Alan Ferguson (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

which makes it rather hard to concentrate, as you know. The events of the past few days have proved that each of those safeguards that have been put in in this place actually works. Senator Santoro has resigned because he did not comply with the ministerial code of conduct. This matter is going to be sent to the Privileges Committee. The people opposite us suggest that it has not been complied with and so it will go to the Privileges Committee and then come back to this chamber to be adjudicated on, which is the intention of how it should work.

But no-one on that side has yet told me why, if the register of interests is so important, they let it lie on the Notice Paper for 10 years before they introduced it into this chamber—on the Notice Paper since 1983. In 1994, I think it had something to do with the Keating piggery and the Marshall Islands affair of Senator Richardson, which you are all quite proud of. They refused to introduce a ministerial code of conduct and they refused to introduce a charter of budget honesty.

The people on that side earlier today talked about this critical accountability mechanism. I would like to repeat what I said back in 1994 in relation to this Register of Senators’ Interests: it tells you everything and it tells you nothing. I still remember—and some of you may remember—that a couple of years ago the Labor senators opposite came in here virtually salivating at the fact that they were going to pin Senator Minchin on a conflict of interest. In his register of interests he had BHP shares and, as minister for finance, he had a conflict of interest owning them. They were salivating; you and your colleagues were salivating. The question was asked and Senator Minchin said, ‘Yes, I do. It is true. I do have one share in BHP. It was given to me the day I was born by my grandfather, and I refuse to sell it.’ One share at that stage was worth $14. As I said to you, the Register of Senators’ Interests does not tell you whether you have a million dollars worth of BHP shares or one share, or how much it is worth or how much it is geared. It tells you absolutely nothing, and so if they were going to establish a register of interests it ought to be a register that means something.

We had a situation back in 1994 at the time of Mr Keating’s piggery interests. I looked at a speech made by one of my colleagues at the time on 17 March 1994 when he talks about the seriousness of whether Mr Keating obtained a loan from the Commonwealth Bank when he was Treasurer or Prime Minister. He said:

It would be interesting to know whether the Prime Minister discloses his interests in the Commonwealth Bank or his loan dealings with the Commonwealth Bank when he makes decisions at the cabinet table on the Commonwealth Bank ... in the past wholly owned ... now a major shareholder.

We had a situation where there was no ministerial code of conduct. There was a register of senators’ interests, and the Prime Minister had a commercial interest in a piggery which was kept in the dark and where he made a considerable amount of money—much more than I am sure Senator Santoro has ever made out of his shares—and yet he refused to divulge it, refused to tell us. I can tell you: if Senator Santoro had every one of those shares on the register you still would not know whether he had one share in each of those companies or 5,000 shares. It does not tell you a thing. I support the motion before the chair; no-one could not support the motion before the chair. But unfortunately those opposite have gone on all sorts of tangents talking about everything except the integrity of the Register of Senators’ Interests— (Time expired)