Luke Gosling (Solomon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Improving integrity and good governance was a major election commitment of the Albanese Labor government. This was rightly one of the Australian people's top priorities at the last federal election, and, if I can say so, your appointment to your position, Mr Speaker, has helped us get back on track.

I've spent quite some time in this place talking about the need after the last decade for us to rebuild the ethical infrastructure of our nation, and that is what we are getting onto. It's been obvious that this is required. It's been incredibly clear that our trajectory as a country has not been good enough in recent years. Our international reputation was, in the past, one of having robust institutions, the rule of law and integrity. But, particularly in the last decade, that has been backsliding against many metrics. So, this is not a partisan point.

Let's hear what the different organisations have had to say. We've seen this backsliding in the past decade. Between 2012 and 2018 Australia slid to 13th place in Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index, which measures trust in government. A 2018 Australia Institute report calculated that perceptions of growing corruption in Australia shaved four per cent off our GDP because of the hit to business confidence. That had a real cost to us—a massive $72 billion. But over the past decade it got worse. Between 2018 and 2021 Australia dropped by five more slots to reach 18th place in the Corruption Perceptions Index. This picture is even more abysmal when you add it to the result of the 2022 Edelman Trust Barometer, which found that trust in government declined precipitously in 2021. I don't need to remind honourable members here of many of the reasons for that. The study found that politics had become viewed by Australians as a dividing force.

Yesterday the member for Kennedy mentioned that he was once part of a fascist government that locked people up for protesting. Well, 61 per cent of Australians responding to the study I just mentioned reported in 2021 feeling unable to have civil debates about points they disagree with. As members know, the culture of this place is often seen as a bellwether of the broader social malaise of distrust. That is why there was such an urgent need for action when our government came to office. That is also why we quickly moved to implement our commitment to legislate a powerful, transparent and independent National Anti-Corruption Commission, the NACC Act, which passed both houses of parliament in November. Our government is also reforming whistleblower protection through the Public Interest Disclosure Amendment (Review) Bill 2022. This is all part of our commitment to the Australian people to restore trust and integrity to government.

Today we continue to consider a piece of legislation to increase transparency that many of us never thought we would need. The Ministers of State Amendment Bill 2022 that is before us will implement reforms that foster greater transparency and accountability in our system of government. This bill responds to the revelations that Australians learned about in August last year that their former Prime Minister, the member for Cook, had secretly sworn himself into five extra portfolios that were already occupied by his own ministers in 2020 and 2021, so that in addition to being appointed to administer the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet the former Prime Minister was invested with the power to administer the departments of: health; finance; industry, science, energy and resources; the Treasury; and home affairs. The news of these secret appointments shocked many Australians and also shocked many around the world. It goes without saying that it also shocked many members on all sides of this parliament when it came to light, except for a select few in the former Prime Minister's circle.

This was an issue that truly cut across political lines. Of these multiple portfolios, former Prime Minister John Howard said:

I don't think he should have done that, I don't think there was any need to do it, and I wouldn't have.

The next coalition Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, said:

I'm just not going to defend what was done … it is just highly unconventional, highly unorthodox, and shouldn't have happened.

The next coalition PM, Malcolm Turnbull, said:

This is sinister stuff. This is secret government.

And:

This is one of the most appalling things I have ever heard in our federal government. I mean, the idea that a prime minister would be sworn into other ministries, secretly, is incredible.

It was in this context of widespread and bipartisan shock that the government acted to prevent this ever happening again. Our government referred these matters to the Solicitor-General, Dr Stephen Donaghue KC. As was clear from his advice, 'the principles of responsible government are fundamentally undermined by the actions of the former government.' And many who still sit on the benches opposite us today were part of the government that allowed this culture, this behaviour, to happen. In his advice, the Solicitor-General noted:

The Governor-General has no discretion to refuse to accept the Prime Minister's advice in relation to such an appointment.

