House debates
Monday, 22 June 2009
Treasurer
12:00 pm
Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
Given the debate in recent days, the government can inform the Leader of the Opposition that it would be prepared to provide a facility in the House now for the Leader of the Opposition to (1) provide a copy of the alleged email between Dr Andrew Charlton and Mr Godwin Grech which allegedly establishes representations by the Prime Minister and his office in support of Mr John Grant and (2) to explain the full dealings that the opposition leader and his office have had with this alleged email—
Tony Abbott (Warringah, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
Mr Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I am just wondering on what basis the Leader of the House is speaking. Is he speaking on indulgence? Is he moving a motion? Exactly what is he doing in the chamber now?
Harry Jenkins (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
Order! He is not moving a motion. I suppose he has taken indulgence, which I am allowing him. He is, hopefully, concluding his statement on indulgence.
Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
I am seeking indulgence to give the Leader of the Opposition the opportunity to come clean about his involvement and his party’s involvement with this fake email. If he wishes us to do so, we will also provide equal time for the government to respond.
12:02 pm
Tony Abbott (Warringah, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
On indulgence, it is my understanding that the Leader of the Opposition would be only too happy to put a case for—
Harry Jenkins (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
Order! Those on my right! The member for Warringah has the call.
Tony Abbott (Warringah, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
It is my understanding that the Leader of the Opposition would be only too happy to prosecute the case that the Treasurer has misled this House. If that is the debate that the Leader of the House wants to have now, let us have it. Let us move to it straightaway.
12:03 pm
Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
I move:
That so much of standing and sessional orders be suspended as would enable the Leader of the Opposition to move the following motion forthwith—
Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
Mr Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I very clearly indicated that if the Leader of the Opposition seeks leave—
Joe Hockey (North Sydney, Liberal Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
We’re doing it!
Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
No, you are not; you are moving a motion for the suspension of standing orders. Seek leave to move your motion. It will be granted. Bring it on.
12:04 pm
Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
by leave—I move:
That this House require the Treasurer to immediately attend the House and make a full and unreserved statement about his personal involvement and that of his office in the Ozcar ‘deals for mates’ scandal and disclose the following information:
- (1)
- How many car dealers received special treatment from the Treasurer, his office and senior Treasury officials—as they were ‘not your average constituent’—as was the case with John Grant?
- (2)
- How many car dealers did the Treasurer personally hold telephone conversations with, to discuss their financing troubles, as was the case with John Grant?
- (3)
- How many car dealers were the subject of regular and lengthy updates to the Treasurer’s personal home fax, as was the case with John Grant?
- (4)
- How many dealers had their telephone contact details handed over to Treasury officials at a high level meeting to discuss a half a billion dollar funding proposal, as was the case with John Grant? And
- (5)
- How many car dealers were described in meetings between Treasury officials and finance companies as an “acquaintance” of the Prime Minister, as was the case with John Grant?
On 4 June the Treasurer was asked a question about representations having been made by his office on behalf of Mr John Grant. He answered relevantly as follows:
It is the case that Mr Grant made representations to my office, and he was referred on to the SPV—
that is, OzCar—
just like everybody else. I have no idea what the outcome of that was.
That was the Treasurer on 4 June. On 15 June, the Treasurer was asked this question:
I refer the Treasurer to his statement in question time on 4 June that Mr John Grant’s representations in relation to OzCar were referred to Treasury as the responsible agency for this taxpayer funded finance company. Will the Treasurer advise the House what manner of assistance his office requested Treasury officials were to give to Mr Grant?
Mr Swan’s response was as follows:
Mr Grant approached my office. He was referred to a departmental liaison officer who then referred him on to the relevant section of the department. Mr Grant would have received the same assistance as any other car dealer who was referred through that process received.
The Treasurer of the Commonwealth of Australia has sought to persuade this House, to create the impression, that Mr Grant’s concerns came through the door in the regular run of business and were just referred in a mechanical way off to the Treasury officials responsible for dealing with them. They were sent off and he was treated like anybody else. There was no special treatment. The Treasurer expressed a complete indifference to—indeed, an ignorance of—what exactly had transpired. And yet we now know the fact that these statements were completely and utterly false.
It turns out, from the emails that have been tendered in the Senate by the Treasury itself, that the case of Mr Grant was raised directly with the Treasury official, Mr Grech, by the Treasurer’s office. And so concerned were they when they raised the matter of Mr Grant on 20 February that they encouraged the Treasury official to raise this matter with Ford Credit when the Treasury met with Ford Credit at a prearranged meeting the following Monday, 23 February.
Now, that meeting with Ford Credit on 23 February was of enormous significance, because Ford Credit, in common with other finance companies in this industry, were facing very serious financial challenges. They had been struggling, as had others, to raise short-term finance to roll over their commercial paper and they were seeking financial assistance from the Commonwealth government in the order of $500 million—half a billion dollars. This was a matter of the greatest urgency, the greatest necessity, absolutely vital for the continuance of Ford Credit’s operations in Australia. It was at that meeting on 23 February that it was proposed the case of John Grant would be taken up. So not only would the Treasury seek financial support for Mr Grant, this benefactor of the Prime Minister, this provider of a free car to the Prime Minister—who has more cars and planes that one could possibly imagine—but this individual was to have his case raised by the Commonwealth, by the Treasury. That in itself is bringing to bear considerable influence on his behalf. But then the circumstances in which Ford Credit were asked to provide support were circumstances in which Ford Credit knew that it needed to do anything it could, whatever it could, to be agreeable to the government. After all, it was seeking half a billion dollars of financial accommodation from the Federal government.
What do we imagine, what would anyone imagine, went through the minds of the executives of Ford Credit when the Treasury said, ‘Oh, and there’s this chap John Grant; he’s a Kia dealer, he hasn’t been able to get his floor plan rolled over with his existing provider; do you think you’d be able to help him out?’ What are Ford Credit going to do when they are asked that question and told that he is a friend of the Prime Minister’s? They are obviously going to do exactly what they did: spring to attention and seek to render whatever assistance they can. So here we have a case where the considerable influence—and, in fact, leverage—of the Commonwealth government is brought to bear on a finance company that is seeking $500 million of finance, the provision of which is absolutely vital for its survival.
Now, this was all recited to the Treasurer in advance. On Friday, 20 February, his DLO, departmental liaison officer, Andrew Thomas, wrote to the Treasurer and said:
Treasurer
Both Godwin Grech and I have spoken to John Grant this evening.
This is this man who was not treated any differently to anybody else and in respect of whose affairs the Treasurer professed in this House a complete indifference! Thomas wrote:
… Godwin will also raise John’s case with Ford Credit when he sees them in Melbourne on Monday.
John has not yet been in contact with either—
the other one being Capital Financial—
We are confident we can arrange for John to be taken up by one of these two.
Then the email goes on to describe in considerable detail the situation of Mr John Grant, the man of whose affairs the Treasurer told this House he knew nothing; his was just another representation that came through the inbox. Following that email, we had a report from Mr Grech on Friday evening, after the meeting. He says to Andrew Thomas:
As promised, I raised the case of John Grant with the CEO of Ford Credit, Greg Cohen, during my meeting with Ford Credit in Melbourne today.
I met with Ford Credit as part of the ongoing negotiations I have been having—along with Credit Suisse—to come up with a possible response to Ford Credit’s request of 14 January 2009 that the Government arrange for Ford Credit to access up to $500 million for around 12 months to allow it to continue to run its wholesale floorplan financing business in Australia.
As you know, Ford Credit will shut down the business if they cannot secure access to capital.
I believe that we are getting close to a ‘solution’ which I will be putting to the Treasurer … within the next 2-3 weeks.
Re John Grant—Cohen gave me an undertaking that Ford Credit will actively look at taking Grant on (this would be for the Kia component of his business).
What we have here is an email sent by Mr Grech to Andrew Thomas—
Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
and copied to the Treasurer’s home fax. What has the Treasurer learned from this fax? He knows that, consistent with the plan to which he was a party the previous week—on the Friday—Mr Grech raised the concerns of his mate, his crony, the Prime Minister’s friend and benefactor, with Ford Credit.
Harry Jenkins (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
Order! The Leader of the Opposition will resume his seat. This is a serious matter. It will not be won by those who shout the loudest. The Leader of the Opposition will be heard in silence, so all members of this debate can be heard in silence.
Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
Thank you, Mr Speaker. The plan was hatched the previous week that Mr Grant’s case would be taken up with Ford Credit by Treasury at a time when Ford Credit was dependent, was relying for its own survival as a financing business in Australia to get half a billion dollars from the Commonwealth. In that context of enormous vulnerability, when the influence of the Commonwealth was greater than it could ever be imagined to be in normal circumstances, at that point John Grant’s case was raised by the Treasury officials. Then the upshot of the meeting was duly reported that very evening to Mr Swan and to his office and, according to Mr Grech, all went well. Ford Credit have said that they will shut down their business if they cannot get the $500 million. In the context of that, when Ford Credit was as desperate as any business could be for $500 million of Commonwealth money—can we imagine a position where the Commonwealth has greater leverage over any business?—at that point with all of that leverage, with the knowledge, the connivance, the support and the request of the Treasurer, the case of one dealer and one dealer alone is raised with Ford Credit, and who is it? The crony and benefactor of the Prime Minister—John Grant. Nobody else. He is a very special person. That was provided to him.
In the light of all of that, the Treasurer came into this House and said: ‘Mr Grant would have received the same assistance as any other car dealer who was referred through that process received.’ Notice the use of the word ‘would’.
Damian Hale (Solomon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
Mr Hale interjecting
Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
It was deliberately designed to create the impression that the Treasurer had no direct knowledge of what had happened to Mr Grant. He did not say that he did receive the same treatment as any other car dealer; he said he ‘would’ have done, as though he did not really know and he just assumed that the normal mechanical bureaucratic processes would have been complied with. That was a calculated deception—calculated to mislead the House and the public—and, until the truth came out, no doubt it was successful.
Then on 4 June he said he had no idea what the outcome of Mr Grant’s representations had been, and yet we have page after page of detailed accounts of who met whom and who rang whom. Even the following week, on 27 February, again in an email sent directly to the Treasurer himself, he is told about the progress of the dealer of whose interests and activities he professed no knowledge at all. The Treasurer is told that:
Grant said that he had a good meeting with Ford Credit on Thursday and they told him that while they are generally concentrating on Ford dealerships … they were prepared to take him on assuming the numbers add up.
And it goes on in considerable detail.
What we have here is a shocking abuse of power. We have a Treasurer who has used his considerable influence to get a favour for a mate—and not just any mate, the mate who is a benefactor of the Prime Minister.
Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
The government benches can shout and scream and try their distraction as much as they like, but these emails that were tabled in the Senate demonstrate that there was only one dealer who received that support and it was John Grant. That was the dealer in respect of which the government proclaim complete ignorance, yet they desperately seek to raise a distraction from the Treasurer’s situation.
Who could imagine any Treasurer surviving—in a government that had any integrity—when he is so manifestly and comprehensively breached the ethical standards? I will quote from the Prime Minister’s ministerial standards:
Ministers must accept the full implications of the principle of ministerial responsibility.
The Treasurer has said, ‘No, I don’t have to worry about that.’ He has no concern about that. He says that it is nothing special. Notwithstanding that it is abundantly plain that everything that he has said in this House about John Grant is false, he says that he has no obligation to step down.
The government can raise distractions about other documents and other emails as much as they like—
Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
Good. You can talk it up as much as you like. But you cannot escape the fact that presiding over the finances of the Commonwealth of Australia is a Treasurer who has lied to this House. He said that he had no idea of the progress of Mr Grant’s application. He said that he was treated like everybody else. There was nobody else treated like this. The only person who got that treatment was a crony and benefactor of the Prime Minister.
This goes to the very core of the ethical standards of this government. This Prime Minister, who, when he was in opposition, constantly stood up and spoke sanctimoniously about high ethical standards—and continues to do so as Prime Minister—here has a Treasurer who has lied to the House.
Harry Jenkins (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
The Leader of the Opposition should be careful.
Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
The Treasurer has sought to use extraordinary leverage to seek an advantage for a mate, and the Prime Minister will not lift a finger against a Treasurer who has so abused his power. It is impossible to imagine any company being more vulnerable and more susceptible to government pressure than Ford Credit. They were fighting for their life and they were told: ‘John Grant needs help. He’s not a Ford dealer, but he needs help. Oh, and he’s a friend of the Prime Minister; he’s a mate of the Prime Minister.’ This is the culture of the Labor Party. They cannot escape from it: cronyism, patronage and abandonment of the—
Mike Symon (Deakin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
Mr Symon interjecting
Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
ethical standards. The louder they scream, the more desperate we see them to be as they try to hold up in office a Treasurer who has betrayed the trust of the Australian people and prostituted his responsibilities by seeking to leverage the power of Commonwealth to advantage the Prime Minister’s mate.
Joe Hockey (North Sydney, Liberal Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
I second the motion and reserve my right to speak.
12:25 pm
Kevin Rudd (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
I move:
That all words after “That” be omitted with a view to substituting the following words:“that this House censures the Leader of the Opposition for relying on, actively communicating and promoting the contents of a fake email to attack the integrity of the Prime Minister and the Treasurer”.
After calling on the Prime Minister of Australia to resign, after calling on the Treasurer to resign, this Leader of the Opposition comes into this House today and says that he has concerns. But he does not actually take the action of moving a motion of censure. We have been told that we should resign from our offices because it is such a matter of grave public importance. Yet he comes in here and does not even have the courage to move a motion of censure. Why has he failed to do so? He has had an opportunity today in this debate to produce the email upon which his entire case depends. Where is the email? We are waiting for this email to be produced. Why has he not produced this email? Because the alleged email between my office and the Treasury does not exist. The entire case advanced by the Leader of the Opposition rests on a forgery. This Leader of the Opposition has gone out there and mounted an attack on the Treasurer and me based on a document which is a forgery.
This censure motion of the Leader of the Opposition becomes necessary because the member for Wentworth is no longer fit to occupy the office of Leader of the Opposition because he has actively promoted for political gain the contents of an email, purporting to be from my office, that is entirely false, fictitious and a forgery. The member for Wentworth is not only not fit to be Leader of the Opposition by his actions in this sordid Turnbull email forgery affair but he has also disqualified himself from ever being fit to serve as leader of this country. Let us be clear about what is at stake here: this fraudulent email is the entire rock upon which the Leader of the Opposition has constructed his case against me, the Treasurer and the government. And this rock has now disintegrated into sand.
