George Brandis (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Senator Lundy, you would not know a budget if one jumped out of a tree and bit you, if the relevance of your questions at estimates is any indication. When it comes to the core government functions, this government has set not only a benchmark for itself unmatched in Australian political history but a new benchmark for all other governments.

In the time left to me, let me turn to other things because, although accountability to the parliament and accountability to the public by being honest during election campaigns are among the core elements of accountability, there are other mechanisms, as you know well, Mr Acting Deputy President. Senator O’Brien touched on Senator Vanstone and the Cornelia Rau and Vivian Solon affairs and he chastised Senator Vanstone. Why? Because Senator Vanstone participated in the establishment of an independent commission of inquiry which collected all the evidence and made some findings adverse to departmental officers and that report was published.

Senator O’Brien mentioned the AWB affair. How did this government respond to the AWB affair? By constituting Mr Cole, a respected lawyer whose objectivity is not in question, as a royal commissioner, giving him the widest terms of reference and instructing that all material that was relevant in the hands of any government department or agency should be offered to the Cole inquiry, which of course is proper.

If this government were a government seeking to avoid scrutiny—and I interpolate to say that nobody is suggesting that mistakes were not made—or if this were a government seeking to avoid its obligations of accountability, why would it have set up the Cole royal commission? Why would it have set up the Palmer inquiry? Why would it have set up other public inquiries or inquiries the reports of which were published and which, in the case of the Rau inquiry, contained criticisms of the government? If it had followed the precedents of the last Labor government, either there would not have been an inquiry or the report containing criticism of the government would have been suppressed.

I commissioned some research from the Parliamentary Library. I asked them to look and tell me how many commissions of inquiry had been established during the 13 years of the previous Labor government. Do you know how many there were? There were 12. Those 12 royal commissions were in general, subject to an exception I will mention in a moment, directed to issues which were not a source of political embarrassment for the government of the day or a source of political controversy, like the royal commission into the Nugan Hand Bank. That was nothing to do with the government of the day. There was a commission of inquiry into the use of chemical agents in Vietnam, which had nothing to do with the government of the day; the royal commission by former Senator McClelland into British nuclear tests in Australia—a royal commission into events that happened in the 1950s; the royal commission by Justice Morling into the Chamberlain case, which was not a matter of political controversy—at least not in federal politics—and not a matter of sensitivity to the government of the day; and the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, which was not a matter of political sensitivity to the government of the day because no allegations of misconduct by any minister of the government of the day had been made. The only inquiry that the government established in that 13 years that might be thought to relate to a matter of contemporary, present political controversy was the inquiry into the leasing of Centenary House. Before you of all people, Mr Acting Deputy President Murray, we do not need to rehearse the sorry story of Centenary House.

So that is the difference. It is the difference in the standards of accountability to parliament, both through question time and through parliamentary committees. It is the difference in the accountability to the Australian public—in particular about the core function of the government, the management of their finances—between the deceit of Mr Beazley, Australia’s worst finance minister, and the transparent honesty of this government, which actually imposed upon itself and future governments statutory obligations of transparency that had not been there before. It is the willingness of the government to take on the chin and expose criticisms that are politically embarrassing—for example, as during the Palmer inquiry or as perhaps we will see during the Cole inquiry—rather than sweep it under the carpet. Nobody says that governments or ministers do not make mistakes; the test is whether they own up to them, whether they come into this chamber and whether they go before public inquiries, wear the political pain and answer to the people.