Shayne Neumann (Blair, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

When I heard that the former Prime Minister the member for Cook did what he did in terms of his executive positions, I thought back to Sir Henry Parkes, who of course was the Premier of the Colony of New South Wales on multiple occasions and who is known as the Father of Federation. His great Tenterfield School of Arts speech was where he really set the platform for conventions that would take place across a number of years before we got to the point in January 1901 when we became a federation. Sir Henry Parkes said this, and I think it's relevant to this particular debate today:

I believe that the time has come, and if two Governments set an example, the others must soon of necessity follow. There will be an uprising in this fair land of a goodly fabric of free Government, and all great national questions of magnitude affecting the welfare of the colonies will be disposed of by a fully authorised constitutional authority. This means a distinct executive and a distinct parliamentary power for the whole of Australia, and it means a Parliament of two Houses, a House of Commons and a Senate, which will legislate on these great subjects.

So Henry Parkes understood it. He understood the idea of a parliament for the whole of the country. He called it a House of Commons. We call it a House of Representatives, as per the American system. But he got it and the idea that the states would be represented in a senate. He understood the fact that there would be a constitution that would establish the parliament and establish the country and establish the executive, and that the monarch and the monarch's representative would be referred to the Governor-General. He got the idea of a distinct executive. Those were his words, 'a distinct executive'.

What we saw by the member for Cook as Prime Minister was a muddling of that distinct executive, so we didn't know who was accountable. And not only did the public not know, his ministers didn't know, his caucus didn't know and the opposition didn't know. So that distinct executive that Sir Henry Parkes talked about was dishonoured. He utterly dishonoured a distinct constitutional authority and that we have a constitution in this country. I wondered what people like George Reid, a Conservative prime minister, a former governor of New South Wales, would have thought; what Edmund Barton would have thought; or Alfred Deakin would have thought about that. It's important in the establishment of our constitutional system of government.

I learned, when I was at the University of Queensland studying law all those years ago, that our system of government is not just about the Constitution but about the principles of constitutionalism, where there is a separation of powers in a Westminster system of government. In some respects, it's a Washminster system, with a Senate rather than a House of Lords, but the executive must be accountable to the parliament. That means that the parliament must know who's serving in distinct offices, that there must be a distinct executive, to pick up Sir Henry Parkes's words. We didn't know that. The public didn't know that. The government didn't know it. The member for Cook kept that secret.

Democracy is a fragile thing. I come from the state of Queensland, where, growing up, at times it was a bit like a hillbilly dictatorship, where one political party could get elected with 18 per cent of the vote and form a majority in the Queensland Legislative Assembly, where ministers in the executive had conflicts of interest and decided on issues of mining leasing when they themselves had shares in those companies. A Premier could arrange a voting system in a gerrymandered way to make sure not only that the Labor Party was disadvantaged but also that the Liberal Party was disadvantaged. Representative democracy was trashed. Sir Henry Parkes talked about the idea of a house, this place, that was representative of the people, and a Senate, the other place, that was representative of the states. We are fortunate that the forefathers of this country decided that we wouldn't have a House of Lords, a sort of bunyip dictatorship or aristocracy, but we would have a parliament.

This legislation, tragically, is a necessity because the member for Cook didn't listen to Henry Parkes, Alfred Deakin, Edmund Barton or even the great Labor hero Andrew Fisher, one of the early prime ministers. I wonder what those prime ministers who served in office in the first two decades of our Federation would have thought about a Prime Minister, 100 years later, confusing the public. They had a Minister for the Navy, a Postmaster-General and an Attorney-General. They had these types of distinct ministerial positions. There were fewer, because our country is more complex now and it's a lot bigger in population. The NBN, the internet and TV weren't known to Andrew Fisher when he was growing up, when he came from Gympie as the member for Wide Bay. He wouldn't have understood about them. It would have been science fiction to him. But the principles of 100 years ago or more still apply. In the last few years, in countries that we honour and believe are our allies and friends and that we identify with, like the United States of America, Brazil, and other places, we've seen people take peaceful protest to the point where it's almost armed insurrection.

The legislation that we have before the chamber today is absolutely vital because of what the member for Cook did. I never thought I would see a prime minister do that. I never thought I'd see a prime minister appoint himself to a variety of different ministerial posts without it being published. I wonder what the former member for Kooyong really thinks in his heart of hearts about the fact that the former Prime Minister was appointed to the Treasury in his place, when they were bunking together in the Lodge during COVID. The former Prime Minister did not tell him, his good friend and political ally, that he was actually in the same role as him. When we were asking questions of the Treasurer or the Minister for Home Affairs in the last parliament, when we sat on that side of the chamber, we could have been asking them of the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister didn't tell anyone. It's no good the member for Cook saying: 'You never asked me. No-one ever asked me. Therefore I didn't tell.' That's just not good enough. I mean, seriously, what sort of insult is that to the intelligence of not just this chamber but his colleagues? I can't believe how disrespectful he was to his own ministerial colleagues and to his own caucus. I am absolutely convinced that, if he'd told his colleagues about what he had done in appointing himself to all those portfolios, without them knowing whatsoever, he would not have been the Prime Minister within 24 or 48 hours. They would have simply shunted him off. I'm convinced there would have been a special caucus meeting of the Liberal Party, and he would have been replaced either by the member for Kooyong or by the member for Dickson. I'm sure that would have been the case. But he didn't tell anyone about that.

We've got legislation here that has come about through the advice of the Solicitor-General and of an eminent former justice of the High Court of Australia. It really is sad that we've had to bring this legislation before the chamber, and that we have to make sure that when you're appointed to a ministerial post it's actually published so the public can know.

What possessed the member for Cook to think this? He got elected by the public in that area of the shire; they voted for him. You would think that at some level he respected democracy or the democratic process. To think he could come into this place, sit in that chair and in that office, and not tell anyone that he'd done this is just astounding. And then he appointed other people, like the member for Capricornia and his good mate the member for Tangney, into roles as well. At the time they were assistant ministers. There was an assistant minister getting responsibility for one of the most important portfolios, Home Affairs.

I wonder what the member for McPherson really thought? I'll give her her due: she's been very clear and very succinct about what she thought in some respects. I would have been furious with the member for Cook. And it's hard to believe that the former member for Tangney—we've got a good member for Tangney now—wouldn't have understood. Wouldn't you have thought that Ben Morton would have rung up and said: 'By the way, Karen, I just got appointed to this role. Is there any brief you'd like me to do? Perhaps I can approve a few visas while I go.' But it never happened.

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