Cameron Thompson (Blair, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I present the following reports from the Committee of Privileges: Report concerning applications from Professor David Peetz for the publication of responses to references made in the House of Representatives, and Report concerning an application from Ms Harriett Swift for the publication of a response to references made in the House of Representatives. I seek leave to move a motion relating to the report concerning applications from Professor David Peetz.

Leave granted.

I move:

That the report relating to Professor David Peetz be agreed to.

The first report I have presented relates to a request from Professor David Peetz for rights of reply in relation to references to him made by the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations and the member for Deakin in the House on 14 February 2007.

The committee has considered Professor Peetz’s submission and has recommended that responses in the terms included in the report I have just presented be incorporated in Hansard. In recommending that the responses be incorporated in Hansard, the committee emphasises that, as required by the right of reply resolution, it has not considered or judged the truth of any statements made by the members in the House or by the person seeking responses.

The second report relates to a request from Ms Harriett Swift to a right of reply to remarks made about her in the House by a number of members on 14 June 2007. She also makes reference to a report that the Committee of Privileges presented. The committee recommends that the House take no further action as the matters to which Ms Swift seeks a response are related to the proceedings of the Committee of Privileges and are consequently outside the guidelines for the consideration of applications for a right of reply.

Question agreed to.

The document read as follows—

Report concerning applications from Prof David Peetz for the publication of responses to references made in the House of Representatives

House of Representatives Committee of Privileges

August 2007

Canberra

Membership of the Committee

Committee Secretariat

CAMERON THOMPSON MP

Chair

August 2007

Appendix 1

Response to remarks made by Hon Joe Hockey MP

Statement by Professor David Peetz

On Wednesday 14 February 2007, the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations, Mr Hockey, used a question on ‘how the government’s workplace relations reforms have strengthened the economy and assisted families’ to launch a personal attack on me.

This attack is similar to one launched by Senator Eric Abetz under parliamentary privilege in the Senate on 8 November 2005. In both cases the parliamentary attacks made heavy use of a poem I wrote in 2001, quoting out of context extracts from the poem with the intent or effect of making it appear that I was somehow sympathetic to the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre of 11 September 2001.

I corrected the record in response to the attacks by Senator Abetz; my reply, which appears in Senate Hansard of 6 December 2005 at pages 38-40 of the Senate Hansard of that date, also deals with some comments made by Mr Hockey in the Chamber, as does a letter published in the Australian Financial Review of 31 January 2006.

Mr Hockey also alleged in the Chamber that I was a ‘flawed academic’ who had written ‘concocted reports’ for the ‘Labor Party’, alleging that my report ‘used outdated information’ and ‘lacked academic integrity’.

The ‘report’ to which Mr Hockey referred was an academic conference paper presented to the annual conference of the Association of Industrial Relations Academics of Australia and New Zealand in Auckland on 9 February 2007. It included the most recent available data from: the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) Labour Force Survey (released on 8 February 2007, the day before the conference paper was presented); the ABS quarterly Average Weekly Earnings Survey (released 16 November 2006—the next edition was not released until 22 February 2007); the ABS Labour Price Index (released 15 November 2006—the next edition was not released until 21 February 2007); the ABS National Income, Expenditure and Product publication (released 6 December 2006—the next edition was not released until 7 March 2007); the ABS Industrial Disputes data (released 7 December 2006—the next edition was not released until 15 March 2007); the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations’ Wage Trends in Enterprise Bargaining publication (released 22 November 2006—the next edition was not released until 12 March 2007); the Employment Advocate’s database of the contents of Australian Workplace Agreements (information released 29 May 2006, based on a sample of 250 AWAs—unfortunately no further data have been released despite the development of a dataset covering at least 5250 AWAs); and numerous private surveys. In each case my conference paper used the latest available data at the time, and so in no respect can it be said that my paper used ‘outdated’ information.

Nor was the conference paper ‘concocted’ for the ‘Labor Party’. The paper was independently initiated and funded by me for presentation to the academic conference mentioned above.

As for the slur that I am a ‘flawed academic’ who lacks ‘integrity’, I draw the attention of Members to a letter that was published in the Australian Financial Review of 21 February 2007 (page 52) by international academic peers from six countries. In this letter, seventeen professors expressed “grave concern about the personal attacks that have been made upon David Peetz by Joe Hockey, Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations, in response to an academic paper written by Professor Peetz”, confirmed that “Professor Peetz is held in high regard by members of his field in Australia and internationally”, as “a widely published scholar and a past president of the Association of Industrial Relations Academics of Australia and New Zealand” and referred to “unfounded attacks upon his academic integrity”.

Response to remarks made by Mr Phil Barresi MP

Statement by Professor David Peetz

In the House of Representatives on 14 February 2007, Mr Barresi, the Member for Deakin, used Parliamentary privilege to refer to me as

someone who has made a name for himself producing half-baked information and suspect research paradigms. I have debated Peetz in public forums and, frankly, I do not know how a person who claims to be an academic can get away with that kind of research.

I do not believe that Mr Barresi knows whom he is talking about. I have never debated Mr Barresi in a public forum, let alone multiple forums. In fact, I have never met Mr Barresi. What he says about me is not only offensive but clearly and demonstrably false.