Joe Ludwig (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Manager of Opposition Business in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of answers given by ministers to questions without notice asked by Opposition senators today.

Let me be plain about this. The minister for justice was asked about statements from the government regarding the anthrax scare at the Indonesian Embassy last year. Last year’s hoax was a very serious affair but it was not assisted by the Prime Minister’s eagerness to rush out and declare it was an act of murderous criminality without the preliminary testing suggesting it was a biological agent. This government’s eagerness to act as an agent of fear is all the more deplorable for its failure to correct the record once it learnt that its statements were wrong.

It is typical of this government. The principle here is very simple: when you become aware that a past statement is wrong, it is critical that the government correct the record immediately. Hasn’t this government learnt anything in 10 years? When you look at children overboard, it could have learnt a lesson but did not.

This is all the more important when you are dealing with matters of national security and potential terrorist threats. The government should be wary of becoming the boy who cried wolf. Its failure to correct the record in relation to past warnings and claims about something that turns out to be a hoax undermines the credibility of future warnings on similar matters, thus putting Australian lives in danger. That is the premise. This government should learn from that. It is completely unacceptable.

Senator Vanstone, the minister for immigration, is a key figure in the Howard government’s culture of denial. In the AWB scandal, we see them channel funds to one of the world’s greatest criminal terrorists to the tune of $290 million and then beat their chests about how pure they are because they grudgingly held a limited inquiry into this disgraceful conduct. But the culture of denial is rampant through this government and is demonstrated by the following statement. Senator Vanstone, in parliament on 10 May 2005, said:

The short answer is that I think the department do an excellent job. We are talking about 0.2 per cent of the cases.

And the PM, picking up on that I assume, on 26 May 2005, said:

And I’m told that of these 88,000, 201 individual cases fell into the category where a person was released after it was determined they were not here unlawfully and that was 0.2 per cent of the number of people who were located.

So it is this ability to say: ‘It’s a small margin.’ But if there is any doubt about where the source of the problem culture lies, Mr Palmer, when he conducted his inquiry nailed the Prime Minister and Senator Vanstone with this quote direct from the Palmer report, where he said:

It was suggested to the Inquiry that, of the thousands of removals and cases DIMIA deals with each year, the case of Cornelia Rau represents less than 0.001 per cent. The Inquiry considers that this statement, more than most, demonstrates the culture and mindset that have brought about the failures in policy implementation and practices.

There is something seriously wrong with the moral fibre of the Howard government when it relies on that, and it has been clearly outed by the Ombudsman. From answers from the minister given to the Senate today, it is clear that the culture of fear, cover-up and denial are still alive and well in the Howard government. When you look at the Ombudsman’s recent report, the Ombudsman, Professor John McMillan, said he was shocked by the report which highlighted serious administrative deficiencies in the immigration department. He added that the problem could be solved by proper leadership. That is what he said.

The minister is the person who should take the lead and demonstrate leadership. That is where the blame lies: in the inability of this minister to take her ministerial responsibility and accountability properly and deal with it effectively and ensure that we do not use an AWD defence of ‘We held an inquiry. We’ve opened the door.’ You have not corrected the problem; you have left the minister where she is. But I see that that could be corrected this Christmas. Mr Robb might get it yet. (Time expired)