His charge was as crude as this: that I, the Prime Minister, had directed my staff to make representations on behalf of Mr John Grant to the Treasury for access to the OzCar program and as a consequence caused the Treasurer to intervene on my behalf to assist Mr Grant. That is the charge. This entire charge, therefore, against me and the Treasurer turns entirely on whether I have so directed my staff, for which the single piece of evidence offered is an alleged email between Dr Charlton of my office and Mr Godwin Grech of the Treasury—an email that the opposition purported to quote in the Senate last Friday; an email that the opposition boasted to have in its possession to multiple members of the press gallery in recent days; documentary evidence that the Leader of the Opposition claimed to possess in multiple representations to News Ltd editors in the course of recent weeks; documentary evidence that the Leader of the Opposition claimed existed when he threatened Dr Charlton of my office last Wednesday night. Yet when today he was asked in parliament to produce the evidence of this email—an alleged email that goes to the absolute core of his charge against me and the Treasurer—he says that he has never had it and he refuses now to answer questions as to whether he has ever seen it.
Today, the Leader of the Opposition and the Deputy Leader of the Opposition have made it much worse for themselves, as they have tried desperately to cover their tracks on this matter. Today, Alan Jones asked the Leader of the Opposition on radio the following:
But someone in the Opposition obviously believe they had seen the email because Senator Abetz, your opposition industry spokesman, read out its text during the Senate inquiry on Friday.
To which the Leader of the Opposition replied:
That had been published, I believe, in the Telegraph.
To which the Deputy Leader of the Opposition then added on ABC radio this morning:
It is perfectly legitimate for senators to put information that has been published on the front pages of the newspaper that day regarding the content of an email.
But here is the core problem: the Daily Telegraph did not publicise its alleged email until Saturday. The Senate inquiry was held on Friday. In fact, it was not until after the Senate inquiry had concluded that Mr Lewis of News Ltd sent the following to my office:
News Ltd plans to publish the following email sent by Andrew Charlton from the Prime Minister’s office to Treasury official Godwin Grech. The email was sent on 19 February. It says:
Hi Godwin, the PM has asked if the car dealer financing vehicle is available to assist a Queensland dealership, John Grant Motors, who seems to be having trouble getting finance. If you can follow up on this asap that would be very useful. Happy to discuss.
The email from Mr Lewis to my office continued:
Given the emergence of this email, hasn’t the Prime Minister misled the Parliament when he said that neither he nor his office had intervened on behalf of Mr Grant?
Then, despite my response later on Friday night, based on independent IT audits by the Public Service that no such email existed and that it was in fact false, the Daily Telegraph proceeded to publish this alleged email on Saturday. In their mock-up of this false email, the Telegraph typed it up, by the way, as an email from my office to ‘Godwin Grant’, not Godwin Grech. But, by this stage, who cares about accuracy? The core point is this: both the Leader of the Opposition and the Deputy Leader of the Opposition have said their senator raised it in the Senate inquiry on Friday because it had already been published in the Telegraph. The truth is it had not.
What a tangled web we weave. So desperate are they to cover up the traces concerning their access to the contents of this forged email that today they try to reinvent the chronology to blame News Ltd for their own culpability. May we ask: why are they so desperate to distance themselves from this false and fake email? It goes to the question of the opposition’s active participation in communicating the contents of an email forgery or even worse, which is why the Leader of the Opposition must commit in parliament today to making fully available the opposition’s computer systems and staff to the AFP inquiry that is underway concerning this matter under the relevant provisions of the Commonwealth Crimes Act. It is for these reasons that the Leader of the Opposition has tried in the last 48 hours to run a million miles an hour away from this false email on which he has based his entire case against me, the Treasurer and the government. This is a most serious matter which goes to the integrity of the man who purports to be the alternative Prime Minister of Australia. It goes to the destruction of his credibility in this place, which is why it is no longer tenable for him to occupy the position of Leader of the Opposition.
The Daily Telegraph ran on its front page last Saturday the following story under Mr Lewis’s by-line:
THE Rudd Government was in crisis last night amid calls for Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and Treasurer Wayne Swan to resign over allegations they misled Federal Parliament.
An explosive email, which has been read to the Daily Telegraph, reveals the Prime Minister “asked” if a $2 billion scheme could be made available to help his friend, Queensland car dealer John Grant.
I state again to the parliament that this email is a forgery. The Daily Telegraph’s reporting of it by Mr Lewis in the article I have just read is totally false. I repeat: it was also produced by Mr Lewis and reported by the Daily Telegraph following the comprehensive denial of its accuracy the night before. Of course, the standards they apply to proper journalism is a matter for News Ltd to attend to. What is relevant here today in this censure debate is the honesty of the Leader of the Opposition and his fitness to continue to hold this office.
The Leader of the Opposition has his fingerprints all over the promotion of this fake email—and he knows it. For weeks he has been talking up this alleged smoking gun to editors around the country. When he raised questions in parliament last week concerning my assurances to the House about any communications between my office and the Treasury on this matter, both he and the Deputy Leader of the Opposition lent across the chamber and began shaking their fingers at Dr Charlton, who sits in the advisers box. That was last Monday. Then we come to the extraordinary events of last Wednesday night, when he sought to threaten Dr Charlton from my office. Dr Charlton then produced a record of conversation.
Harry Jenkins (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
Order! The House will come to order!
Kevin Rudd (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
Dr Charlton states:
On Wednesday 17 June I attended the Press Gallery’s Mid Winter Ball. I was seated at a table adjacent to the table at which Malcolm Turnbull was seated, and our seats were close together.
During the main course Malcolm Turnbull turned around to initiate a conversation with the person seated beside me.
He then turned his seat in my direction and initiated the following conversation:
Turnbull: Hello. You are Andrew Charlton.
Charlton: Hello.
Turnbull: You are friends with [he then mentioned the name of a person known to us both].
Charlton: Yes, I know [I mentioned that person’s name].
Turnbull: Let me give you some advice because I think you have a very promising career ahead of you.
Integrity is the most important thing in the career of a young man.
[A short conversation ensued on a different subject related to our mutual acquaintance … ]
Turnbull: Andrew, integrity is the most important thing in a man’s career.
That is why I encourage you, no matter what the circumstances, no matter what the pressure, not to lie.
Charlton: Thank you for the advice. I don’t feel any pressure to lie.
Turnbull: This whole Ozcar issue will be very damaging for you.
Let me just give you some friendly advice.
You should not lie to protect your boss.
Charlton: I have not.
Turnbull: You know and I know there is documentary evidence that you have lied.
Charlton: There is not.
Turnbull: Andrew, you know that there is documentary evidence. This could be very damaging for you.
Charlton: I have not had any contact with Mr Grant.
Turnbull: Ah well, I advise you to consider your actions very carefully.
At the conclusion of the conversation, Dr Charlton went outside and reported this conversation to a fellow member of staff.
On this note, I note that the Leader of the Opposition, this time using Glenn Milne of News Ltd, has briefed out the following today:
MALCOLM Turnbull has told close colleagues the prime ministerial adviser at the centre of the ute affair admitted to him he was troubled and had not been able to sleep.
According to colleagues briefed on the Opposition Leader’s version of his conversation with Andrew Charlton at last week’s press gallery Midwinter Ball, it was Charlton—not Turnbull—who raised his own role.
The two men were seated next to each other … After talking about a mutual friend, Turnbull says he gave the generic career advice as “one old man to one young man; always tell the truth”.
According to Turnbull’s version of events it was Charlton who admitted to worrying about the advice he had given Kevin Rudd.
Charlton was—
according to Glenn Milne, briefed by the Leader of the Opposition—
“clearly anxious and stressed” but concluded he had given the Prime Minister the correct advice on OzCar.
What a tangled web they weave. I note for the record that Dr Charlton’s signed file note on this was released last Friday morning, and it has not been until the implosion of the integrity of the email that the Leader of the Opposition has chosen a journalist of choice to brief out a different version of events who once again places much distance between himself and the false email saga.
I also note that in the Leader of the Opposition’s briefed out version, through Mr Milne today, he says ‘it was Charlton—not Turnbull—who raised’ this. Once again, a tangled web, because neither he nor, it seems, Mr Milne, bothered to consult the report last Friday in the Daily Telegraph by Malcolm Farr, who wrote:
MALCOLM Turnbull, wife Lucy next to him, asked his dining companions on table 27 at the Press Gallery Mid-Winter Ball if anyone knew where Andrew Charlton was placed.
… … …
Back on VIP table 27, which had a tall centrepiece … as did the Rudd’s table 26 across the aisle, lists were consulted to answer Mr Turnbull’s inquiry.
… Mr Turnbull turned to talk to him …
That is the account of Malcolm Farr from the Daily Telegraph, sitting at an adjacent table. In other words, there is a third party witness, from the Press Gallery himself, saying that the Leader of the Opposition turned to speak to Dr Charlton—not the reverse. A desperate Leader of the Opposition sought to brief out a contrary version of events through Mr Milne in today’s paper.
We then add the saga of Senator Abetz, and then we have three separate reports—(Time expired)
12:40 pm
Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
Mr Speaker, I move:
That the Prime Minister’s time be extended.
Harry Jenkins (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
Order! The question is that the motion moved by the Leader of the House be agreed to.
Harry Jenkins (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
Order! Before calling the division, I remind the House, on what might be a testing day, that those that shout the loudest will not win the debate. People are actually interested in the debate and it should be heard in silence.
A division having been called and the bells being rung—
Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
Mr Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I wonder if we can save some time for the House if the opposition realises that the opposition leader was given 20 minutes. What we are after here in moving this motion is for the Prime Minister to be given equal time to the Leader of the Opposition. They might not know that. In terms of the standing orders, all we are after is equal time between the Leader of the Opposition and the Prime Minister, which under these circumstances is eminently reasonable, so call it off and get on with it.
Harry Jenkins (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
It being agreed, at the convenience of the House, the division is called off.
Kevin Rudd (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
(Extension of time granted) The question at stake here is of course the opposition’s knowledge of the contents of this forged email and their dissemination of it. What we have seen today is yet further evidence on the part of the Leader of the Opposition and his office to brief out a false account of his attempt to intimidate and threaten my senior economic adviser, not having bothered to take the precaution of consulting a third party source—namely, a senior and respected journalist from the Daily Telegraph who was seated at another table and reported on this last Friday.
Beyond that, of course, we have the saga of Senator Abetz in a Senate inquiry—and we are now all too familiar with that—and those two opposite, leader and deputy leader, claiming that Senator Abetz only raised the content of the purported email after seeing it on the front page of the paper, but: ‘Whoops! We forgot that the paper wasn’t out until the next day.’ We then of course have the complete briefings on the part of the opposition to the Press Gallery overnight Friday and Saturday. We have three separate reports in the Australian newspaper and the Sydney Morning Herald on Saturday 20 June that the opposition, as of then, were maintaining that they still either had, were in possession of, or had sighted this forged email. Paul Kelly in the Australian of 20 June said:
The opposition had sighted the written evidence.
We have Phil Coorey of the SMH on 20 June saying:
No one can find the email. The Coalition claims to be aware of its existence and some say they have read it.
Sid Maher writes in the Australian of 20 June:
… the Coalition last night was maintaining that it had an email from Rudd’s economic adviser Andrew Charlton to Treasury on the Grant affair.
These are the papers on Saturday morning. We can only assume that the Leader of the Opposition, in claiming now to be totally ignorant of this email, is assuming that Mr Kelly, Mr Coorey and Mr Maher are all liars. I happen to know all three of them. That is not my view. Once again, a tangled web of deceit he has sought to weave, trying on the one hand to maintain his charge against my integrity and the Treasurer’s, based on the existence of this email, and then to run a million miles away from any direct knowledge of it. The bottom line is this: these facts demonstrate beyond reasonable doubt, any reasonable doubt, that the Leader of the Opposition has been fundamentally untruthful with the Australian people on his knowledge of and use of this forged email to serve his political ends.
What checks did we in the government make concerning the accuracy of this email? First, of course, Mr Grant has denied ever having made representations to me on the matter. Second, I know for a fact that I have received no representations from him on this matter. Third, my staff have advised me that they have received no representations from him on this matter. Fourth, my staff have advised me they have made no representations to the Treasury on this matter. Fifth, and most crucially, no record of any such email as that conveyed by the Liberal Party and by the Daily Telegraph in its report could be located. Sixth, the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet has done an audit of all the emails from and to Charlton on and around the date in question, including deleted items, and has no record of the alleged email ever having existed. Seventh, the Department of the Treasury has done a full audit of all emails to and from Charlton and has found no record of the alleged email to Grech. That is what the government did. Therefore, as I have said throughout this debate, I stand by the answer I gave in parliament on the first day it was raised.
What has become clear since I made those remarks is that the Leader of the Opposition’s entire attack on me and on the Treasurer’s integrity has been based on a forged document from the outset. The Leader of the Opposition has refused to use parliament today to provide this document to the Australian people for authentication. This Leader of the Opposition has, together with his staff, been backgrounding media for weeks, since this matter was first raised more than two weeks ago. They were backgrounding media to say, ‘Here is the smoking gun’—talking it up in the media, saying that there was this direct evidence of a communication from my office to the Treasury in support of Mr Grant. This is what they have been doing all along—except, what they were doing was communicating the contents of a forged document, a fake document, a falsified document.
What do we know about the Liberal Party? We know that this is deeply in their DNA. This is the party that gave us ‘children overboard’. This is the party that gave us the misrepresentation of the facts concerning ‘children overboard’. This is the party that specialises in these sorts of activities. This is the party whose activities are being monitored particularly closely at present in terms of what happened in the Lindsay electorate on the eve of the last election. This is the political party whose activities are being equally monitored in terms of recent events in the state of South Australia. This is written deeply into the Liberal Party’s modus operandi.
I would say that the Leader of the Opposition has a fundamental question to answer concerning his integrity. We have given him the opportunity to stand in this place today and to provide the evidence of the existence of this email which he has used to attack the integrity of myself and the Treasurer. The Treasurer’s actions in this entire matter have been entirely professional and appropriate. Those opposite have constructed this farrago of lies based on the existence of this email, based on a proposition that I have provided representations on this matter and caused the Treasurer to act in a particular way. That has been fundamentally demolished, because this email is a complete and utter forgery. The Leader of the Opposition has no option, having raised this matter, called for my resignation, called for the Treasurer’s resignation, to stand in this parliament now, to offer an apology and to—
Harry Jenkins (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
Order! The Prime Minister has the call.
