Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

On behalf of Senator Johnston, the Chair of the Standing Committee of Senators’ Interests, and in accordance with the Senate resolution of 17 March 1994 on the declaration of senators’ interests, I present declarations of interests and notifications of alterations of interests in the Register of Senators’ Interests lodged between 2 December 2008 and 22 June 2009 and move:

That the Senate take note of the report.

The Register of Senators’ Interests was introduced, rightly or wrongly, for senators to disclose money, gifts et cetera that they have received. It seems to me, reading the document that has just been tabled, that it would make good sense if there were to be a requirement that actual details be provided. We now have in this place a senator who has been the beneficiary of, on my estimation, over three-quarters of a million dollars in a personal account of which he is the sole signatory—$739,000, but nothing disclosed for about 10 months. The so-called disclosures that we get, making up that $739,000, include such things as ‘anonymous donation, $10,000’, ‘another anonymous donation, $5,000’, and so it goes on. The account is in Senator Bob Brown’s sole name.

If any political party leader in this country, be it Mr Rudd, Mr Turnbull or Mr Truss, had a slush fund of this nature, I know what our friends in the media would do. That man or woman would be pilloried for not having accountability—