Fiona Phillips (Gilmore, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

What unusual times we live in that this parliament has need for a bill such as the Ministers of State Amendment Bill 2022 to protect the sheer fabric of Australian democracy, all because of the actions of a former Prime Minister. It feels a bit sad really that these things should have to be placed into law like this after, it might be fair to say, the current laws had operated effectively until the election of the Morrison government.

We all accept that the pandemic was an unusual time. We have not seen anything like it in our lifetime—that is absolutely for sure. There were definitely calls for some extreme and perhaps unusual measures. It was a difficult time for many people, and absolutely there were challenges involved in the Australian people's trust of government. We needed to bring our country along with us for the journey and to explain to everyone why extreme measures were necessary and why the government was taking unusual steps to protect our broader community. Trust was at the core of this. It was essential to its success.

On the whole, Labor, who were in opposition for the height of the pandemic, supported the government in these measures. We worked constructively and were determined to put the health and wellbeing of Australia ahead of political interests. We did that. We were clear about why. We made constructive suggestions when they were necessary, but, on the whole, we didn't get in the way. Trust in government's ability to handle this crisis was paramount. The health and safety of the community were paramount. But we were there, as an opposition is meant to be in our democracy, to hold the government to account when it was necessary, to ask the hard questions of responsible ministers and to make sure that these extraordinary measures were in fact in the best interests of the Australian people.

But, as it turns out, it is pretty hard to hold responsible ministers to account when you don't know who they are, when you have been deceived by the guy in charge, who couldn't trust the ministers his own party appointed to do their jobs—who didn't even trust them enough to tell them that he had usurped their responsibilities and that he, in fact, was now the one in charge, a dictator extraordinaire. Democracy be damned! Accountability be damned! There was an ego to be stroked. There simply is no way to put this more delicately: the acts of the member for Cook were an unforgivable, reprehensible betrayal of the Australian public. Each and every person in this country who put their faith in government to steer them through one of the most difficult periods in recent history was deceived.

Our democracy is based on a cabinet, an Executive Council. The Westminster system of government does not have one single head of parliament, one single dictator or guy in charge. When we go to the polls, we don't vote for a single person. Our Constitution does not allow for power to be concentrated in the hands of one person. We vote for a team of trustworthy individuals, who stand up and tell our community what they stand for, what they will do and how they will do it. Our chamber, here, in this place, allows for a challenging of those ideas by other elected, trustworthy individuals, to get the truth—to allow for examination and scrutiny—so that that team of individuals can justify their decisions to the ones who ultimately hold the power: the voters.

But that system of government was undermined, torn apart and cast aside by the former Prime Minister, for reasons that—as Virginia Bell, AC, said, following her inquiry into these appointments—were 'not easy to understand' and were unnecessary. There was absolutely no need for it. It's one of many aspects of this whole saga that are simply flabbergasting: why do it? Ministers can be appointed in a matter of minutes. There was no threat. There was no gap that needed to be filled by a power-hungry prime minister. Not only that, but three of the appointments had absolutely nothing to do with the pandemic whatsoever; they were simply because the Prime Minister wanted the power, which he chose to exercise to overrule those who he helped put in charge. He wanted the power to say to them, when he felt the time was right, 'No, thanks; we'll do it my way,' blindsiding those who didn't even know he could do it—not to mention the fact that the departments didn't even know he was in charge; so how could they possibly be advising him? He was one guy, making the decisions he wanted, on a whim, on the fly, because he felt like it.

The seat of Gilmore on the New South Wales South Coast is no stranger to high-flying visits from Liberal ministers. We have hosted the former Prime Minister on many occasions. Those opposite have really had trouble letting go of the fact that they lost a formerly safe Liberal seat to a TAFE teacher, a farmer's daughter and—oh yes, worst of all—a member of the Labor Party. That last one really hurt—not just once, but twice. They are still licking their wounds on that one. So they regularly ride into town to remind people what they definitely aren't missing.

