seriously.

So, to each of those seven ministers that really had that responsibility diminished by the member for Cook: this is your opportunity—and not all of them are in this House anymore, but they have friends here; this is your opportunity to redeem what happened to them and to acknowledge the wrong that was done toward our system. Our names here in this place will be enshrined in the Votes and Proceedings; our words will remain inscribed in Hansard forever. And that record will remain for a long time—long after we have all left. Voting against this motion will tell a history of those members that were unmoved by the unjustified assault on our democracy. I urge all members to support this motion, in the interests of this chamber, of the other place and of the representative democracy of Australia.

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