Kevin Rudd (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
I notice the member for North Sydney interjects at this point. I would reflect carefully on what the member for North Sydney himself has said in recent days on this matter as well. It goes to the heart of his integrity and any aspirations he may have to lead the Liberal Party. This Leader of the Opposition has been given the opportunity to come into this House and provide the evidence upon which he has called for my resignation and the Treasurer’s resignation. He has failed to do so. He has no alternative now but to stand up, be man enough to apologise and resign.
Harry Jenkins (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
The original question was that the motion moved by the Leader of the Opposition be agreed to.
Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
Mr Champion interjecting
Harry Jenkins (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
To this the Prime Minister has moved as amendment that all words after ‘That’ be omitted with a view to substituting other words. The question now is that the amendment be agreed to.
Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
Mr Champion interjecting
Harry Jenkins (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
The member for Wakefield will leave the chamber for one hour under standing order 94(a).
The member for Wakefield then left the chamber.
12:50 pm
Joe Hockey (North Sydney, Liberal Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
Mr Speaker, I should inform the House of a news report on the ABC Broadcasting site which is headlined, ‘Australian Federal Police descend on Grech’s house’, and states:
Australian Federal Police have executed a search warrant at the house of the Treasury official at the centre of the OzCar affair.
The report goes on to say the ‘police are now interviewing Mr Grech about the email which appears to have been concocted inside the Treasury Department.’ It also states:
Mr Grech told the inquiry on Friday that his recollection was that a staffer of the Prime Minister sent him an email about Mr Grant …
He also told the inquiry that Treasury officials gave him the impression that Mr Grant “wasn’t your average constituent”.
So, an email does exist, according to this report. The Prime Minister said there was no email, and yet evidence today from a Federal Police investigation suggests that an email—
Mike Symon (Deakin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
Mr Symon interjecting
Harry Jenkins (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
Order! I remind the member for Deakin of his status.
Joe Hockey (North Sydney, Liberal Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
Evidence from an emerging report suggests, firstly, that an email does exist, which contradicts what the Prime Minister said on Friday night, that an extensive search of the computer systems of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet as well as the Treasury department said no email exists. There is now a report that says that there is an email on the Treasury department IT system. Secondly, in relation to the Senate hearing—
Joe Hockey (North Sydney, Liberal Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
I refer the House to the words of Senator Abetz before the Senate inquiry on Friday: ‘A person, a journalist in fact, has suggested to me that there may have been a communication from the Prime Minister’s office.’ He went on to ask about that communication. He finished by saying, ‘This is what has been suggested to me by somebody, and there is of course the suggestion in today’s media that such a document exists.’ That is point 2. So, firstly, the Prime Minister said that there is no email and that there is no email on the computer system of the government. It now emerges that there are reports that the email exists. That is point 1. Point 2: the report suggests that the email was concocted within the Treasury department. Point 3: the Prime Minister said, with some measure of authority, that somehow he knows, before the Federal Police, that the email is a forgery. Before the Federal Police have completed their investigations, the Prime Minister knows that it is a forgery.
There is one thing about this whole matter that we will not be distracted from and it is this: the integrity of the Treasurer. The Prime Minister can have the diversion of an email—an alleged email or an email—that is now reported to be real. He can have that distraction, but I will tell you that we are not going to let Wayne Swan off the hook. We are not going to let the Treasurer off the hook. I will tell you why: because the Treasurer stated in this place with absolute conviction that Mr Grant was being treated ‘just like everybody else’. He said it was an entirely normal situation the way that Mr Grant was being treated. And he had the audacity to repeat it in an interview with Laurie Oakes yesterday on Channel Nine, where he stated:
And in the case of Mr Grant, he was not treated any differently from any other car dealer.
Not treated any differently—just a normal run-of-the-mill case. And what is irrefutable is the evidence that has been presented to the Senate by the Treasury. But ironically it was Labor Party senators that tabled the emails—not even the treasury department tabled those emails—that belled the cat in relation to the Treasurer’s lies to this parliament. The truth of the matter is that this all started with our Prime Minister receiving a free motor vehicle from a car dealer. Our Prime Minister, when he was Leader of the Opposition, was in receipt of a car from John Grant. That is the first moment of compromise of our Prime Minister. Secondly, our Prime Minister and the Treasurer stood in this place and said—
Damian Hale (Solomon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
Mr Hale interjecting
Harry Jenkins (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
Order! The member for Solomon will leave the chamber under standing order 94(a) for one hour.
The member for Solomon then left the chamber
Joe Hockey (North Sydney, Liberal Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
there was nothing out of the ordinary in the treatment of the man that had given a car to the Prime Minister. Well, I am about to contend that there is something different about John Grant. It comes down to the authoritative information that has been presented, not just by the Treasury but also by the Treasurer himself over the last few days. Firstly, how is it just an ordinary occurrence in the treatment of a constituent matter that the Treasurer on one day took a phone call from Mr John Grant—you would believe that in the ordinary course of business the Treasurer speaks to every constituent referral by a member of parliament—but Bernie Ripoll rang up the Treasurer and said, ‘I have a real problem with one of my constituents.’ Oh! if we could all have that response from the Treasurer about our constituents. But the Treasurer on this one day—on 20 February—rang up Mr John Grant on the mobile phone. There was a conversation with Mr John Grant. It was a conversation that the Treasurer omitted from his statement in parliament. He was treating Mr Grant as an ordinary person but he omitted to mention a mobile phone conversation with Mr Grant.
Secondly, on that day Mr Swan, the Treasurer, referred the matter within his office—quite appropriate. It went to Godwin Grech in the Treasury—all on the one day. The Treasury official then rang Mr Grant. Oh! if we could all have that sort of constituent response from the Treasurer—any Treasurer; we do not mind who the Treasurer is. All this activity on just one day, but Mr Grant is not being treated any differently to any other constituent! Mr Grech contacted Mr Grant and provided feedback on his discussion at 5.19 pm on a Friday. That is pretty efficient from Treasury. And do you know what? Not only does he provide that feedback, at 5.19 pm on a Friday, which is impressive all the same, but the email traffic continues with copies to Mr Thomas, Mr Jim Chalmers, the Deputy Chief of Staff to the Treasurer—keen interest in this matter—and Mr Matthew Coghlan, the senior media adviser in the Treasurer’s office. Why did so many people have this interest in an ordinary constituent? Just another ordinary case but yet all these officials seem to have a keen interest! But it did not end there. This was a long day. At 7.27 pm, on a Friday, Mr Andrew Thomas provides an update on the issue to the Treasurer at his home fax. Amazing! Normally home faxes would have emails and facsimiles from the head of the IMF or the World Bank or even the Secretary of the Treasurer but, no, this ordinary constituent has his details sent to the Treasurer’s home fax, which the Treasurer omitted from his statement in parliament. The Treasurer was asked in a doorstop, ‘Why was this sent to your home fax?’ and he went on to say: ‘Well, it was not faxed specifically to my home at my request. All sorts of things come to my home fax machine. There can be hundreds of pages of material on the fax. On a rare night in Brisbane it could be out of paper.’
A few days later, on the Monday, there is the key event. The Treasury official goes into a meeting with Ford Credit. Ford Credit had been unable to access $2 billion of funds. At this point in time—and this is the most telling line—Godwin Grech, from the treasury department, sends an email to the Treasurer at his home, to the chief of staff, to the deputy chief of staff and to the secretary of the treasury department, who now has an interest in this ordinary constituent matter. In that email, the Treasury official states:
… Ford Credit will shut down the business if they cannot secure access to capital.
So Ford Credit, which needs half a billion dollars from this government and needs this government to change the terms of OzCar, is on its hands and knees to the government and yet, in a meeting with the Treasury official the following day, that Treasury official raises the issue of an acquaintance of the Prime Minister—
Joe Hockey (North Sydney, Liberal Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
the ordinary man, the everyday man, the everyday constituent. When a company is desperate for half a billion dollars of taxpayers’ money, all of a sudden the Treasury official not only raises John Grant with the Ford Credit people but, interestingly, hands over Mr Grant’s private mobile phone number. You know what? Ford Credit had not, at this stage, been able to change the rules. Ford Credit had not been given an indication that they would get half a billion dollars of taxpayers’ money, but here is a Treasury official handing over the mobile phone number of a person who he described as an acquaintance of the Prime Minister and someone whose interests had had the direct involvement of the Treasurer. And Ford Credit were expected to just treat that like any other constituent!
This is the damning moment for the Treasurer because the Treasurer stated in this place that it is an entirely normal situation. He is expecting us to believe that it is an entirely normal situation to ask a company that is desperate for half a billion dollars of taxpayers’ money to help out a mate of the Prime Minister. He expects that is an entirely normal situation. I will tell you what: that is not an entirely normal situation. The best defence this Treasurer can come up with is that the money did not, in the end, come from Ford Credit. The Treasurer has engaged in a conspiracy to murder but there is no body—that is what he is saying—and therefore there is no crime. Well, there is a crime. There are two crimes. Firstly, the Treasurer has misled the Australian people and that is a heinous crime. Secondly, this weak and insipid Treasurer is taking care of the Prime Minister’s mate with taxpayers’ money. That is our contention. The Treasurer has gone too far. The bill for all of this is undoubtedly being paid by the Australian taxpayers.
How revealing it is that, from the very start of this entire debate, the Prime Minister goes into denial about everything. He is seeking to provide aerial protection for his Treasurer. But I tell you what: we are not going to let the Treasurer off the hook. There are lots of questions that need to be answered. When did you first meet John Grant? It emerges the Treasurer purchased a car from John Grant Motors. It also emerges that there is a little club that John Grant is a member of that provides support to the Labor Party and may even provide support to the Treasurer. There are many questions to be answered, but I want to make this point: it is perfectly clear John Grant received preferential treatment directly as a result of the Treasurer’s involvement. There is now a correspondence trail between the Treasurer and Treasury officials. Of course, the Treasurer said it was only a one-off. Four separate emails go to the Treasurer’s home, and the Treasurer says: ‘I don’t know what happened in that case; I wasn’t informed. It was arms-length.’ What a fool. It is the case that the Treasurer’s bravado has got ahead of him. He is a man who has lied to the Australian people, he has lied to this parliament and the Treasurer now needs to resign.
1:05 pm
Wayne Swan (Lilley, Australian Labor Party, Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
I think we have just witnessed one of the weakest and most pathetic political attacks ever mounted by an opposition in this parliament. I have spent some time in opposition in this parliament and I have seen some fairly weak attacks, but today just takes the cake. Surely, the Leader of the Opposition must now resign. He has been telling people for weeks that he has the smoking gun. He has been telling senior journalists and senior people in business that he has the smoking gun on the Rudd government. As it turns out, he has been in possession of a fake email. He must pledge today to make available for a police inquiry all of the resources used by the opposition, because it is clear that the grubby opportunism of the Leader of the Opposition knows no bounds.
The person sitting opposite, there, is supposed to be the alternative leader of this country. That is why he is called the Leader of the Opposition, the alternative Prime Minister. What is he doing in the middle of a global financial crisis where jobs are endangered, where there has been a crisis in car financing earlier this year and where there has been a need for urgent action from the Australian government? What does he do? He is just out there with the mud bucket throwing it everywhere and getting involved in all sorts of conspiracies. Many who have known the Leader of the Opposition also know he has been involved in these sorts of nefarious activities before. He has a history, and I believe that history will now haunt him as the events unfold when we look at the creation, obviously, of a fake email. So the clock is ticking for the Leader of the Opposition. If he cannot provide to this parliament some authentication for this email then surely he must resign, particularly in circumstances where his spokesman and he personally have been telling people about the existence of this email. But of course he is the Captain Smear of Australian politics and he has been throwing it around a lot in the last couple of weeks as we on this side of the House attempt to put in place the fundamental supports for the Australian economy to support jobs. It will be shown to be the case that most of the extreme statements they have been making about the Prime Minister and me are simply false.
I want to deal with some of the false statements that have been made by those opposite, particularly regarding what I have done responsibly as the Treasurer of this country. Nothing I have done and nothing that has been said by them or anybody else contradicts anything that I have said to the people of Australia in this parliament. I stand by those statements 100 per cent because at the end of the day Mr Grant received no benefit from OzCar and he received no assistance whatsoever from Ford Credit—no assistance at all—and that is the very basis of the allegation that has been made. We also were confronting a very serious situation where many car dealers were not able to access finance and we took the same steps to help other car dealers that we took in the case of Mr Grant—the same steps. Why did we do this? We did this because jobs were at stake in the community. We did this in an environment where many of the dealers, perhaps half of the dealers in the country, may have been in serious trouble. I will come back to that later on.
I do want to deal with this allegation that somehow there was some extra-special treatment given to one car dealer over another. I want to quote Mr Delaney, the Executive Director of the Motor Trades Association of Australia. He had this to say:
The treatment that Mr Grant, a member of mine, got was no different from the treatment all of my other members got on my intervention on their behalf to Mr Grech.
‘No different’: I will deal with that in a moment. He went on to say:
They were all treated in the same way and for the same good reason—there was no other way to do these things. In fact, I think Mr Grant has been treated less well because he went to the Treasurer.
That is what Mr Delaney had to say. And why is that the case? Because car dealers have been subject to a torrent of abuse from those opposite and dragged into a political situation that they simply do not deserve.
The shadow Treasurer sought to create the impression that no-one else was looked after, just Mr Grant—no-one else received any treatment at all. Let’s deal with Mrs Hull, the member for Riverina. There was an email to my office—
Joe Hockey (North Sydney, Liberal Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
Did it go to your home?
Wayne Swan (Lilley, Australian Labor Party, Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
I will deal with the home fax in a moment, Sloppy Joe. There was an email from Kay Hull on 20 March 2009 at 12.17:
We have a crisis in car dealer finance for many dealers, covering around 80-90 dealers in New South Wales.
It goes on very legitimately to talk about the nature of the problem. That came to my office at 12.17 on 20 March. At 12.28—11 minutes later—the reply goes from my office:
Kay, I will refer your request to the appropriate person in the department who will get in touch with the car dealer—
and so on. There was an immediate reply from Kay, who is also very diligent:
Thank you so much, Amanda—
and so on. The key line is in the next document, which is an email from the treasury department to my office on 23 March at 11.53:
FYI. In case Kay Hull asks you where this is at, I have spoken with the dealer and explained to him where things are at.
The next paragraph is the killer:
I told him to contact Capital Finance and to let me know if he gets resistance.
That was signed by Godwin Grech. That was not even a full working day before Godwin Grech got back to my office, and then there was a flow through to the representation that had been made.
