Milton Dick (Speaker) Share this | Hansard source

On 1 December last year in this chamber, the member for Melbourne raised as a matter of privilege whether the behaviour of the member for Cook, when he was Prime Minister, constituted a deliberate misleading of the House, for failing to inform the parliament of his appointment to a number of ministries.

The member for Melbourne asked that I consider several references: the report of the inquiry into the appointment of the former Prime Minister to administer multiple departments, conducted by former High Court judge, the Hon. Virginia Bell AC; the statement by the member for Cook, during debate in the House which referenced the Bell report; and the member's reliance on ministry lists presented to the House, which noted that ministers might be sworn to administer portfolios for which they were not listed. I will refer to these materials briefly, as they raise significant issues for our Australian system of parliamentary government.

The member for Cook, in his contribution to debate on the motion of censure focused on matters of executive government, reflecting on various aspects of his prime ministership, including his ability to respond to questions in the House. He noted that the Solicitor-General had found that the then Prime Minister had been validly appointed to administer an additional department, and that there was no consistent practice for publication of appointments in the Gazette.

The member for Cook acknowledged that the non-disclosure of arrangements had caused offence and he offered an apology to those who were offended, but he did not apologise for taking what he refers to as 'redundancy action' in being appointed secretly to administer additional departments in the circumstances of a national crisis.

The Bell report attributed responsibility for the failure to notify the parliament of the making of these appointments to the former Prime Minister (at paragraph 201). The report relied on the opinion of the Solicitor-General that the absence of any notification of the appointment to administer a department, was not consistent with the principle of responsible government—a central concept of the Constitution which, according to the High Court, is based on a combination of law, convention and political practice.

In terms of parliamentary practice about such notifications, since its first edition in 1981, the authoritative text, House of Representatives Practice, has contained an explanatory statement that any ministerial and departmental change is notified publicly and announced in the House.

I find the final implication expressed in the Bell report to be most concerning—that 'the lack of disclosure of the appointments to the public was apt to undermine public confidence in government. Once the appointments became known, the secrecy with which they had been surrounded was corrosive of trust in government'.

Nevertheless, as fundamentally important as these matters are for the House and our parliament, I see no prima facie evidence to support a matter of deliberately misleading the House by the Member for Cook.

I remind members that the House has addressed this matter through a different procedure. By resolution on 30 November, the House censured the member for Cook, following an extensive debate on the issues I have referred to, for his failure to disclose appointments to administer multiple departments when he was Prime Minister.

The matter of deliberately misleading the House is a serious one and rightly there should be prima facie evidence that the House has been misled, and the misleading has been deliberate, in order for a Speaker to act under standing order 51, and allow such a matter to be referred, as of right, to the Committee of Privileges and Members' Interests. I am not able to grant precedence for a referral on this occasion.

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