Patrick Gorman (Perth, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Western Australia) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

by leave—I move:

That the House:

(1) notes the legal action taken in the Federal Court of Australia by ClubsNSW against Mr Troy Stolz, known as Registered Clubs Association of New South Wales v Stolz;

(2) notes the report of the Standing Committee of Privileges and Members' Interests on its inquiry into whether the legal action raises issues of parliamentary privilege or contempt such that the House should formally claim privilege and intervene in the court proceedings to assert the protection of parliamentary privilege;

(3) considers that email communications relating to ClubsNSW between the office of the Member for Clark and Mr Stolz, between 17 December 2019 and 1 December 2020, are likely to fall within the definition of 'proceedings of Parliament' under subsection 16(2) of the Parliamentary Privileges Act 1987 (the Act);

(4) notes the restrictions placed by subsection 16(3) of the Act on the treatment of proceedings in Parliament;

(5) acknowledges that interpretation of the Act, and therefore determination of the application of parliamentary privilege in court proceedings, is a matter for the courts; and

(6) authorises the Speaker to take steps to ensure that the interests of the House are represented in this matter before the courts, such that parliamentary proceedings are appropriately protected as provided by the Act.

Tony Smith (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is the motion seconded?

Ms Catherine King (Ballarat, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Development) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I second the motion and reserve my right to speak.

Andrew Wilkie (Clark, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

[by video link] I thank the committee for their attention to this matter, and I obviously welcome the outcome that the committee has recommended—that is, that the House authorise the Speaker to take steps to ensure that the interests of the House are represented in the Registered Clubs Association of New South Wales v Stolz, such that parliamentary proceedings are appropriately protected, as provided under the Parliamentary Privileges Act 1987. Obviously I support the motion, and I hope it will have the support of all members of the House.

I think it would be fair to say that all parliamentarians in Canberra—in fact, parliamentarians in parliaments right around the country and indeed even overseas in Commonwealth countries—will be very grateful for the increased clarity that this episode promises to bring to the issue of parliamentary privilege. There are precious few precedents and precious little case law in Commonwealth parliaments around the issue of parliamentary privilege, which possibly helps to explain why we are needing to clear things up right now. What is perfectly clear, though, is that the protection of communications between the community and parliamentarians is vitally important, especially when those communications are directly related to the work of the parliamentarian in the parliament.

Of course, that's what this is all about; that's the origin of why we are standing in the parliament discussing this motion today. This is all to do with a gentleman of New South Wales called Mr Troy Stolz—a brave gentleman, I would hasten to add. Mr Stolz is a former ClubsNSW employee. He got in contact with me in late 2019 and was in regular contact with me for some time after that—or with my office, I should say, more accurately. During that interaction, Mr Stolz provided me with documents obtained in connection with his employment at ClubsNSW and, in particular, a board paper detailing how the vast majority of registered clubs of New South Wales were not, or at least were not, complying with anti-money laundering and counterterrorism financing legislation. This was contained in a ClubsNSW board paper. This was hard evidence of widespread noncompliance in New South Wales registered clubs with very important federal legislation—legislation designed to rein in and stamp out money laundering and terrorism financing.

Mr Stolz came to me with the express intention of seeking to get me to ventilate these concerns and to present that hard evidence in the parliament, and that I did. In fact, in early 2020, I stood in the House and I ventilated this information and I sought to table the board paper that Mr Stolz had provided me with. In other words, there is an unambiguous and direct link from his approach to me doing my work in the parliament. Of course, ClubsNSW have subsequently taken legal action against Mr Stoltz, and the Federal Court has ruled that the communications between Mr Stolz and me may be used as evidence in the court case. This, of course, is what I dispute. This is why I referred the matter to the House, and this is the matter that now is the substance of this motion before the House.

Obviously, there are so many alarming dimensions to this whole issue about Mr Stolz and, quite frankly, the threat to parliamentary privilege. And that's not just in the House of Representatives; there's the threat to parliamentary privilege that would come from an adverse precedent here for parliaments right around Australia and right around the Commonwealth countries. Let's remember that the powers and protections in place under the Parliamentary Privileges Act enable the parliament to carry out its functions properly, including debating matters of importance freely, discussing grievances and discussing investigations effectively without interference from the government, the courts or anyone else.