There was some talk before about emails. I will deal with the home fax, because that seems to infatuate those opposite. I suppose they were so lazy when they were in government that they did not use a home fax. They did not have to; they had their weekends off.
I can inform the House that I am advised that two dealers, in fact, had more communications made on their behalf to assist them to secure new financing than did John Grant. In one case a dealer had approximately double the number of communications made on their behalf. I can tell the House that between 15 October last year and 19 June this year, Mr Grech sent around 130 emails to my office. There has been all this conspiracy—that some of the emails went to the Secretary of the Treasury, some of them went to senior members of my staff, and so on. Of these emails, around 80 were copied to the Secretary of the Treasury, some 30-odd contained documents specifically for my attention and around 20 related directly to car dealers. Out of all these 130-odd emails sent to my office, only a handful of the emails related to John Grant.
Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
Mr Perrett interjecting
Wayne Swan (Lilley, Australian Labor Party, Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
During his speech before, the shadow Treasurer made a great deal about the fact that Mr Grech was meeting with Ford Credit, who were talking to OzCar about future arrangements. He then sought to say that there was some special attention paid to Mr Grant in those discussions. Let me take you back to that time, and Mr Delaney did this very well on the radio this morning. There was a massive threat to car dealerships in this country because GE and GMAC were withdrawing and many dealers did not know whether they were going to have finance, and particularly thought that their finance might simply stop in March through a prompt and rapid withdrawal by those two companies. We had decided to set up OzCar, but it had not yet been fully established. And what Mr Grech was simply doing in the case of Mr Grant and others was working as a public servant to put those firms that were already out there with the capacity to fund dealers in contact with dealers who were going to lose their finance. That is what was going on. That email that was referred to before by the shadow Treasurer does at the very beginning refer to the fact that the meeting with Ford Credit had been put in place weeks before the Grant representation had come through. I cannot vouch for everything that Mr Grech was doing but I do know what he was doing in this instance. He was referring dealers who thought that they would not have finance to finance companies that might have provided it. It was standard operating procedure.
I would have thought that as a party that pretends that they have got an interest in small business they would have thought that was a very reasonable thing to do. At the end of the day Mr Grant did not secure finance from Ford Credit and when I told this House that I did not know what the outcome had been of any of those representations I meant it—I did not know. If I had known, where are the rest of the emails that were supposed to have come along to justify the outrageous slurs coming from those opposite? The answer is: there are none. The representation was made. It was put in the hands of Mr Grech and he went off and made representations because that was his job—to help car dealers, to set up OzCar, to talk to Ford Credit and to do all of those things that are so important to be done during such a difficult time, because we had to do something for those dealers.
As it turns out, many of the existing financiers, particularly Esanda and Capital, decided that they were going to expand their books and in the end they took on many of the dealers that were left behind by the finance companies that had withdrawn. That was a terrific thing. It has meant that the OzCar vehicle is smaller than it was otherwise going to be. But it did mean that we were left with a particular problem with Ford Credit, because their international arm was no longer going to support them. We on this side of the House took the responsible decision to involve them in the special purpose vehicle so that 240-odd dealerships, mostly located in regional and rural Australia, would not go to the wall. This lousy mob opposite is seeking to exploit that action and to somehow say that it was sleazy. Shame on you! What this government has been doing honestly and directly and openly is working to solve a problem to support employment amongst small business in the auto industry.
What Mr Delaney said this morning is so true. There was a prospect early this year, upon the withdrawal of those finance companies, that this could have ricocheted right down the supply chain and hit the auto manufacturers themselves. That is what we were looking at earlier this year. So I personally was highly attentive to the needs of the industry. I spent a long time with the Prime Minister in many cabinet meetings and in many working group meetings—in fact some of them went on every day for weeks and weeks and weeks—to see what we could do about supporting this industry. I did spend a lot of time getting regular updates and briefs from officials in the Treasury about the progress of what was going on because I was worried sick that some of these dealerships were going to hit the wall.
I know that those opposite do not understand the nature or the depth of the global recession. You can tell that in their opposition to the stimulus. They do not have a clue about the nature of the economic challenges that have been posed to this country in recent times. It is why they were so opposed to the bank guarantee and the term funding guarantee, which is the single most important decision this government has taken to keep confidence running in our economy. And what did they do to that? It was the same grubby campaign they are running right now. Everybody in this House will remember the grubby campaign on leaked emails run by the Leader of the Opposition against the bank guarantee. It was something that was profoundly destabilising in this country at a very difficult time. He has demonstrated how reckless he is, how irresponsible he is, and now he should resign. (Time expired)
1:20 pm
Tony Abbott (Warringah, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
This motion moved by Leader of the Opposition is about the most important subject of all. It is about integrity in government. Integrity in government is something that should be determined by a cool and dispassionate analysis of the facts, and that is precisely what the Leader of the Opposition sought to do in moving this motion and in his speech to the parliament.
What did we have in response? We had the Prime Minister come in here, his face flushed, surrounded by a phalanx of heavies. He came in here and tried to carpet-bomb the integrity of anyone who dares to question anything that he did. He carpet-bombed the integrity of News Ltd. He carpet-bombed the integrity of the Leader of the Opposition. Do you know what the Prime Minister has even done today? Since last Friday, and again today, the Prime Minister has used governmental organisations as agencies of political intimidation. He has sooled the Australian Federal Police and the Auditor-General onto politicians and journalists to try to stop them doing their job. That is the real import of what we have seen today: a Prime Minister who will balk at nothing to try to ensure that he does not suffer any political disadvantage whatsoever.
Let us return to the whole point of this: this is not about emails in dispute; this is about emails that are not in dispute. This is not about an email that may or may not have been sent by Andrew Charlton to a Treasury official. This is about the emails that were most undoubtedly and indisputably sent by the Treasurer’s staff to the Treasury and from the Treasury back to the Treasurer’s staff and to the Treasurer himself. That is what this debate is all about. This debate is not about the integrity of Malcolm Turnbull; it is about the integrity of the Treasurer. It is about the integrity of the Treasurer, who has plainly, on the basis of the emails that were tabled by Labor senators in the inquiry last week, misled this parliament.
Let us be absolutely upfront about this. The greatest political crime that a member of this parliament can commit is to mislead this House. A member of parliament can maladminister a portfolio. A member of parliament can squander billions of dollars. A member of parliament can run naked down George Street and survive. But a member of parliament cannot mislead this place and survive. Any member of parliament who misleads this House must resign, if he or she has any integrity, or must be forced to resign, if the party leader has any integrity. That is the point here.
We have a Treasurer who, on the face of the legitimate emails—the emails that are clearly valid emails sent between the Treasurer’s office and the Treasury and the Treasurer—has misled this House and should resign. That is what this debate was all about. This debate was all about giving the Treasurer an opportunity to come in here and clear this matter up. He could have done that but, no, this Treasurer does not take easily to checks to his political career. We all know what the member for Lilley’s reaction was to losing his seat back in 1996. We know what happened to his office, provided by the taxpayer. We know what happened to his car, provided by the taxpayer. That is what he did when he was confronted with the reality of losing office. Confronted now with the prospect of losing office for misleading this House, he came in here and, as his Prime Minister did, carpet-bombed the integrity of every person who is asking legitimate questions on this matter.
What the Treasurer should have done, instead of giving the speech we have had from him now, is come in here and explain just how many car dealers have had personal phone calls from the Treasurer about this car-financing matter. Maybe there have been dozens, maybe there have been a handful, but I suspect that there is just one. Let us not forget that this Treasurer came into the House on 4 June and said:
… Mr Grant made representations to my office, and he was referred on to the SPV, just like everybody else.
Mr Grant was treated ‘just like everybody else’. As if that point had not been made clearly enough on that day, on 15 June in this House he said:
Mr Grant would have received the same assistance as any other car dealer …
So he did not say it once, where perhaps he may have had a bit of a rush of blood to the head. He said it twice. He did not say it once and have no chance to correct the record. He said it twice, about nine days apart. So, clearly, this is a Treasurer who wanted to let the world know and wanted, most importantly, to let this parliament know that this car dealer, John Grant, was treated in exactly the same way as everybody else. Again, I say to the Treasurer: please tell us how many car dealers you have personally spoken to about their financing arrangements. It is not a vicious, underhand, subversive question. Absent the answer, I am not even accusing the Treasurer of any lack of integrity. I am giving the Treasurer an opportunity to demonstrate his integrity and, most of all, to demonstrate that he has not misled the House because the personal, private phone call that he gave to Mr Grant was exactly the same sort of treatment that he gave to everyone else.
Another question for the Treasurer is this: how many car dealers’ financial problems have been the subject of instructions, by his own staff to Treasury officers, that those officers have to look after the dealer? Maybe there are dozens. Maybe there are dozens of car dealers who have had Treasury officers take a direct personal interest. Maybe there are dozens of car dealers who have been the subject of specific, direct representations from the Treasurer’s office. Maybe there are. But, if he wants to put himself in the clear, that is what he has to show. If he wants to demonstrate that he has not misled the parliament, as he seems so clearly to have done, that is what he has to show. It may be that, in discussions between Treasury officials and car finance companies, many, many car dealers have had their problems dealt with at length. Maybe it has happened. But, until the Treasurer has demonstrated that it has happened, clearly Mr Grant has received special treatment. He has received treatment denied to the thousands of other car dealers in this country and to all of the other car dealers who have been making representations, or whose MPs have been making representations, to the Treasurer’s office.
How many discussions between Treasury officials and finance companies involved those Treasury officials saying to the finance company, ‘This guy is a friend of the Prime Minister?’ Really, how often does this happen? Is this everyday treatment? Is this the kind of thing that the Treasurer does every day? If he does not do it every day, he has misled the parliament. How often do Treasury officials give the mobile phone number of a car dealer to car finance companies and say—wink, wink; nudge, nudge—’If you want half a billion dollars you had better sort this bloke out?’ How often does that happen? It clearly happened in this case because that is what the undisputed evidence to the Senate committee said. So, Treasurer, come into this House and tell us just how often this kind of thing is done. If it is done routinely, fine, your answer is okay. But if in fact there is only one car dealer in the whole country—the good old Kia dealer from Ipswich—who gets this kind of treatment then plainly he has misled the House.
He came in here today and tried to suggest that his office had been very prompt in attending to the concerns of the member for Riverina. I am sure he has an efficient office; I would like to think he has an efficient office. Certainly, his office was hyper-efficient when it came to the problems of Mr Grant but the fact is this: by no stretch of the imagination is the treatment that the Treasurer’s office accorded to the member for Riverina’s car dealer on a par with the treatment accorded to the Prime Minister’s friend and the person from whom the Treasurer himself bought a car just a few years ago?
Yvette D'Ath (Petrie, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
Where’s the proof?
Tony Abbott (Warringah, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
They ask, ‘Where’s the proof?’ Read the Hansard of the Senate inquiry of last Friday. Read what the Ford finance representatives told the press last Friday. Finally, amidst all of the problems of the car industry that were driving our poor Treasurer to distraction—he was losing sleep at night he was so concerned about the state of small business—how many other car dealers have had their problems made the subject of faxes and emails sent directly to him at home after seven o’clock on a Friday evening? It is utterly implausible that anyone has been treated in the same way that Mr John Grant has been treated.
I have read Mr John Grant’s statements in the press. I am sure Mr John Grant is a fine man and nothing that is said in this House is directed against him. I have seen that Mr Grant has said, ‘Friendship is friendship and loyalty is loyalty,’ and I just say this: lying is lying and misleading the House is the worst political offence that a member of parliament can commit, and it has been committed by the Treasurer of this country—unless he can come into this House and explain precisely why what he did for Mr Grant was exactly the same as what he did for everyone else.
What we have seen from this government is an extraordinary campaign of bluff and intimidation against anyone who dares to call the integrity of its senior members into question. What kind of country has Australia become if a media report that the government does not like and which seriously embarrasses the Prime Minister and the Treasurer becomes the instant subject of an Australian Federal Police investigation? This is more akin to the actions of a police state than it is to the traditions of a great democracy. On the face of it, even in the Prime Minister’s own performance today we saw a radical lack of integrity. What did the Prime Minister come in and say? He said that Senator Abetz on Friday had in his possession a forged and fraudulent email. He must have had access to the Senate Hansard where Senator Abetz said that he had been told by a journalist about an email. This is a very significant fact and yet it is a fact which was totally ignored by a Prime Minister who is desperate to defame, intimidate and bluff anyone who is calling his integrity into question.
And then he comes into this parliament and says that the Leader of the Opposition has concocted this: on the basis of the first report of the AFP’s investigation the so-called fake email originated in Treasury. Now the fact of the matter is this: I think that the Leader of the Opposition is a very powerful man but he cannot cook up a conspiracy with the Treasury—he cannot alter the Treasury’s computer system. What we are seeing today is a giant smokescreen from a terrified government. (Time expired)
1:35 pm
Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
Last Friday the Leader of the Opposition stood at a press conference and said that the Prime Minister of this nation should resign. He stood at a press conference and said that the Treasurer of this nation should resign. He effectively accused them of engaging in corrupt conduct to help a mate—on the basis of an email which we know is fake. Today the opposition came into this chamber over this issue, which just one working day ago was serious enough to call for the resignation of the Prime Minister and the Treasurer—something that does not happen every day—and they failed to even move a censure let alone a call for resignation.
This was like being told that you are being sent out to bat against Brett Lee and, when you front up, you get John Howard in the Middle East. That is what it was like—all pop and no bang from those opposite, because they have got nothing. There was no ‘chk-chk-boom’ moment from those opposite—none whatsoever. It has just been vicious slur and smear against the Prime Minister and the Treasurer of this nation—a smear without concern of the consequences for the national interest; a smear that those opposite have walked away from. The member for Dickson took this so seriously that he did a press conference on alcopops while the Leader of the Opposition was speaking on this matter. That is how seriously he took it. He was out there talking about their backflip on alcopops. After having a campaign day after day to run fear on the economy, those opposite had a change of tactics when it was determined that we were not in a recession. For those opposite, it is all about tactics, never about strategy. It is always about the next 24 hours. Their changing of tactics was about personal smear to replace the campaign of economic fear.
The Leader of the Opposition claimed on Friday: ‘The Prime Minister and Treasurer have used their offices and taxpayers’ resources to seek advantage for one of their mates and they’ve lied about it to the parliament.’ He made the most serious allegation possible against the Prime Minister and the Treasurer and called for them to resign. There have been reports in the last hour that this ‘email’ is a forgery. We know that it is a forgery. We know that Mr Andrew Charlton, a person of integrity, says that it is a forgery. The Leader of the Opposition and his office have a lot of questions to answer now. They have been pushing this email around for weeks, trying to smear the Prime Minister and the Treasurer.
