Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Hansard source

Senator Ronaldson is right, the shovel that was left on the front doorstep of the person who blew the whistle was a none-too-subtle manoeuvre. But this investigation has been going on for three years. Let us just cast our mind to the allegations that President Nixon, no less than a president of the United States, faced. Watergate, from beginning to end, was wrapped up in 18 months. They were dealing with the President of the United States. But here we have an investigation into the activities of a trade union official taking twice as long, a period of three years. I am not going to make any allegations here. There is a stark choice. I am not sure which choice we should take. Either we have a display of gross administrative incompetence or an institutionalised go-slow, and what motivates that is another question.

But there is no doubt that something is wrong in Fair Work Australia. Indeed, the former industrial registrar, Mr Doug Williams, has taken the unprecedented action of going public to indicate that under his stewardship such an investigation would not have taken so long and would have been concluded by now. So if a former industrial registrar can come to that conclusion, why can't Fair Work Australia?

Senator Jacinta Collins interjecting—

We have Senator Collins interjecting, asking was he an appointment by a certain person? The problem, Senator Collins, is this: the member for Dobell is allegedly also complaining as to why this is taking so long. Ms Jackson is complaining as to why it is taking so long. Indeed, yesterday, we had the Australian editorialising that possibly this is worthy now of a royal commission to get to the bottom of this terrible go-slow.

In our own experience in dealings with Fair Work Australia on this issue, given the reluctance and deliberate obfuscation by the minister at the table at Senate estimates and by the then manager of Fair Work Australia, Mr Tim Lee, we undertook an FOI, a freedom of information request. It was completely denied by Fair Work Australia, categorically rejected. They would not even tell us what documents they would not give us access to. They just would not tell us anything. So what did we do? We had to go to the Information Commissioner. The Information Commissioner basically forced Fair Work Australia to finally disclose some documents. What do those documents reveal? Well, no wonder they did not want to tell us about them. One of them is an email to Fair Work Australia. It says:

I am the Acting Commander, New South Wales Police Fraud Squad.

I have left messages throughout the day with both—

name deleted and name deleted. I am deleting these names because I do not think they should be on the public record at this stage—

from your office requesting that you contact me. I have been told by—

name deleted—

that the best way to contact you is to send an email.

So here we have the commander of the fraud squad in New South Wales reduced to emailing the manager of Fair Work Australia to get his telephone calls returned. Not one, not two, but numerous calls on that day were not responded to. I simply pose the question—chances are Senator Collins would agree with this, but I am sure all the listeners would—that if any of us in our offices or in our homes got a call from the commander of the New South Wales Police fraud squad, would we ignore it? You know what? I reckon that would get priority for a return phone call. I think most people would react like that. But, no, not Mr Tim Lee, the manager of Fair Work Australia. 'We'll ignore that. We'll ignore that. We'll ignore that.' So he reduced the acting commander of the fraud squad to sending an email.

After three years of this obfuscation, knowing that this was about to blow and that the coalition and the public were about to pursue this, what does Labor do? This manager of Fair Work Australia quietly gets appointed as a commissioner of Fair Work Australia to make sure that he can no longer appear before the Senate estimates committ­ee process to account for these three years of delay. That is why, just moments ago, I put a motion before this place to have Mr Lee brought before Senate estimates to explain his behaviour of the past three years. Isn't it interesting the parties that say they are always for openness and transparency, namely the Greens and the ALP, voted en bloc as their Green-Labor alliance to deny access. We had the real representative of the Labor Party, the Democratic Labor Party, and Senator Xenophon voting with us. At least the Democratic Labor Party knows how to look after Labor voters, unlike the Australian Labor Party, which is now engaged with the New South Wales Right and the Australian Greens in deliberately obfuscating, deliberately not answering questions and deliberately seeking to avoid the issues. We know what is at stake here. If you can keep the member for the Dobell on political life support, he in turn will keep the Gillard government on political life support, and everything is being done by the government to delay this and ensure that it drags out until the next election. This is a matter of great public interest and great public concern. When you have former industrial registrars saying this is highly inappropriate, when you have the Australian newspaper editorialising for a royal commission and when you have the person that laid the complaint complaining, this is a matter that needs to be taken seriously, and we in the coalition do so.