Julian Hill (Bruce, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I wouldn't want to offend you, Member for New England! Your delicate sensibilities are restored? Excellent! But I was talking, actually, about how the previous Prime Minister was aided and abetted by his cabinet colleagues—which includes you, Member for New England—and the Liberal Party, who knew exactly what he was like and what he was up to.

If anyone hasn't read it, I recommend Bulldozed by Niki Savva. I started it one morning on my holidays, and finished 12 hours later on the couch. My step-count that day was a total of 506, involving me walking from the couch to the fridge and back again and occasionally to the bathroom, so gripping it was to find out what a truly dysfunctional government you were part of, Member for New England. You still don't actually understand how truly awful the previous government was. But the same people, when they had the chance, who failed to formally condemn his actions in a censure motion, say, 'This bill's alright.'

The previous Prime Minister's actions—the trashing of democratic conventions and norms—have been the subject of endless jokes. But I'm going to surprise some in the House; I'm not going to spend my speech repeating them because it is a deeply serious matter, as evidenced by the government's decision to appoint former High Court justice the Hon. Virginia Bell AC to investigate and report into those actions, so I'll make some serious remarks in kind.

Australians rightly expect integrity, transparency and accountability from their governments. They expect a lot more, but those values surely are foundational—the least that people deserve. These are fundamental notions necessary for the effective functioning of democracy to ensure public confidence in our system and the processes of government—know who the ministers exercising executive authority are. But, unfortunately, for the better part of the last decade of our federal government, the government was largely bereft of these ideals, with the previous Prime Minister, the member for Cook, having led the way in undermining Australians' public confidence in government. We saw it during the bushfires, the floods and the vaccine rollout. Whenever the country was in crisis the previous Prime Minister was nowhere to be seen, other than occasionally briefly emerging from wherever he was hiding—under the doona, in Kirribilli—to explain to the Australian people why the job of governing wasn't his responsibility, why it wasn't his job at all. He didn't hold a hose in the bushfires. He didn't order the vaccines; that was the health minister's fault—although he was actually the health minister, as we found out later! He didn't build safe quarantine; that was the premiers' problem. There was always someone else to blame.

While the former Prime Minister was very keen on telling us what his job was not, he was a lot less keen on telling Australians what jobs he actually had taken on—that is, the five secret portfolios he had sworn himself into as minister. He was like Gollum polishing the ring: 'I'll amass more power. I know; I'll have another one!' But it took until August 2022, nearly 18 months after he was first sworn in as health minister, for Australians to find out what he'd been up to. Even when it came out, he then tried to hide the extent of what he'd done. He said he couldn't remember. Then he tried to make jokes about it on Facebook, undermining the entire system of responsible government—that ministers are responsible to the parliament for the offices they hold and the decisions they make or can make, the very foundation of our Westminster tradition. If only we'd known when he came out last election spruiking a slogan of 'jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs' that Side-hustle Scotty was actually referring to himself!

In November 2022, former High Court justice the Hon. Virginia Bell AC provided her final report to the government on the member for Cook's secret appointments to administer multiple departments of state. This bill forms part of our government's response to that very serious inquiry. The bill will require the Official Secretary to the Governor-General to publicly announce, as soon as reasonably practicable, any appointments to the office of minister under the Australian Constitution. No-one ever thought this was necessary until this moment! For 123 years our federation has been around and no-one thought it was necessary to pass such a law, but here we are. In plain English, it will prevent anyone in the future from ever doing again what the previous Liberal Prime Minister did.

The opposition, to their credit, have indicated they'll vote for this bill. They've said it's very sensible; that's welcome. But they're having a bet each way. They're talking out both sides of their mouths. On one hand the Liberals have described this bill as 'very sensible legislation'—but they're not here to talk about it; they don't want to talk about it—but on the other hand they're in denial about why the bill is necessary. They had their chance to take a stand and they squibbed it. They failed to vote to censure the member for Cook for his actions.

When this House rightly censured the member for Cook, those opposite showed their true colours. They consoled him, patted him on the back and said, 'Well done; what a good job you did.' They backed him in. Even John Howard came out and criticised the disgraced former Prime Minister's actions. But the current-day Liberal Party, under this weak Leader of the Opposition, have gone so far off the deep end, so into bed with the extremists, that even John Howard's views hold little sway over them anymore.