This is important; this matters. We must be very careful not to allow any precedent to be established to diminish these very important protections. If the parliament does not seek to intervene in some way in the current matter of ClubsNSW versus Stolz then there's a very real risk that parliamentary privilege will be diminished in some way. But even more broadly than what we need to do our jobs—what the parliament needs to function effectively—the protections afforded by parliamentary privilege are actually needed by the public. It's not their privilege, but it has the effect of protecting people in the parliament to ventilate important issues when they would otherwise be voiceless—in particular, whistleblowers like Mr Stolz.

Let's not forget the substantive matter here. The substantive matter is not that Troy Stolz gave me a board paper from ClubsNSW. The substantive matter—and, as far as I'm aware, still a matter uninvestigated by federal authorities, including AUSTRAC—is that almost all registered clubs in New South Wales are, or at least were, not complying with anti-money-laundering and counterterrorism financing legislation, and that ClubsNSW, the peak body, was effectively running a protection racket for them and is still trying to run a protection racket for them right now by trying to silence and destroy Mr Stolz in the Federal Court. This is the substantive matter. That should be what everyone is running around about and which should be on the front page of the newspapers. The issue of parliamentary privilege should just be taken for granted; we shouldn't need to be taking this action but, of course, we are.

Of course this isn't the first time that I have come into the parliament, informed directly by brave whistleblowers, and brought to the public's attention issues of great public importance in cases where the whistleblowers had nowhere else to turn—like in the case of Crown, where whistleblowers had tried to get traction with Victoria Police, the Victorian gambling regulator, AUSTRAC, the Federal Police and Border Force, or with anyone else who might have had some jurisdiction. In the end, it was left for them to come to me and for me to stand up in the parliament, with the absolute privilege that I do enjoy in the parliament, to ventilate those concerns.

That's one of the few reasons why Crown casino is in such strife at the moment: I had a group of poker machine technicians come to me in 2017 who gave me hard evidence on the misconduct at Crown, including money laundering, poker machine tampering, domestic violence and gun running. I was able to table a USB in the parliament with their recorded testimony. More recently, a brave whistleblower came to me to talk about what was going on at the private terminal at Tullamarine—how aircraft were coming in with some foreign national who had 15 bags for a weekend at Crown casino in Melbourne. Heaven knows what was in those bags—presumably cash to be laundered through Crown casino. More recently, it was only because of a brave Victorian gambling regulator that I was able to reveal—and, again, attempted to table in the parliament—the video footage of an ALDI shopping bag with a couple of million dollars in it being money laundered in the Sun City junket room at Crown casino.

I don't rehash all of this history to big note myself, I do it to honour the brave whistleblowers who have come to members of parliament with their concerns in the public interest. Those approaches have led directly to the work of parliamentarians in the parliament—an unbroken chain from approach, discussion and handover of material to the MP standing up and ventilating it in the parliament and in the public interest, protected by the absolute privilege of the privileges act.

That's what we're here today to defend—to hopefully pass this motion and authorise the Speaker to somehow intervene in ClubsNSW versus Stolz so that the communications with me not be allowed to be used in that case and to set a very powerful precedent for all parliaments of the Commonwealth right around not just this country but the world that parliamentary privilege is real, it's powerful, it's effective and it will be used to protect the parliament and to protect the functioning of the parliament.

Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for the Arts) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I won't detain the House long; I know there's important business about to occur. I simply want to thank the Privileges Committee for dealing with this. It shows, as most members are aware, that the Privileges Committee has continued to act in a nonpartisan way and to make sure that it is defending the effective functions of this House.

This resolution is really important for this reason: if we're to have free debate in this House, it is essential that people be protected in their communications with us. Anything less than that means we no longer have free debate in this House.

For a long time it's been the case that, if issues arose during a period of sittings, Speakers would prefer there to be direct authority from the House before they took action with the courts. This resolution provides exactly that authority for the Speaker to be able to make representations on behalf of the House to the courts on the exact issue that the member for Clark just spoke about. There are times when the House is not sitting, either because we're in a long recess or we're in a caretaker period, when, with this resolution, the Speaker should be in no doubt that there is a clear request from the House that we want privilege protected when parliamentary privilege is asserted, we want to make sure that it's followed through on and we want to make sure that it is well understood that it's the view of the House that free debate is only protected if people feel confident about being able to come to members of parliament and provide information that might otherwise be confidential.

Question agreed to.