Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern and Remote Australia) Share this | Hansard source

I return to the point I was making. Senator Carr's answers today showed lack of courage in any response to the questions asked of him. He took the easy way out of saying they were not related to him when, quite clearly, the question was how Senator Carr can lecture other countries about lack of corruption when it is suggested that he presided over a state government which is now being demonstrated to have been very, very corrupt.

I might take this opportunity while I have the floor on this issue to remind people who might be listening that while my name is Ian Macdonald and while I was some years ago a minister in the federal government, I am not the minister Ian Macdonald currently being referred to in the ICAC inquiry. Some of the allegations coming out in the ICAC inquiry—and I acknowledge that so far no-one has been convicted of anything—are such that I think the most uneducated observer would have to be concerned at the relationship between my namesake Mr Ian Macdonald, then the minister for mines, and Mr Eddie Obeid, whose family ended up with quite lucrative pieces of land following some decisions by my namesake Mr Macdonald on coal leases.

Why the question was asked of Senator Carr today was that the people who are featuring prominently in the ICAC inquiry were all ministers who were there when Senator Carr was the Premier of that state and the leader of the Labor Party. It was Senator Carr who promoted people like Mr Obeid and my namesake Mr Macdonald. I have to say that I met my namesake Ian Macdonald once or twice and he seemed to me to be quite a nice guy. I have to say also that I thought that about Bob Collins when he was a senator in this place and I thought that about Mr Gordon Nuttall, who I had a couple of dealings with when we were both ministers, I federally and he in the Queensland government.