But, while the Solicitor-General advised that Prime Minister Scott Morrison, the member for Cook, had acted lawfully and in accordance with the Constitution, he did so only because the current rules did not require notification of such an appointment to be valid. That's obviously an omission that, we learned, can be misused to undermine transparency in federal parliament, at the very least, and to accumulate power in too few hands, at the worst.

Following the Solicitor-General's advice, it was also clear that an appropriate and swift inquiry was needed, so, on 26 August last year, the Prime Minister and the Attorney-General announced the appointment of former High Court Justice the Hon. Virginia Bell AC to lead the Inquiry into the Appointment of the Former Prime Minister to Administer Multiple Departments. The report was provided to our government on 25 November last year and has been published online. This is an outstanding, incisive report that goes to the core of this unfortunate story in vivid detail. Thanks to the report, we know, for example, that Mr Frydenberg, the then Treasurer, was not informed of the then Prime Minister's appointment to administer the Department of the Treasury. The report draws on firsthand interviews with parliamentarians and officials involved in this case. This inquiry was not about the politics but about how this happened, why it happened and who knew about it.

The Ministers of State Amendment Bill 2022 forms one part, an important part, of our government's response to Ms Bell's recommendations. In response, the bill will require the Official Secretary to the Governor-General to publish a notifiable instrument, registered on the Federal Register of Legislation as soon as reasonably practicable, that the Governor-General has chosen, summoned and sworn an executive councillor to the Federal Executive Council, appointed an officer to administer a department of state or directed a minister of state to hold an office. It will also require notification when any of these positions are revoked. The notifiable instrument will include the name of the person, so we understand who is being sworn, the department of state and the date on which they were sworn, appointed or directed. In the case of revocations, the notifiable instrument must include the name of the person, the name of the former office and the date that such membership, appointment or direction was revoked.

This bill demonstrates the government's readiness to act promptly to restore the Australian people's confidence in our federal system of government and to rebuild integrity in public sector institutions, processes and officials. Transparency in government processes is not a 'nice to have'; it is essential, because our system of parliamentary democracy relies on conventions and checks and balances. As the Solicitor-General concluded:

… it is impossible for the parliament to hold ministers to account for the administration of departments if it does not know which ministers are responsible for which departments.

It's pretty simple stuff: we need to know who is responsible for the discharge of what responsibilities.

The measures in this bill will go some way towards providing greater integrity and transparency around the process of appointing elected officials to high office, especially towards ensuring we have a system of government where one person cannot again garner powers without adequate accountability to the Australian people and the Australian parliament. It will ensure the Australian people are able to access information relating to the composition of the Federal Executive Council, those appointed to administer certain departments of state and the high offices that ministers of state hold. This is a technical change, an important change with positive and long-term implications for our democracy.

Like the American experiment, the Australian project relies for its legitimacy, in the eyes of the people, on a raft of rules, principles and conventions that are not necessarily laws. In this case, the convention was that the members of the executive could not legitimately accrue more power without their own parliamentary colleagues and, of course, the public knowing about it. Our system of government had until now assumed this norm to be widely understood and to not need any specific act of parliament to enshrine it in law. Unfortunately, through the actions of the former Prime Minister and his inner circle who were aware of this, we have learned that we can no longer assume anything.

I wish there had been no need for this bill—obviously, everyone does—but there clearly is a need, so I commend this bill to the House and welcome this reform that will strengthen transparency and good governance, no matter the government of the day. Crucially, this bill will also help to restore citizens' trust in government from the dangerously low levels we have seen. Earlier in my contribution I went through that slide in trust in government that we've seen in the last decade.

This bill will contribute to making our democracy stronger by shedding light on ministerial and other high-level appointments. In a mature democracy like ours, this shouldn't be optional; it should be law. This bill makes sure that it is law, and it joins with our other measures to start rebuilding the ethical infrastructure of our great nation. That's what the Australian people expect of all of us, so I call on all sides of government—all parties, all Independents—to support this bill.

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