The opposition must explain where, when and in what circumstances they came into contact with this email. They must detail all their involvement in the creation, distribution and promotion of this email. The opposition must today commit to fully cooperate with the Australian Federal Police by making their computer systems available. They must fully cooperate with the AFP investigation, because they have got form, and the Leader of the Opposition in particular has form. During the legal action related to the Costigan royal commission, the Leader of the Opposition made a series of ‘provocative claims in the press, including an interview in which he claimed to have significant evidence’. This was all documented in Annabel Crabb’s recent article. That evidence was never produced. In the same proceedings, the Age newspaper, on 17 December 1984 reported that Turnbull ‘publicly boasted of having evidence against a participant in the legal case and released a “press statement announcing that other information was available”.’ The judge in the case—and I quote from the judge—said that Turnbull’s ‘failure to give those particulars has never been explained nor have the particulars ever been supplied’ Packer v Marr 1984. Sound familiar? The judge condemned Turnbull’s tactics, saying that his statements to the media had ‘managed effectively to poison the fountain of justice immediately before the commencement of the present proceedings.’ That was Justice Hunt, quoted once again by Annabel Crabb. This is very serious indeed. The journalist receiving leaks from the Costigan commission claimed that Turnbull was lying about having information about the source of leaks from the commission. The journalist, Brian Toohey, said at the time—and I quote from the Age on 10 December 1984: ‘Malcolm Turnbull is not aware of any source of any story I have ever written. I am astonished that he should pretend to know.’ The Leader of the Opposition has form.
There are more quotes. In the Australian on 20 June 2009, Paul Kelly writes, ‘The opposition had sighted the written evidence’. In the Sydney Morning Herald on 20 June, Phil Coorey write, ‘No-one can find the email. The coalition claims to be aware of its existence and some say they have read it.’ Do you think Phil Coorey made that up? Do you think he just decided to make that up? Sid Marr, in the Australian on 20 June, writes: ‘The coalition last night was maintaining that it had an email from Rudd’s economic adviser, Andrew Charlton, to Treasury on the Grant affair’. These are all very serious, experienced journalists on integrity. I might not agree with everything they ever write but I would not question the integrity of Paul Kelly, Phil Coorey or Sid Marr. On 20 June 2009, Mark Riley on Seven news said, ‘Certainly those people in the Liberal Party who were telling me yesterday that either they knew of its existence or its contents are certainly running away at 100 miles and hour.’
This morning we heard the clanger from the Leader of the Opposition on the Alan Jones program when he said, ‘Well, Eric Abetz, he was just quoting from a newspaper report.’ No, he was not. The newspaper was not out yet. It was Friday and the newspaper came out on Saturday. Today, on Sky News, Helen McCabe said, ‘I guess to be completely frank today, we were under the impression that the email existed and under the impression that the opposition had it.’ That is what she said today on Sky News. You had the Deputy Leader of the Opposition saying today with great clarity, ‘Well, I don’t know that an email doesn’t exist.’ That is her position: ‘I don’t know what I don’t know.’ Yet, this is an issue that the Prime Minister and the Treasurer should resign over. This is an issue that should bring down a government. What a farce. When the Prime Minister and the Treasurer have been dealing with the greatest economic crisis since the 1930s and have been putting Australia in a position to move forward when the rest of the world is moving backwards, I will tell those opposite what their contribution has been: you are a dead weight on the national interest of this country trying to hold us back.
We will not be deterred by the politics of smear from those opposite and we will not be bullied either, because the Leader of the Opposition has form when it comes to bullying. During his Wentworth preselection battle with Peter King—remember Peter, his opponent?—he called a 23-year-old member of Peter King’s staff at home. That staff member has written a book. In the book he said—and I ask you to think about the comments between the Leader of the Opposition and Dr Charlton last Wednesday at the press gallery ball: ‘You lied, John. You have got to tell the truth. People could go to jail. Just tell me the truth. It’s so important to tell the truth.’ What were those comments last Wednesday night at the press gallery ball: ‘You have lied, Andrew. Integrity is the most important thing in a man’s career. This could be very damaging for you.’
This is all about the email which they now say they never said existed. They now say it has nothing to do with them. We will see how they go. I again call for them to open up their computer systems and their processes to the AFP investigation. There is also form on bullying public officials because in 1984, Mr Turnbull launched a legal action against an assistant to the Costigan royal commission asserting the assistant had leaked commission documents to the media. The presiding judge later said that the action launched by Turnbull was a bullying technique designed to put pressure on the official. Justice Hunt said Turnbull’s actions were ‘no more than a ploy’—this is a judge—and ‘clearly enough calculated to prejudice the defendant in his conduct of the present proceedings’. In the judgement, Justice Hunt described Turnbull’s actions as—and I quote from the Age on 17 December 1984—’an abuse of legal process’.
Annabel Crabb nailed the Leader of the Opposition by talking to some of the people in the party room, some of those people who were sitting up the back or holding press conferences, anywhere but, distancing themselves from the Leader of the Opposition. A Liberal Party member described the Leader of the Opposition’s character as follows:
I do not think any of us have any illusions about Malcolm. I mean, he would destroy you if you got in his way and think absolutely nothing of it.
She quoted a former employee as well:
He just worked to bully them into getting the job done. If they were inappropriate for the job, he’d just keep bashing them against a rock until they were finished.
That was one of his former staff members.
It is very clear that this is an opposition leader who will not think for one second about whether he is prepared to put his own cheap political interests before the national interest. He has been exposed by this fake email scandal as a grubby opportunist who will do anything to get into office, just as he would do anything to knock off Peter King, a sitting member from the Liberal Party, just as he would do anything to destroy people in the ARM. What a success that was! He had the majority of the Australian public supporting a republic and he managed to lead the ARM to defeat. They should think about that. They should think about what happened in the internal dynamics of the ARM under his leadership because this is a man who is prepared to put himself first, second and third. This is a man whose only interest is his own interests. He will stop at nothing to gain political power and that is why he deserves to be censured before this parliament today.
I note that the original motion censures nobody because they are embarrassed and humiliated—some of them at least—by their actions over recent days. The Treasurer outlined quite clearly why there has been no misleading of the parliament. The bottom line of all this is: what did this great mate get? Nothing, not a zack, unlike the mates of the Liberal Party and the National Party year after year, rort after rort, abuse of government process after abuse of government process. The Leader of the Opposition has been exposed for his involvement in a fake email and this is why the Leader of the Opposition should simply resign—because he is unfit for public office, he is unfit to be the alternate Prime Minister of this nation and he is unfit to be the Leader of the Opposition. (Time expired)
1:50 pm
Ms Julie Bishop (Curtin, Liberal Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
This issue is about the Treasurer. This is about the Treasurer misusing his position as the Treasurer of this country—using his ministerial office, using his ministerial staff and directing Treasury officials to provide preferential treatment to a friend of the Prime Minister’s, who year after year after year has given the Prime Minister, when he was Leader of the Opposition, a free vehicle—the registration and all the costs involved. This is thousands and thousands of dollars as a gift to the Prime Minister. So this is about the Treasurer using his ministerial position, his ministerial staff and his ministerial office to direct Treasury officials to give preferential treatment to a mate of the Prime Minister’s.
Do you know what is extraordinary? This is exactly what the former Minister for Defence was accused of doing, and the former Minister for Defence resigned because he had used his ministerial office to direct Defence officials to meet with his brother in order to get preferential treatment.
The government tries to use the excuse that ‘Mr Grant did not get any credit from Ford Credit.’ Well, as I recall, the government also pointed out that Mr Fitzgibbon’s, the member for Hunter’s, brother did not get a contract with Defence, apart from the fact that those contracts have not been let yet, and that therefore it is okay. But the member for Hunter still resigned because he knew that it was an abuse of his position—his ministerial office—to direct a senior Defence official to be in his office to meet with officials that no other constituent would be able to access.
I just had a meeting with a whole group of constituents from the member for Mallee’s electorate and they said, ‘We have been in trouble in relation to Treasury matters before. We have needed support in relation to the bank guarantee.’ A number of them told me that they had written to the Treasurer’s office and received no reply. They have sought to get responses from the Treasurer’s office. But, in the case of Mr Grant, all he had to do was telephone the Treasurer and the Treasurer moved heaven and earth, that day, to make sure that Mr Grant’s needs were taken care of.
The patronage, the cronyism, the jobs-for-the-boys, the-looking-after-your-mates is so much a part of the Labor Party’s DNA that they do not even know when they have done something wrong. The member for Hunter was still denying that he had done anything wrong, because he was out blaming the Judases in his midst for his downfall. This is another Labor member with a messiah complex—yet another. They do not even know when they have done something wrong. They are still blaming the Judases for the Messiah’s downfall. This is another example of Labor once more trying to shoot the messenger.
Why is it that in the Senate inquiry last Friday the government senators, clearly on directions from the leadership, intervened to prevent evidence being given in the Senate inquiry? The government senators were trying to suppress evidence to a Senate inquiry by intervening in a most disgraceful way to prevent a Treasury official giving his evidence.
What happened to the openness and accountability and transparency that the Prime Minister promised on coming to office? A Senate inquiry was held not because the government wanted to clear the air but because the coalition, with the support of the Greens, was able to get up a Senate inquiry to answer the questions that the Treasurer and the Prime Minister refused to answer in question time. In fact, in the case of the Treasurer, the answers that he gave at the time were manifestly false and he knew it. So we set up a Senate inquiry, and what does the government do? It directs its senators to run interference against a Treasury official who is called to give evidence. That is disgraceful. That is absolutely disgraceful. The government directed a Treasury official to run interference on Mr Grech so that he could not complete his evidence. What kind of transparency is that and what is the government trying to hide?
If this was just a normal constituent—if Mr Grant was just a run of the mill constituent who made an inquiry and it was just going through the processes—why is the government trying to prevent the Treasury official who knows about this matter giving full evidence? What is the government seeking to hide? Well, you can get a fair idea of what the government was seeking to hide by the emails that were tabled—and I note this—by the government senators. I think it is passing strange that the Treasury officials did not table emails from Treasury but the government senators did. Government senators having tabled these emails certainly does gives the lie to what the Treasurer said in parliament in answer to questions about OzCar. In fact, it shows that on 27 February, after a whole series of efforts by Treasury officials and by the Treasurer’s office, they were prepared to do whatever it took to get Mr Grant preferential treatment. In fact, one of the emails—from Mr Grech, of 27 February, to Andrew Thomas in the Treasurer’s office and copied to the Treasurer’s home fax—goes so far as to say:
Andrew, just to let you know that I have spoken again with John Grant this afternoon to clarify progress.
This is a week of this Treasury official ringing Mr Grant, reporting back to the Treasurer and reporting to the Treasurer’s home fax. The email continues:
Grant said that he had a good meeting with Ford Credit on Thursday—
This is the meeting that the Treasury officials set up for Mr Grant. Do not worry about all the other car dealers across Australia; just one car dealer gets a meeting set up specifically for him with Ford Credit—
and they have told him that while they are generally concentrating on Ford dealerships—
So we know that Ford Credit do not generally deal with people who are not Ford dealers. He goes on to say:
… I know for a fact that they still have a number of non Ford dealers on their books … they were prepared to take him on assuming the numbers add up.
Mr Grech then goes on to talk about Grant’s accountant, who ‘is preparing the financial advice’. But I ask members to listen to this: Mr Grech says:
I told Grant to keep in touch and to let me know if Ford show concerns or resistance.
So if Ford shows ‘concerns or resistance’ to the direction from the Treasurer that Mr Grant is to be looked after, what happens then? Well, as Mr Grech says:
… I will not speak with Ford again on this unless it is absolutely necessary to push it through …
So this Treasury official was under no illusion that he had a direction from the Treasurer to push it through. In other words, Mr Grant was going to get access to money, whatever it took. At a time when Ford Credit was seeking half a billion dollars from the government, the Treasurer directed his office and his Treasury officials to make sure Mr Grant got preferential treatment. With this wording:
… I will not speak with Ford again on this unless it is absolutely necessary to push it through …
these Treasury officials were in absolutely no doubt at all that the Treasurer was directing them to look after the Prime Minister’s mate. The patronage, the cronyism, the-look-after-your-mates is just so much a part of the Labor DNA that they do not even know when they have done the wrong thing.
This just goes to show why the Labor Party is running so much of a distraction on this. The fact is that this matter should have been cleared up in the Senate inquiry on Friday. A Senate inquiry was held so that the Treasury official could give evidence. I remind the House that this was the Treasury official who was sent away during Senate estimates to be hidden from the Senate inquiry. These were Treasury officials who were not able to give evidence during Senate estimates, were they Treasurer? A Treasury official was sent away from Senate estimates so that he would not have to face questioning. A Senate inquiry was set up, with the support of the Greens—not with the support of the government but with the support of the Greens—so that this Treasury official could give his evidence unimpeded, and yet time and time and time again, the Treasury—
Harry Jenkins (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
Order! I will interrupt the Deputy Leader of the Opposition as it is two o’clock. It is my understanding that it is the wish of the House that this debate continue and that that has been agreed by the Leader of the House and the Acting Manager of Opposition Business. That means that after the Deputy Leader of the Opposition’s speech there are four more speakers.
Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
No, sorry; five.
Harry Jenkins (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
So question time commences at about 3.15 or 3.20 pm. As that is agreeable to the House, I will allow leave for that to occur. The question is that the amendment be agreed to.
Ms Julie Bishop (Curtin, Liberal Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
As I was saying, a Senate inquiry was set up specifically so that Treasury officials could come before that Senate inquiry and give evidence as to what they had been told by the Prime Minister’s office and what they had been told by the Treasurer’s office. Yet time and time again the government senators, on directions from the leadership team, ran interference to prevent the Treasury official from giving a full answer. Not only did the government senators run interference but so did a Treasury official at the table, to prevent Mr Grech from giving his evidence in full not distorted by the attacks from the government senators. As I was saying, I have just been speaking to some constituents, and I say this to those who might be listening to this debate: how many people who have had a problem that required Treasury attention have received an immediate phone call from the Treasurer? How many people have received action taken that day?
Jenny Macklin (Jagajaga, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
Ms Julie Bishop (Curtin, Liberal Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
I am talking about a constituent.
Jenny Macklin (Jagajaga, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
Ms Macklin interjecting
Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
Order! The Minister for Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs!