I can't help but reflect on the member for Cook's visit to Nowra in my electorate in April last year, as the election campaign kicked off. His words at the time seem a little ironic now, at best, and decidedly deceptive, now that we know what we know. The media wanted to know if Australians were tired of him, implying that that was why he might lose the election. Spoiler alert: he did—thanks in no small part to the very sensible people of Gilmore. But I digress. His answer I will quote: 'It's not about any individual. It's not about me.' That's interesting—not about any individual. But what we didn't know at the time was that this particular individual had actually been in charge of five portfolios on top of his prime ministerial responsibilities for the previous two years. He was in charge of the Health; Finance; Treasury; Home Affairs and Industry, Science, Energy and Resources portfolios, appointed not all at once but over a year, not all in a hurry but in a calculated way, in a secret way, but we had no idea—not even his own ministers did.

This wasn't his only visit to the seat of Gilmore during this whole sordid secret ministries affair. Like I said, he enjoyed popping by and often had very warm greetings, like his infamous visit to Cobargo, just down the road, in the wake of the bushfires or when he was greeted by ukulele singers in Hawaiian shirts. Our community are no fools when it comes to fly-in fly-out visits from a politician who, as he said, doesn't hold a hose, even if we didn't know that he did hold five secret ministries. Perhaps if during one of these visits we as members of the public and of this parliament had been aware that the member for Cook was not only Prime Minister but also the Minister for Health, we might have asked him what he was doing to resolve our GP crisis, which was spiralling out of control. We might have asked him why he, as the minister responsible, was not stepping in to reinstate bulk-billed video-telehealth psychiatry consultations that he, as the minister responsible, had seen ripped away from regional and rural Australia—a budget cut that surely the secret Minister for Health and secret Treasurer had a hand in and could fix with the stroke of his pen. We might have asked why he, as the minister responsible, had refused to deliver on his commitment to a radiation therapy centre for the Eurobodalla. We might have asked him what he, as the minister responsible, was doing to fix our neglected aged-care system. The secret minister for Finance and secret Treasurer in charge of the purse strings surely could have done something to fix this. The list goes on and on.

But we were denied the opportunity to quiz this secret minister on the decisions he ultimately held responsibility for because we were denied the knowledge that he didn't trust his own cabinet. We were denied the knowledge that he had no faith in our democratic system. We were denied the opportunity for full and frank scrutiny of the actions of people responsible for our public administration. He should be ashamed. Mr 'No Responsibility' doesn't hold a hose, doesn't have the answers. It's not about him sitting on a beach in Hawaii sipping cocktails while my South Coast burns or swanning about the Shoalhaven Heads Hotel trying to pass himself off as a local while deceiving everyone around him, even his own ministers—a blight on our democracy smashing the trust of every single voter, shaking the very fabric of our democracy.

The Albanese government will do everything it can to ensure that this can never happen again. A loophole that only a very shaky character would exploit will be closed with this bill. We will not allow this abuse of power to happen again. The Australian people are entitled to know who is administering our government departments. We are entitled to know who comprises our executive and what offices they hold. Local people in my electorate deserve transparent and accountable government, and only Labor will give that to them. Democracy is not a given. It is something we must fight to protect. We must preserve it at every opportunity and protect it from those who wish to undermine it. We don't want an Australian Donald Trump. We say no, we will not allow it.

The government has accepted all of Ms Bell's recommendations. We have listened to the advice of the Solicitor-General. The Ministers of State Amendment Bill 2022 requires the Official Secretary to the Governor-General to publicly publish advice that the Governor-General has appointed a minister of the Commonwealth because the Australian people deserve to know without delay who is in charge of our public institutions. I hope that this will go some way to restoring the trust of our community in government that was so horribly eroded by the actions of the former Liberal Prime Minister. That is on top of our commitment to establish a powerful, transparent and independent National Anti-Corruption Commission. I am proud to say that that bill is now law, and it wouldn't have happened without the Albanese government.

The Liberals will never want true accountability, true transparency. They have too much to hide, like political allocations of disaster recovery funding, political allocations of community infrastructure grants, secret ministries and dodgy dealings. That is what you get with the Liberals. Only Labor will set that straight and make sure that it can't happen, or that, if it does, there are consequences. We said we would establish a corruption watchdog with teeth, and we have. Transparency, integrity and accountability are at the heart of good governance. That is what the Albanese government is delivering. I commend the bill to the House.

Debate adjourned.

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