'Weak' may seem a strange word to some to describe the Leader of the Opposition, given his aggressive macho carry-on all the time. But it's apt. He has no spine to stand up to extremists in his party room. He's so desperate to hold his ramshackle show together with bandaids, sticky tape and compromises that he couldn't even do the right thing, the basic thing—to defend our system of government and the Constitution and acknowledge that what the member for Cook did was profoundly wrong.

Frankly, though, the whole situation wasn't just a reflection, then, on the character of the member for Cook and his obviously perverse obsession with the accumulation of ever more power and portfolios. It was also about his distrust and his disdain for his colleagues. How poorly the previous Prime Minister thought of his own ministers that he appointed his housemate. We'll get to him—we'll get to Joshie. In that respect he was prescient; neither he nor the other minister for health, Greg Hunt, remembered to order enough vaccines in time. Neither of them got around to building enough safe quarantine. Both of them, though, managed to pick fight after fight after political fight with the states and territories when it suited their own 24-hour media cycle interests.

Only a few weeks after he took on the health ministry, though, the member for Cook obviously got a bit of a taste for grabbing more power and thought: 'Ooh, this is good! Who else can I secretly become next?' So he had himself sworn in as the finance minister as well—all that money. Unbeknownst to poor old Senator Birmingham, though, the member for Cook was lurking behind him in the shadows the whole time he was the finance minister. Did the member for Cook not trust Senator Birmingham to be able to capably carry out his role as finance minister? Now, I've sometimes found Senator Birmingham to be quite a reasonable person, but maybe the former Prime Minister's obvious distrust for him is a reflection on how moderate people, more normal people, are not welcome in the modern Liberal Party.

But health and finance could only satiate him for so long. Just over a year later, in April 2021, he took on Industry, Science and Technology, alongside his very good friend Christian Porter, all unbeknownst to Christian, of course. When old mate Christian eventually walked the plank—'Well done Angus', the member for Hume, took over, never realising that 'Menacing Wallpaper', as a former Liberal MP described the previous Prime Minister, was already the industry minister. Not content, though, with that, he then went after Home Affairs. To her credit, the member for McPherson was rightfully outraged when she found out, calling the former Prime Minister's actions 'unacceptable' and calling on him to resign and leave the parliament. If only anyone over there actually listened to the member for McPherson.

But even all this power was still not enough. So he turned on poor old Josh Frydenberg and decided to take his old job back and secretly swore himself in as the Treasurer too. The people of Kooyong, I must admit, did seem to agree with the previous Prime Minister's assessment of poor old Josh Frydenberg at the last election. What happened to Josh? I should say I actually quite like Josh. We went to university together. He's a very personable chap, very decent compared to many. Though he believes in absolutely nothing, except becoming Prime Minister. I said that about him once in an MPI, when I was first elected, in 2016, when he was the environment minister. I said, 'He's saying the right things, but he doesn't believe in anything.' Josh came up to me the next day, after question time, and said, 'I saw what you said about me yesterday,' and I said, 'Oh, what was that?' He said, 'You said I didn't believe in anything.' I said, 'Well, I said you're a nice guy and you don't believe in anything,' and he laughed and walked off, so that was that.

He then appointed himself as resources minister. That ended well, didn't it? He made a secret decision on PEP-11. There was a fight within the cabinet. Too gutless was he to ask the resources minister to bring the matter to cabinet—collective, responsible government, what we're supposed to do. Prime Minister first among equals—not everyone. We've now ended up, post the election, as this truth has come out, in litigation before the courts, forcing the government to make a fresh decision with a blank sheet and clean up the legal mess that we've inherited from the previous government because of the previous Prime Minister's actions.

This bill shouldn't be necessary. The disrespectful manner in which the Liberal Party—and I say 'Liberal Party', not just the previous Prime Minister, because everyone knew what he was like, yet still they let him remain as Prime Minister—has treated the Australian people and our democracy over the last decade has fuelled growing distrust. It's not the only reason, but it is part of the reason for distrust in our system of government.

The Albanese government is delivering on the promise that we made to the Australian people last election to restore trust and integrity to federal politics, though we never even imagined this is what we'd need to do in delivering this promise. We had more in mind things like behaving like adults, telling the truth, answering the question at press conferences, taking responsibility, introducing a national anticorruption commission—stuff like that—but here we are.

The bill will provide greater integrity and transparency around appointments to public office. It will be a small step, but it turns out a necessary step, in case those opposite ever get into government again, in restoring checks and balances to make sure that what the previous Prime Minister, the member for Cook, did can never happen again. I commend the bill to the House.

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