Ms Julie Bishop (Curtin, Liberal Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
How many have had a representation made that day to the Treasurer’s office? How many times has a Treasury official then gone into bat for that constituent and written the most detailed response back to the Treasurer’s office? But remember this is in the context of the Treasurer saying he knew nothing about this and he had no knowledge of the progress of this. But day after day after day long emails were sent to his home fax detailing all of the representations that had been made on behalf of Mr Grant. Every single nuance—whether Mr Grant was happy, whether Mr Grant was sad, whether Mr Grant had been buoyed by the news or not—is contained in these emails.
If the members of the government still do not get what it is that the Treasurer has done—how the Treasurer has used his ministerial office and his staff and directed Treasury officials to give preferential treatment to one person and one person only—then that shows a reflection on those members. The Labor Party do not understand that the level of patronage, of cronyism and of looking after their mates is unacceptable. The member for Hunter had the decency to resign. The Treasurer should resign.
When the Treasury official Mr Grech had spoken with Ford Credit, he went back to give the Treasurer’s office a detailed description of everything that occurred. He said he had spoken with John Grant, he had given him a good rundown of where things are at, he had told him he would arrange for Capital Finance to get in touch with him. He had flagged a fallback ‘but I will not set that out here, suffice to say it involves Ford Credit’. So this is the plan and this goes to the Treasurer at home. It is interesting to note that the Treasurer was copied in on emails from 20 February, so from the Friday night he was being copied in. Then Mr Grech goes on: ‘I’m meeting Ford Credit in Melbourne on Monday and I will raise Grant’s case.’ That should have caused alarm bells to ring in the Treasurer’s office, that a Treasury official felt—in a prearranged meeting with Ford Credit to discuss Ford Credit’s application for the OzCar rules to be changed, Ford Credit’s application to access half a billion dollars of taxpayers’ funds—that he had to raise the Prime Minister’s friend’s issue with Ford Credit at that time.
The fact that that does not ring alarm bells in the minds of those opposite is of great concern. They have no understanding of what their level of patronage of cronyism and preferential treatment for their mates is doing to the integrity of this government. Then, on the Monday after Mr Grech had met with them, he gave another detailed response back to the Treasurer and to the Treasurer’s office, pages of emails on what the government now says was just another constituent. The government knows that no other constituent got this kind of treatment. The government knows that it was only the Prime Minister’s mate—who had given him a free car for years and years, who had donated money to him, who was one of his strongest supporters—who received treatment that no other car dealer in Australia received. That is why the government has worked so hard to ensure that the full facts of this case do not come out. If the government has got nothing to hide, why did it run interference in the Senate inquiry? If the government has got nothing to hide, why is it that government senators prevented Mr Grech from giving his evidence in the Senate inquiry on Friday?
In case viewers of, and listeners to, this broadcast are in any doubt of what is occurring here, this is all about the Treasurer’s use of his office, the Treasurer’s use of his staff, the directions the Treasurer gave to Treasury officials to give preferential treatment to the mate of the Prime Minister, treatment that no other car dealer in Australia received. On that basis alone the Treasurer should resign. The member for Hunter resigned for a lesser offence than this. The Treasurer should resign. He will continue to bring this government into disrepute for every minute that he stays in the Treasurer’s role. This government has lost its moral compass. This government has lost its way. (Time expired)
2:06 pm
Lindsay Tanner (Melbourne, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Finance and Deregulation) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
On Friday, the Leader of the Opposition, at a press conference, stated the following:
The Prime Minister and Treasurer have used their offices and taxpayers’ resources to seek advantage for one of their mates, and then lied about it to the Parliament.
The Leader of the Opposition then called on the Prime Minister and Treasurer to resign as a result of these claims that they had been engaged in corrupt behaviour and had lied to the Australian people. It is hard to think of a more serious accusation that can be made against a Prime Minister or Treasurer than accusations such as these. Accusations of corrupt behaviour in particular are not very common in national politics.
We have now heard reports over the past hour that the AFP has run to ground the fake email on which all of these accusations were founded by the Leader of the Opposition. The Leader of the Opposition and his office now have some very interesting questions to answer. They have been pushing this fake email around for weeks and have been promoting its content for weeks, and now they have some very, very tough questions to answer. It is apparent in the opposition’s behaviour in the parliament today that they understand the predicament they are now in. They have not moved a censure motion. Two or three days ago they were asserting corrupt conduct on behalf of the Prime Minister and the Treasurer and yet they are not moving a censure motion here today. The Deputy Leader of the Opposition spent most of her speech talking about events of weeks ago that are irrelevant to the current context, and very, very significantly did not even mention the Prime Minister during her opening remarks in her statement about what was wrong with the government.
The opposition now have some very, very tricky questions to answer, particularly in their role in the production, dissemination, distribution and promotion of this phoney email. I call on the opposition to open up all of their computer resources, all of their backups and allow the Federal Police to examine these matters in the same way that the government has. Just of word of friendly advice—to use a Turnbull-like term—do not go scurrying back to your offices and try to delete emails, guys; I do not think that would be a great idea. I suggest that the opposition think very carefully about your behaviour from here on in because you have made the most extreme assertion that is possible to make against a government and against a Prime Minister—corrupt behaviour—on the basis of virtually zero evidence, and now that evidence has blown up in your face.
Over the past few days we have seen an extraordinary saga unfold about this alleged email. It has been a bit like the Loch Ness monster. Everybody has heard of it, everybody knows a bloke in a pub who had a photograph of it, everybody knows what it looks like but there is no evidence of it. And there is no email that anybody can bring to bear.
We even note that the journalist, Steve Lewis from News Ltd, who published a story detailing the content of the email, referred to it as ‘an alleged email’ that had been read out to him. I wonder who might have read out that email to the journalist, because for the last few weeks, the Leader of the Opposition and his acolytes have been telling anybody who wants to listen that they have documentary evidence that shows that Kevin Rudd has lied to the parliament and that Kevin Rudd is corrupt. I note several instances where journalists reported this on Friday, 20 June. Paul Kelly reported Liberal sources saying that they had:
… sighted the evidence.
Sid Maher reported:
… the Coalition last night was maintaining that it had an email …
Phil Coorey reported:
The Coalition claims to be aware of its existence and some say they have read it.
It sounds a lot like the Loch Ness monster to me. It is significant that by the end of the day, Mark Riley, on Channel 7 news was reporting, ‘Those people in the Liberal Party who were telling me yesterday that either they knew of its existence or its contents are now certainly running away at 100 miles an hour.’ It is equally notable that yesterday, at a press conference, the Leader of the Opposition was stating that he had:
… never claimed to have a copy of the email—
and that he had—
… not claimed at any time to be in possession of this email.
Yet, mysteriously, one of his shadow ministers in the Senate was able to read out the content of this alleged email on Friday at the Senate hearing before it had been published in any media outlet. So, although the Leader of the Opposition says that he and by definition the Liberal Party had nothing to do with the dissemination of this email, one of his frontbenchers was able to read it out word for word at the Senate inquiry before it had been published in the media.
There are some peculiar things about this email, and I want to draw the House’s attention to one particular aspect that should have said to anybody scrutinising it and asking is this genuine that there was a question about the email. It refers to ‘a Queensland car dealer, John Grant’, but what it does not contain is any contact information that would enable Mr Grech to follow up the request in the email. The use of the term ‘a Queensland car dealer’ to me implies that this is the first time the person sending the email has raised this matter with Mr Grech in this purported email yet, even though there is a request to follow up, there are no details included as to how this might be done. Anybody reading this email who is being diligent, who is being serious and who understands the explosive nature of the accusation they are proposing to make off the back of this email would have heard an alarm bell ring and said, ‘Hang on a second, this does not ring true.’ Yet the Leader of the Opposition was happy to hawk this around, happy to tell people and happy to front Andrew Charlton, the Prime Minister’s adviser, at the Press Gallery ball and claim that he had documentary evidence.
Philip Ruddock (Berowra, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
Madam Deputy Speaker, I rise on a point of order and I would like to ask you for a ruling in relation to a matter that I regard as being quite serious. There are issues which—
Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
Order! I would like to hear this point quickly. The member for Berowra has a right to be heard.
Philip Ruddock (Berowra, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
There are matters that the Prime Minister believed to be sufficiently serious to be raised with the Australian Federal Police. A great deal of the debate which we are hearing traverses those matters that would be directly the subject of that investigation. I am asking for a formal ruling as to whether or not you believe it complies with the standing orders for members in debate to be traducing those issues that are the subject of a police investigation.
Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
Order! The member can resume his seat. Order! This is a serious issue. The questions being asked are not being asked by police and are therefore not in relevance to sub judice. Therefore, the member’s point of order is not relevant. The minister has the call.
Lindsay Tanner (Melbourne, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Finance and Deregulation) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
My comments relate entirely to matters that are on the public record. So we have lots of people who all happened conveniently to be connected to the Liberal Party whispering around the corridors that they have the smoking gun, and as soon as it becomes clear that the smoking gun they think they have got could be blowing up in their faces, they scuttle at 100 miles an hour away from it.
This is not the first time that the Leader of the Opposition has been involved in exercises of this kind, to pump up a case way beyond any content that he has; this is not the first time he has behaved like a grubby opportunist. You will note some interesting examples in the Quarterly essay by Annabel Crabb recently, where he took legal action with respect to the Costigan royal commission and claimed that he had ‘significant evidence that was never produced’. He put out a press release saying that he had serious material to back up this action, and yet the judge in the case—Packer against Meagher—subsequently concluded:
… failure to give those particulars has never been explained. Nor have the particulars ever been supplied …
And then he said of the now Leader of the Opposition he:
… managed effectively to poison the fountain of justice immediately before the commencement of the present proceedings.
Similarly, he claimed to be aware of the identity of a commission staff member leaking material to the journalist Brian Toohey. That was absolutely repudiated by Brian Toohey at that time.
It is not only the Leader of the Opposition who has form in this respect; it is the entire Liberal Party. Somehow the paths of the Liberal Party and dubious documents, forgeries and information that does not stack up just keep crossing. They keep weaving into the single stream time and time again. We all remember the ‘children overboard’ affair. Another case of Chinese whispers, as they are called, where the gossip, the innuendo, goes round in circles and it gets ever more hysterical, ever more florid, ever more off the point and ever more inaccurate, and then it emerges in public debate as if it were fact when of course it clearly is not. We all remember weapons of mass destruction—not just an effort by the Liberal Party, I hasten to add, but something they embraced enthusiastically without really being too careful to worry about whether there was any factual information to back up the assertions.
More recently we remember the activities in the seat of Lindsay in the last week of the last federal election campaign, where Liberal Party activists, including people very senior in the Liberal Party, were caught red-handed distributing fake leaflets. And of course, most recently and most pertinently, the Leader of the Opposition in South Australia, Martin Hamilton-Smith, produced into the public domain documents alleging the most extreme corruption by the South Australian Premier and others and then discovered, much to his embarrassment, that these documents are false. Somebody eventually has to teach people in the Liberal Party that you actually check before you make assertions of these kinds. I am giving you the benefit of the doubt here in assuming that you yourselves have not been the authors of this document. I am open to being convinced otherwise, but I am prepared to give you the benefit of the doubt, but at least you should check.
We have a pattern of behaviour here that is unconcerned with evidence, unconcerned with truth, unconcerned with fact. It does not matter if you are the Young Liberals at the ANU, it does not matter that much if you are playing in the sandpit. But when you are Prime Minister or seeking to be Prime Minister, as the Leader of the Opposition is, it is an entirely different story. The Liberal Party tactics committee is slowly turning into the newsroom of the National Inquirer. Next we are going to have B-52 bombers found on the moon and Elvis alive and well in Montana. That is what is happening to the Liberal Party. And now we are seeing the backdown. Now we are seeing the grand retreat. Now we are seeing: ‘Uh oh! It’s blown up in our faces; we’ll just scurry away like the cowards we are. After having made these extreme accusations in the public domain, we are now going to run away, not even move a censure motion.’
There is other material in the public domain which tells you a lot about the grubby opportunism of the Leader of the Opposition. I remind everybody in the House just of the simple facts associated with his involvement with the HIH disaster. One, in 1997, along with Rodney Adler, he explored the prospect of buying HIH and decided that it was not a good purchase. Two, he was paid $1½ million to help FAI find a buyer. Three, he advised FAI not to get an independent valuation of its assets. Four, he wrote to Goldman Sachs—the Leader of the Opposition wrote to his employers in New York on 7 September 1998 saying that the true net value of the assets of FAI was about $20 million. It was then later sold to HIH, partly on his advice, for $295 million, and that played a central role in the collapse of HIH and we all know the misery, the loss that that caused around the Australian nation. And in June 2006, as the House will also know, the liquidator of HIH issued legal proceedings against the Leader of the Opposition, claiming, amongst other things, that he had misled the non-executive directors of FAI.
Greg Hunt (Flinders, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Climate Change, Environment and Water) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
You should be ashamed of yourself, Lindsay!
Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
Order! Standing order 65(b) still applies!
Lindsay Tanner (Melbourne, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Finance and Deregulation) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
I find it amusing that a frontbencher of a party whose leader has just been prepared, without any evidence whatsoever, to accuse the Prime Minister of corrupt conduct now tells me I should be ashamed of myself for repeating facts that are on the public record in the parliament. I find that an extraordinary contrast. Accusing the Prime Minister of this country of corrupt behaviour is just about the most extreme, serious accusation the Leader of the Opposition could make. He, by failing to back up this accusation, discredits himself, he discredits the office of Leader of the Opposition and he discredits the Liberal Party and he should resign.
2:21 pm
Tony Windsor (New England, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
The accusations that have been raised are very serious. I think both sides of the parliament agree that they are. Events are unfolding in a number of ways outside and inside this building, but we can only deliberate on the evidence that is before us at the moment. I would like to make a couple of suggestions in a moment, but the amendment that we will be asked to vote on is:
That all words after “That” be omitted with a view to substituting the following words:“that this House censures the Leader of the Opposition for relying on, actively communicating and promoting the contents of a fake email to attack the integrity of the Prime Minister and the Treasurer”.
I will be required to vote on this. In my view, the Leader of the Opposition has not been able to substantiate that email. There is an opportunity in the House at the moment for the Leader of the Opposition or others in the opposition to substantiate that email or tell the truth to the general public as to the whereabouts of it or why they believe that it exists. The Leader of the Opposition has also suggested on a number of occasions, and the media have definitely propagated the view, that the Leader of the Opposition has actually sighted an email if he does not in fact have it on his person. One of the other things that the general public would like to know is that, if the Leader of the Opposition has sighted an email, where did that occur and who had it in their possession? We need to know those substantive points, otherwise I will have no alternative but to support the amendment before the House.
