Julian McGauran (Victoria, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

The week began with the Leader of the Opposition, Mr Beazley, making all sorts of claims and promises on the ABC that this was going to be the issue of the decade and the issue to bring the government down. There were claims of government ministers connected with bribes and corruption. In fact, even the Prime Minister was to be linked with it all. What is more, they went a step too far in the House yesterday, claiming that all of the government is linked with the bribes and corruption and therefore linked to suicide bombers. What a shrill lack of credibility was brought to the debate yesterday. That was how they began the week.

At best, we can say we have seen a lot of heat but no light at all. If you ever doubted that the opposition were using this issue—using it not in the public interest, not in the national interest and certainly not in the interest of the wheat farmers—to milk it for whatever political advantage that the desperate opposition on the other side could get out of it, you need not have, because that is exactly their motivation. According to the Australian Financial Review, it was leaked from the caucus meeting—which, as we know, would be a correct report because those caucus meetings leak like a sieve—that on Monday Mr Beazley was hosing them down, telling them that the expectations at the beginning of the week were not going to be met and they were not going to get a ministerial scalp out of this. So forget about the national interest; it was all about getting a ministerial scalp, about discrediting the Prime Minister.

Do not think that the public do not see through that. Of course they see through all of your shrill shrieking and misrepresentation of the whole Cole inquiry. To instil a few facts into this issue is what is needed, not the opposition’s shifting from one allegation, one claim and one assertion to another. As each one has been proven false, as you prejudge the royal commission, your credibility has sunk in the public eye; it could not have sunk lower. The government has acted properly and creditably. From the time of the Volcker inquiry we have acted according to the recommendations of that inquiry. We have set up a transparent and open royal commission with references that give the ability to call government ministers or officers of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. The government has not turned a blind eye to this issue. We have put in charge of that royal commission a former New South Wales Supreme Court judge, the Hon. Terence Cole. He is known to the other side as the former royal commissioner into the building and construction industry. He is a man who knows how to get to the bottom of corruption if there be any. He knows all about royal commissions and how to conduct them. He has not felt constrained at all in administering this inquiry.

We have said from these front benches, as has been said in the lower house, that the government will not prejudge this royal commission. We will not jump in early and follow it line by line, piece of evidence by piece of evidence, claim by claim and counterclaim by counterclaim. It is neither the correct thing to do when you establish a royal commission nor is it in the national interest. But when those recommendations are handed down by the most credible man who could possibly run the royal commission, rest assured that whatever the findings and recommendations, the government will implement them to the full. We have said that much.

On the other side, you decided to take the advantage, following it line by line, claim by claim and counterclaim by counterclaim, and along the way have been proven incorrect and each claim has been shown to be false. Time does not permit me to go through those claims. Perhaps you should bring on an MPI so that we get a little more time or we could discuss it in general business on Thursday. But your initial claim against the Prime Minister in regard to a letter he wrote in 2002 simply shows the absurdity of the effort you are making to drag this government down. On each occasion you have been knocked on the head over it. In the time I have left, I say that we simply reject the opposition’s claim that the government has acted improperly. (Time expired)