Peta Murphy (Dunkley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Imagine, if you will, being the Prime Minister of Australia in early 2020. As the Prime Minister, you had recently won a hard-fought election—so hard-fought that even your own description of that win was that it was a miracle. You are part of a party that, over the last 20 years of Australian federal democracy, had been in power, with its coalition partner, for some 13 years. But over those last two decades, public trust in government had fallen alarmingly. In fact, by December 2019, not all that long after the miracle election win, trust in government had fallen to its lowest level on record in Australia, with one in four Australians telling the ANU Australian Election Study that they had lost confidence in political leaders and institutions.

That same study found that Australians' satisfaction with democracy was only just higher than that recorded in 1979, just a few years after the one and only constitutional crisis that we'd ever had in this country. In fact, satisfaction with how democracy was working in December of 2019 was at 59 per cent, having fallen from 87 per cent in 2007. You're the Prime Minister at a time when Professor McAllister from the ANU, conducting the Australian Election Study, said:

… the findings were a clear warning the nation's politicians needed to do better in their efforts to represent and win the confidence of everyday Australians.

That's the context in which you're the Prime Minister in early 2020. You've just perhaps started to recover from the public outrage over the fact that you were overseas on holiday while vast tracts of the country were burning, and now you're faced with a global health crisis and no-one really knows how that will play out, apart from seriously frightening and dire predictions—some of which are already manifesting—of previously unimaginable levels of death not just around the globe in other countries but here in our country. And you know, as do other leaders in this country, that we're going to have to take unprecedented steps to deal with this international health crisis, this global pandemic. You don't necessarily know what they all are, but it's clear that serious, unprecedented steps are going to have to be taken: actions that, on anyone's account, will absolutely require citizens to have confidence and faith in their governments to support the people and the governments that will necessarily be implementing restrictions on their lives that they never imagined they were going to have to face.

We know that the power of government relies on the citizens supporting the democratic system that gives government power to do the everyday mundane things, let alone the extraordinary things that are required in a time of crisis. But then you're the Prime Minister who discovers that you, personally, don't actually have the legislative power to exercise some of those extraordinary powers—it's the health minister who does. So what do you do in all of those circumstances?

Imagine that you are that person with the crisis in confidence, the global health crisis, the clear need to make sure that Australians understand what is happening and trust that the measures that are going to be put in place are being put in place for the best reasons—to protect them, their families and their communities—and one of the most senior and experienced people in your cabinet has the legislative power to put in place some of those measures. As a reasonable, rational person who is in politics and government in order to make life better for Australian citizens, what do you do in those circumstances?

What would you do where a crisis of trust in government was about to intersect with a crisis of life and livelihood, which at that time, in March of 2020, also had the potential to wreak havoc on the systems and the way of life that we all value? We know what the Prime Minister at the time did. He secretly assumed the powers of the health minister and thought that the best way to take the Australian people with him was to not tell them what he was doing; it was to take an extraordinary step that no Prime Minister had ever taken before of giving himself powers—extraordinary powers—but not tell anyone that he had done it.

Is that what you would have done if you were the person responsible at that time? Would you want to go down in history as giving powers to yourself in secret? Would you want to be compared to Trump and others around the globe who took power for the sake of power, not power for the sake of delivering for other people? Or would you perhaps have said to the Australian people in this extraordinary time: 'Extraordinary measures will need to be taken. Standing next to me is the minister with the powers to do it, and you can absolutely be assured that, as Prime Minister, I will be in the room at all times when decisions are made'?

I don't know about anyone else—well, I know about one person, because he didn't take this path—but I think that's how you start to rebuild trust in democracy and institutions in this country. You are transparent, you are honest, you execute the powers that are given to you by legislation and the Constitution. And, if you have to do something that has never been done in the history of our democracy before, you tell the Australian people what you are doing and why you are doing.

Is it any wonder that by December 2019 a vast number of Australians didn't think that their government governed for them? As it turned out, they didn't even know what their Prime Minister was doing. But other cabinet members knew about that decision to take on the health minister's power. Whilst much of the discussion and debate about the then Prime Minister's secret power grab of—how many portfolios?—five different portfolios is focused on the Prime Minister, let's not forget that the first transfer or adoption of power in relation to the health minister was kept secret from the Australian people and from this parliament but not from other members of that cabinet. There was more than one person who thought it was a good idea to keep secrets from the Australian people when they were governing, and governing in a crisis.

Are they the sort of members of this parliament that anyone wants to see back in charge of the levers of power if that's how they thought they should be exercised? The clear answer to that from the Australian people at the last federal election was no, without even knowing about one of the most inexplicable actions that a Prime Minister has ever taken, and that even he has not been able to explain in any coherent way at any time to his colleagues, let alone the Australian people. We are now seeing the consequence playing out in New South Wales, with court cases having to be taken because decisions were made exercising secret powers that the Australian people and the minister responsible didn't even know about. It's worse than that, actually. The Australian people were told those powers were exercised under prime ministerial authority, when they weren't.

This piece of legislation, which surely no-one ever contemplated should be needed in this country, goes towards dealing with that embarrassing undermining of democracy episode in Australia's history. I personally think it's inconceivable that it could ever happen again, even without this legislation. Surely we couldn't have another prime minister or another cabinet willing to accept this sort of behaviour, but this piece of legislation will ensure it—because honestly we didn't imagine it would happen in the first place, so who knows what they would do if they ever got their hands on the levers of power again.

The crisis in democracy can be dealt with. In fact during COVID we saw, for a brief period of time, Australians starting to believe in democracy and in their leaders again because they did see, publicly, difficult decisions being made in order to save lives, in order to save businesses and in order to save the economy. But it can't be restored unless everyone in this chamber, everyone involved in politics and everyone who cares about democracy, parliament and government are equally committed to restoring it.

I'm proud, as is everyone on this side of the chamber, to be part of a government that went to an election saying that integrity has to be restored and we want to be the government that does the hard work to start to do that. As my colleague the member for Solomon said before me, and I'm sure others have said in this debate, we are proud of this legislation, along with the National Anti-Corruption Commission—the way in which this government is putting in place proper guidelines for how funding should be delivered to organisations, the commitment to a code of conduct, the commitment to conducting ourselves as professional adults whose every action and decision is about making lives better for the people we represent—and we are committed to that.

I commend this bill, and I ask everyone to imagine what they would have done in March 2020. If you come to the conclusion that it couldn't have been what the then Prime Minister did, admit that publicly, because there are too many people in this chamber who still want to be apologetic for Trumpish behaviour that has no place in Australia's democracy.

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