The other point I would like to make, because I think the general public are fairly concerned about it as well, is about the terms of reference that the Prime Minister and the government have proposed regarding the scrutiny the Auditor-General and the Australian Federal Police may make of the Prime Minister’s office. In an interview yesterday morning, Laurie Oakes asked the Treasurer if he would abide by the same terms of reference that the Prime Minister gave to the Auditor-General’s office to ascertain some of the facts and figures of the various allegations floating about. I suggest to the House that it would be in the interests of the Treasurer to allow those terms of reference to apply to scrutiny of the Treasurer or his office. That may well have happened within the last hour or so; I am not aware of that. A lot of things are happening out there that people are only just learning about at the moment.
They are the two things that I would like to bring to this debate. A very serious allegation has been made, partly based on an email that few people have seen, and those who have seen it now doubt the veracity of it. The onus really is on the Leader of the Opposition to substantiate how he came to be in possession of or to witness that particular email and who showed it to him—and there is an onus on the Treasurer to invite the scrutiny of the Auditor-General. Otherwise we will potentially waste a week on this, and I think we all know what the result of this will be, irrespective of the numbers and how the voting will go or what is written in tomorrow’s newspapers. If that email is not presented today, there is no trail of corruption to the Prime Minister. I think it is as simple as that. There may well be some questions that need to be answered by the Treasurer or the Treasurer’s office. As such, I recommend to the government and the Treasurer that, if the terms of reference given to the Auditor-General are good enough for the Prime Minister, they should be good enough for the Treasurer and the Treasurer’s office. This way, the general public may know the substantive facts around what is actually going on here.
As some would remember, I was involved in a Senate inquiry of some note. We are all aware of the things that can happen by way of government and non-government members trying to shift the position of witnesses giving evidence to Senate inquiries. The mere calling of the public servant to give evidence had a political motivation behind it. Now we have what is being played out in this place, which in effect could waste a whole week when there are many more important issues than this. If the Prime Minister is corrupt, today is the day to take his head off. As yet I have not heard anything to suggest that he is. The Leader of the Opposition has the opportunity to come into the House before question time and produce the evidence against the Prime Minister; otherwise I will have no choice but to vote in favour of the censure motion against the Leader of the Opposition for allegedly using a fake email for political purposes.
2:28 pm
Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
A week ago the Leader of the Opposition made the biggest call a Leader of the Opposition can make. I quote him directly:
The Prime Minister and Treasurer have used their offices and taxpayers’ resources to seek advantage for one of their mates and then lied about it to the parliament.
Who would have thought that he would make the biggest call you could make as a Leader of the Opposition and then get to the parliament, not move a censure motion and wander out during his own debate? I do not think anyone is going to believe that he had appointments scheduled in his diary between 2 pm and 3.30 pm today. And yet the Leader of the Opposition has gone from the threshold of claiming that this was the biggest possible issue, worth putting his entire credibility on the line for, to coming into the House and moving a motion without using the word ‘censure’. Then, when it comes to the one part of the day when he was scheduled to be in here, he is not here and he can only get one member of his frontbench in the chamber—because the other one is walking out the door as I speak. That is the level of commitment from the Leader of the Opposition and his team to the issue before us today.
It is the most serious allegation that can be made in Australian politics and they cannot bother to move a motion relevant to it; nor can they show up for the motion that they do move. One wonders whether part of the reason for their absence at the moment has something to do with an article that is online on The Punch. One wonders if that might have something to do with their absence. One wonders about that, but certainly the Leader of the Opposition and his office do have a lot of questions now for themselves, given that there is no doubt that they have been pushing this email around for weeks trying to smear the Prime Minister and trying to smear the Treasurer. The opposition do have to explain when, where and in what circumstances they came in contact with the email. The opposition do have to detail all of their involvement in the creation, distribution and promotion of this email. Remember when the front bench did bother to show up as the opposition earlier today and it was mentioned that they should cooperate fully with the AFP by making their computer systems available. They all just laughed as if they would do that! Now they have all gone back to their computer systems. The delete key is in that same little square where you will find the page up and the page down key—pressing delete, delete, delete!
The Deputy Leader of the Opposition ran what I have got to say was one of the most creative arguments. Each speaker that has come into this debate has had a new argument. They have all tried something slightly different, because whatever argument they put forward then fell over with the next speaker. We had the shadow Treasurer put forward his argument, ‘Oh, it was a pretty fast turnaround,’ only to find the member for Riverina had an 11-minute turnaround. But I reckon one of the best arguments today came from the Deputy Leader of the Opposition, who claimed last Friday that government senators were suppressing evidence. And what was the crafty device they were using to suppress evidence? The tabling of documents. They were tabling documents as a way of suppressing evidence.
It might be news for those members opposite, but when you table a document it becomes public. That is the concept of tabling a document. But we now have a question: if they think it is suppressing evidence, maybe that is the way to get them to table the email that they have been pushing to journalists, that they have been arguing that they know all about and then ran a million miles away from. I am not sure whether that was the best line of the Deputy Leader of the Opposition. It is competing with ‘I do not know that an email doesn’t exist’ as a statement of great credibility. But we also have the question: what was it that Senator Abetz was reading, because the Deputy Leader of the Opposition used the comment this morning, when asked about Senator Abetz reading the email, ‘It is perfectly legitimate for senators to put information that has been published on the front pages of the newspapers that day regarding the content of an email.’ In a similar vein, on the Alan Jones program this morning, the Leader of the Opposition said that Senator Abetz was quoting from the papers. There is a problem with the argument. The paper that carried the text of the email was published the next day. While we never doubt the levels of confidence the Leader of the Opposition might hold in himself, I do not know that he holds a similar level of confidence in Senator Abetz, but certainly it is unusual to be able to quote from a paper not yet published. That leaves us with the more likely scenario, which is that the opposition have been in a position to table the email and have chosen not to do so.
There is good evidence from the Leader of the Opposition that he did in fact have a copy of the email. Why else, on Wednesday night last week, would he have said to Dr Charlton, ‘You know and I know there is documentary evidence that you have lied’? It was an extraordinary grubby, bullying tactic to a member of staff, an extraordinary, grubby bullying tactic to go on with—the tactic of a grubby opportunist—but where is the documentary evidence? If he was so sure that he was willing to try to intimidate a member of the staff of the Prime Minister, then table the document, table the email, and provide it now.
In the same way, if he wants to claim, ‘Oh, I do not know if there was an email or not,’ then why on Friday, in his doorstop, did the Leader of the Opposition say, ‘The Prime Minister and Treasurer have used their offices and taxpayers’ resources to seek advantage for one of their mates and then have lied about it to the parliament’? It is a big call to make. It is the biggest call a Leader of the Opposition can make. Today is the time for the Leader of the Opposition to put up or shut up. If he believes he has got this evidence, if it is strong enough to say it to the media in a doorstop, if it is strong enough to have the opposition shopping it around to Paul Kelly, to Phil Coorey, to Sid Maher and to Mark Riley, then why not provide it to the parliament? If it were to be tabled, it would have the Leader of the Opposition’s fingerprints all over the document. Paul Kelly said the opposition had cited the evidence. Phil Coorey wrote:
No one can find the email. The Coalition claims to be aware of its existence and some say they have read it.
Sid Maher from the Australian:
However, the Coalition last night was maintaining that it had an email from Rudd’s economic adviser Andrew Charlton to Treasury on the Grant affair.
Mark Riley on Seven News:
Certainly those people in the Liberal Party who were telling me yesterday that either they knew of its existence or its contents are certainly running away at 100 miles an hour.
If it comes to a competition between the integrity of the Leader of the Opposition and Paul Kelly, Phil Coorey, Sid Maher or Mark Riley, we know who is going to win. We know who is going to have the higher level of integrity in that case. The motion before us has an interesting phrase in it. The motion that is before us has the phrase ‘deals for mates’. I have got to say that the mover of the motion, in crafting that motion, knows something about deals for mates. If you want to find a story about deals for mates, do not look over on this side of the House; look back at the time the Leader of the Opposition served as a minister in the previous government.
There is an interesting organisation involved in what is described as ‘rainfall enhancement technology’—a company named the Australian Rain Corporation. Apparently they have decided to corporatise rain! The Australian Rain Corporation sought money and the National Water Commission commissioned an independent review of the technology that they were putting forward by a former senior CSIRO officer and professor of physical sciences and engineering from the ANU. The National Water Commission insisted that the Australian Rain Corporation give a presentation of this technology to a panel of physicists. They then provided it with the research papers and made the presentation in Russian. The independent review concluded: ‘There is no convincing evidence that the Atlant technology operates as believed by its proponents.’ But in the end the department recommended that the member for Wentworth provide them with $2 million for a trial, which was arguably a generous offering, given what had been said about the technology. What did the Leader of the Opposition, as a minister, do with a recommendation to give them $2 million? He wrote to the Prime Minister seeking a lazy $10 million for the Australian Rain Corporation. You have to ask: what would be the circumstances of taking a departmental recommendation for $2 million and turning it into $10 million? Why would the Leader of the Opposition have done that as a minister?
This is where we discover that an executive of the Australian Rain Corporation happened to be a next-door neighbour of the Leader of the Opposition. The same person, the same neighbour, was a member of his electorate fundraising committee, the Wentworth Forum, with membership costing a cool $5,000 to get yourself into the room. If you want to find deals for mates, there are stories of deals for mates and there are stories that rest very squarely with the Leader of the Opposition. This is the same person who was able to run around saying, ‘Well, we’ve got this email. You’d better publish it,’ and who went to members of staff, intimidated them and said that he had documentary evidence. All we ask of the Leader of the Opposition is: prove that you have been telling the truth. We know what will happen. We know we will be greeted with the same deathly silence that we get now. We know that he is pretending to write and focus on something else, but we know full well that the Leader of the Opposition has been caught out and caught out badly.
There are different ways of operating. You can operate in the way that the member for Goldstein operates whenever he thinks there is a whiff of scandal. He just wanders around saying, ‘There are questions that have to be answered.’ That is all he says. The Leader of the Opposition went a big step further, because the Leader of the Opposition decided, on the basis of a fraudulent, fake, email to rest his entire credibility in one call. If there is an allegation against the Prime Minister of Australia and the Treasurer that does not start with that email, then the Leader of the Opposition has not bothered to make it. At every point, the entire case here starts with a single email which is fraudulent and which was the basis of the Leader of the Opposition saying that the Prime Minister of Australia had lied and calling for him to resign. That is the foundation and the starting point of everything that has led to us to this debate today.
If there were ever evidence of a lack of commitment, as the story has unravelled and fallen apart in the hands of the Leader of the Opposition, it is the fact that for all the beat-up, for all the lead-up and promise over the last few days, he gets here and refuses to use the word ‘censure’ in the resolution he takes. Already—
Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
Mr Turnbull interjecting
Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
He just said—
Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
Tony, you get the information first.
Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
He says the censure is later. Can I remind the Leader of the Opposition that the first rule when you are in a hole is: stop digging. I have to say: if there is a censure coming later, that means this is the build-up—this case that they have been running in parliament today is the build-up. Every member of the frontbench has had to come up with a different line of argument, because whatever they just argued fell over, to the point where a minute ago they had run out of frontbenchers who were even willing to speak in the debate. The member for Mackellar was the only one to jump. The member for Mackellar was the only one left to be willing to defend the house of cards that is just falling all around the Leader of the Opposition. There is somebody who deserves to be censured in this place and it is the person who has been willing to discredit and malign and use the politics of smear based on a fraudulent, fake, email with no foundation, and that is the Leader of the Opposition.
2:42 pm
Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
I will speak to the amendment. The case against the Treasurer does not rest or rely upon the email allegedly sent by Mr Charlton to Mr Grech. The Prime Minister has made very grave allegations against the opposition, accusing it of being party to the forging of this email. Those allegations are disgraceful and entirely without foundation. The email is now the subject of an AFP investigation, and that should be allowed to proceed unimpeded by political accusations such as those that have been made today by the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister has set up this AFP inquiry to determine, he says, whether the email has been forged, and yet he is alleging that it has been forged, by the opposition he says, and he repeatedly says: ‘Let the police do their work.’ As we have said, and I say again to this House, categorically: the email was not created or composed, nor was the text provided to the News Ltd journalist Steve Lewis, by anybody in the opposition. I repeat: the email was not created or composed, nor was the text provided to the News Ltd journalist Steve Lewis, by anybody in the opposition. Our interest here, on behalf of the Australian people, is only in getting to the truth of the matter. That is why we have said that we will give the Australian Federal Police full cooperation in their investigation.
Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
The alleged or claimed recipient of the email, Mr Grech, was giving evidence in the Senate on Friday. He was asked about the email, but was shut down by the actions of the government senators and by his senior official. Anybody watching that could only draw the reasonable conclusion that the government did not want Mr Grech to tell his story. They shut Mr Grech down and prevented him from telling his story. We have raised legitimate questions based on material provided to the Senate—
Joe Hockey (North Sydney, Liberal Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
Mr Hockey interjecting
Harry Jenkins (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
The member for North Sydney should be reminded about his behaviour. But, having said that, those on my right should sit here in silence. This is an important matter and a serious matter and, as I said earlier, 2¾ hours ago, it will not be won by those that shout the loudest. The Leader of the Opposition has the call.
Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
Thank you, Mr Speaker. It is absolutely imperative that this whole episode relating to OzCar is thrown open to the fullest public scrutiny. The Prime Minister has ordered an Auditor-General’s report with narrow terms of reference. He has called, as I have said, on the Australian Federal Police to investigate the existence and the authenticity of this particular email allegedly between the Prime Minister’s senior economics adviser, Andrew Charlton, and the Treasury official, Mr Grech.
The Prime Minister began on Friday by denying the existence of any such email. The departments of Prime Minister and Cabinet, and the Treasury had scoured their databases, he said. According to the Prime Minister they could find nothing. Today there are reports in the media suggesting that the AFP has located an email and Mr Rudd has rushed out to claim that it is a forgery. We do not know on what sources he relies to make that claim. For our part, and on the part of everybody concerned in getting to the truth of this matter, we should await the outcome of the AFP investigation. It is not my role or that of the Prime Minister to prejudge that investigation. Indeed to do so would be to risk compromising the investigation, interfering in the proper course of that investigation.
We propose that there be a judicial inquiry—and we recommend this to the government—in the OzCar matter. Its terms of reference, which we would propose, would be that it be established to inquire into the full extent of the relationship between the Prime Minister, the Treasurer, Mr Bernie Ripoll and the car dealer John Grant including but not limited to: firstly, all communications between Mr Grant and any of his associates with the government including members of parliament, government officials, ministerial and electorate staff including emails from government, parliamentary and personal accounts, text, SMS, MMS and Blackberry messages, voicemail and voice-to-text messages; secondly, any communications, preparations or discussions in relation to the appearance of Treasury officials before the Senate committee last Friday, 19 June; thirdly, any involvement by opposition members of parliament and their staff—we are happy to be investigated by this judicial inquiry; and fourthly, the 51 Club, Labor fundraising and any previous business dealings and transactions between the Prime Minister, the Treasurer, Mr Ripoll and Mr John Grant. The Prime Minister has made the most reckless allegations here today.
Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
You said the Prime Minister should resign!
Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
By contrast we have raised serious questions concerning the conduct of the Treasurer as disclosed in the emails tendered by his own department to the Senate. Those are legitimate inquiries. I hear the Manager of Government Business complaining that I said the Prime Minister should resign. Well, I must be the first opposition leader ever to call on the Prime Minister to resign. Gosh, that has never happened before! And by way of correcting the Manager of Government Business, based on the evidence given in the Senate we called on the Prime Minister to either justify his actions or resign.
Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
No, you didn’t!
Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
That was our call. The Treasurer on the other hand is absolutely damned by the evidence that it is in hand today. The Treasurer should resign. The Prime Minister has to justify why his action does not warrant him resigning.
2:49 pm
Chris Bowen (Prospect, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Financial Services, Superannuation and Corporate Law) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
Lyndon Johnson once told a colleague of his that he was planning to make a particularly serious allegation against a political opponent. He was asked: ‘Is the allegation true?’ The reply was: ‘I don’t know but I am going to enjoy watching him deny it.’ It is the oldest political tactic in the book that we have seen from the opposition over the last week. ‘It does not matter if there is no truth to the allegation; it does not matter if there is no evidence; but we will make the allegation and we will watch them deny it. We will throw some mud and we will make it stick. We will throw some allegations and we don’t care if they are true because we do not care about integrity.’
We have seen this from the opposition over the last week. The opposition’s case has had two parts. Firstly, they said the Prime Minister had misled the House and they said that the Prime Minister should resign. They base this on the existence of an email, and we just heard the Leader of the Opposition say, ‘We asked legitimate questions. We said that there were matters to be answered.’ This is what he said:
The Prime Minister and the Treasurer have used their officers and taxpayers’ resources to seek advantage for one of their mates and then lied about it to the parliament.
There is no question mark. It is a statement from the Leader of the Opposition that the Prime Minister had lied.
We just heard the Leader of the Opposition say that we should wait for the outcome of the inquiry. There was not any such reticence last week when he called for the Prime Minister to resign. Now the opposition are saying that this email is a distraction, the very email they were basing their entire case on last week. They have been running away from this email at a million miles an hour.
We saw the Leader of the Opposition and the Deputy Leader of the Opposition this morning saying that Senator Abetz, a Liberal Party senator, only raised this email after he had read it in the paper. We know that it appeared in the paper the next day. I am not much of a gambler, Mr Speaker, and I am not much of a horseracing man, but I might start if I could take Senator Abetz with me. He knows the racing results—
Tony Abbott (Warringah, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
I rise on a point of order, Mr Speaker. I would like to table what Senator Abetz did say. He did not say what is being put into his mouth—
Harry Jenkins (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
Order! The member for Warringah will resume his seat. It is not a point of order.
Tony Abbott (Warringah, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
I seek leave to table the document.
Leave not granted.
Chris Bowen (Prospect, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Financial Services, Superannuation and Corporate Law) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
There is something going on, but it is not on this side of the House that it is happening.
We saw Senator Abetz putting this email on the public record for the first time through the Hansard and now the Liberal Party are running a million miles from it. They cannot run a million miles from it because it is on the public record that they placed it on the public record. We have seen dissembling, we have seen manipulation of the facts and we have seen misleading from the opposition. If the opposition really want to clear this matter up, the Leader of the Opposition—he is in his office at the moment—can pick up the phone to the Federal Police and say: ‘Come and have a look at my computers. My office is available. Come right now and have a look at my computers. You can look at any computer in my office and see whether we have, at any time, had possession of the fake and forged email.’
The second part of the opposition’s case is this: that the Treasurer misled the House when he said Mr Grant had received no special treatment. That is what the opposition alleges. But that also does not hold water. We know that because we know, from the public record, that the Treasurer and the government were actively working to assist car dealers across the country. We had the chief executive of the Motor Traders Association yesterday make a public statement and this is what he said:
The treatment that Mr Grant, a member of mine, got was no different from the treatment all my other members got.
That is a pretty definitive statement from Mr Delaney—a statement which shows that the Treasurer and his office were actively working on behalf of car dealers across the country.
We know there are a range of emails to and from the Treasurer’s office on behalf of car dealers everywhere, on behalf of members of parliament on that side of the chamber and this side of the chamber, because we know that that was a very difficult time for the car-dealing industry in Australia. We know that there were hundreds and thousands of car dealers who were worried about access to finance. Many of them were approaching their local members. Many of them were approaching the Treasurer and his office directly to ask for assistance and the Treasurer was providing that assistance. Some were referred by the member for Riverina. I also discussed the member for Riverina’s cases with her and offered any government assistance that could be provided. Others were referred by other members of parliament. Why? Because there were jobs at stake; because there were car dealers worrying about how they would continue to employ their workers if they could not continue to get access to finance; because the ramifications of car dealers closing their doors on employment in Australia would have been very severe indeed; and because the Treasurer of this country is particularly conscientious when it comes to supporting Australian jobs.
I have worked as closely with this Treasurer as any member of parliament has and I am singularly unsurprised by the attitude that the Treasurer took. I am singularly unsurprised that he had his office actively trying to assist car dealers from across the country. I am singularly unsurprised that the Treasurer of this country decided it was important to assist car dealers get finance, because the jobs of their employees were relying on it. I am unsurprised because he is a man who cares about the jobs of ordinary Australians; he is a man who actually cares what happens on the street; he is a man who actually cares how people are dealt with; and he is a man who actually takes his responsibility seriously. If a member of parliament, be it the member for Oxley or the member for Riverina, approaches him with a problem, he tries to fix it, because there are jobs at stake.
We all remember the period of time in which these events unfolded. We all remember that there were car dealers who were very, very worried about where they would get their finance from. We all remember that there were employees of car dealers who were very worried about where their bosses and their employers would get their finance from. We all remember that there was concern that car dealers across this country, from one end of the country to the other, would have to close their doors.
The government had a choice. We could have said: ‘We are going to let the market sort that out. We are not interested.’ We could have said: ‘You are on your own, guys. We are not going to help.’ We could have said: ‘Sorry, there is nothing we can do.’ But we did not say that. We said we would intervene. We said we would establish a special purpose vehicle. We also said we would assist car dealers, where possible, by ensuring that they had access to whatever finance was available. That is what the Treasurer of this country did and he should not be condemned for it; he should be praised for it. He should be thanked for it, because he is a man who actually cares about what happens to ordinary Australians. He is a man who actually came into this place to make a difference and help ordinary working Australians, while you mainly came into this House to take their conditions off them. He is a man who actually believes he can make a difference—and he did.
The government could have said to Mr Grant: ‘Sorry, we’re not going to help you. We’re not going to help you, because you have committed the crime of actually knowing a member of parliament. You have committed the crime of actually knowing the Prime Minister of Australia.’ That is what we could have said, but we did not. The Treasurer acted entirely appropriately and has made his position very clear in the House. The Treasurer has outlined what happened and, in each case, it has been accurate. The opposition, so desperate to come back to office, clinging so hard to the born-to-rule mentality, say: ‘We will latch on to any crisis; we will not tell the truth about it; we will exaggerate about it; we will mislead about it; and we will endeavour to engineer a scandal, even though the facts do not support it.’
Last week, we had the Leader of the Opposition saying the Prime Minister and Treasurer have misled the House. He said:
The Prime Minister and the Treasurer have used their offices and taxpayers’ resources to seek advantage for one of their mates and then lied about it to the Parliament.
This is not a question to be raised, not something for the Treasurer to be held accountable for. It is a call for a resignation—the most serious allegation that can be made against a minister of the Crown, an allegation which leads automatically to the resignation of the minister if it is proven. But it is an allegation totally lacking in support; an allegation totally lacking in any corroborating evidence; an allegation based on a fraud, a forgery and a fake; and an allegation that is not based on any objective analysis of the facts.
The Leader of the Opposition has a very important role in the Australian political institution. The leader of the opposition’s role is to hold the government to account and to be ready to serve as the alternative prime minister. It is important that the Leader of the Opposition’s position is taken seriously. It is important that the government and the people can take the Leader of the Opposition at his word. It is important that when the Leader of the Opposition makes an allegation it is taken seriously. The trouble is that from this day forward nothing the Leader of the Opposition says can ever be taken seriously. The trouble with this Leader of the Opposition is that his position is completely untenable and he has no credibility. He could come in here and make allegations tomorrow and the Australian people would rightly say, ‘How can we believe you, Malcolm?’
How can we believe anything this Leader of the Opposition says? He is prepared to say anything and do anything to take this chair. The Leader of the Opposition is prepared to besmirch the reputation of good men and women for his own base political objectives. The Leader of the Opposition is prepared to tear down people’s reputations that have been built up over decades in public office because it suits him. The Leader of the Opposition is prepared to sell out on morality, to sell out on the truth and to sell out on evidence in order to take his rightful place—in his view—as leader of the government. It is not a position which is credible. It is not a position which the Leader of the Opposition can maintain.
The Leader of the Opposition had a choice: he could come in here and furnish the email that he has based his campaign on or he could tender his resignation. He has failed to tender the email because it is a fake. He has failed to tender the email because he now realises, I would think, that it is a forgery and that his entire political campaign of the last week has been based on a lie. It has been based upon a falsehood; it has been based upon an allegation which cannot be held to be true because it is based on a lie.
The Leader of the Opposition has had the opportunity to support his allegations; he instead has been shown to be a shallow man who is not prepared to back up his allegations. He is a man who has sold out on all semblance of credibility, on all semblance of holding to the truth and on all semblance of being a credible alternative prime minister of this country. Instead he has made himself a weapon and a tool of smear and innuendo.
The Treasurer, the Prime Minister and this entire government will continue to be focused on the real issues at hand—the real issues of helping Australians through the global financial crisis, of coming up with vehicles to actually keep Australians in employment and of working with people like the member for Riverina on methods to keep Australians in jobs, because that is the job and the mandate that the Australian people gave us. They gave us the mandate to see them through these difficult times. While ever the member for Wentworth occupies that seat the opposition will not be involved in helping ordinary Australians through these very difficult times; they will be involved in smear and innuendo, in grubby politics and in cheap opportunism because that is the epitaph that the Leader of the Opposition has written for himself.
3:02 pm
Mrs Bronwyn Bishop (Mackellar, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
The high dudgeon of the Minister for Financial Services, Superannuation and Corporate Law rings somewhat hollow. The high dudgeon in fact indicates that perhaps he might feel he is stepping one step closer to being Minister for Finance and Deregulation, and the Minister for Finance and Deregulation one step closer to becoming the Treasurer, because it is the Treasurer who is here to answer the charge that he has misled this parliament.
There has been much obfuscation about whether the question of the so-called email is the question that has to be answered. The real question to be answered is whether the Treasurer misled the parliament by saying that he had given no special attention to Mr Grant when all the evidence points to the fact that he has so given that special attention. Whilst we have heard a lot of mud being thrown around in this parliament, we should remind ourselves that it was the Treasurer back in 2000 who gave, in a brown paper bag, $1,400 to the Democrats and said there was nothing wrong with that either and that it was perfectly normal practice for political parties to give money to opposing parties. Equally, he is arguing now that there is nothing wrong with him giving special attention to somebody who is a mate of the Prime Minister and possibly even a mate of his.
The Prime Minister has said he will solve this problem by having the Auditor-General conduct an inquiry. This so-called inquiry is supposed to answer all the questions such that we will then see an end to any question of probity. There are a few things that have to be said about the so-called inquiry by the Auditor-General. I point out that the Auditor-General appeared before a public hearing this morning and he answered a number of questions relating to this so-called inquiry—and I happen to have asked a lot of those questions. The first thing to say is that the Prime Minister has not ordered an inquiry by the Auditor-General. The Prime Minister has written to the Auditor-General and asked the Auditor-General if he will conduct an inquiry—a performance audit—of I am not quite sure what because we did not see the letter. But he said that it is up to him as Auditor-General to decide whether he accepts the request of the Prime Minister to conduct such an audit. He also went on to say, when I asked him what would be the terms of reference, that it was up to him, the Auditor-General, to determine and set the objectives of that inquiry.
In the course of the public hearing this morning we then went on to discuss how it would be possible to have such an inquiry if there was not power exercised by the Auditor-General to ask the Prime Minister and the Treasurer to give evidence to that inquiry on oath—to be sworn and give that evidence. It is very important that we understand that the Prime Minister has not ordered an inquiry by the Auditor-General; it is up to the Auditor-General to determine whether he accepts it and then to set the objectives. The objectives must include taking sworn evidence from both the Treasurer and the Prime Minister and further they must include that all communications—faxes and indeed emails—between the Treasurer, his office and anybody else where there is supposedly evidence that other people were given the same advantage as Mr Grant must be seen. Because it is the tone of the letter, the tone of the assistance given to Mr Grant, that shows there has been special attention given. Unless we see the other so-called pieces of evidence, which we can then compare with that relating to Mr Grant, we will not have had a proper inquiry at all.
To questions this morning, the Auditor-General answered that he would consider whether or not he would take evidence from the Prime Minister or the Treasurer. He would not give an undertaking that he would, which, again, causes me great concern. I will end on this point, Madam Deputy Speaker, which is that, in pulling the Auditor-General into this grubby political mire, we are now having a political assurance investigation. This means that the Auditor-General, who has to be like Caesar’s wife and above suspicion, is being pulled into this quagmire of political humbug—the worst that we have ever seen.
The Leader of the Opposition has been quite correct in calling for the Treasurer to resign. There is sufficient evidence before the people right now for that to be done. If he wishes to refute it, then we need to see all the correspondence—the emails and faxes—on the public record.
Question put:
That the amendment (Mr Rudd’s) be agreed to.
Question put:
That the motion (Mr Turnbull’s), as amended, be agreed to.