Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate censures the Assistant Minister for Health for misleading the Senate, failing to comply with an order for the production of documents, and failing to account for her actions to the Senate.

Today we saw the Assistant Minister for Health fail to comply with an order to produce a document that would support her claim to this chamber that her decision-making has not been corrupted by a conflict of interest. Her defiance of the chamber is the latest in a series of acts which warrant censure by this chamber. I say to my colleagues: the Senate needs to pass this censure motion to uphold the ministerial standards the Prime Minister has failed to enforce. I should not need to move this censure motion; the Prime Minister should have acted. But over recent weeks the Senate, the press gallery and the Australian public have been treated with contempt by an Assistant Minister for Health who has an unhealthy tendency to mislead. The minister has failed to account for her actions by answering questions and, when she has answered questions, she has demonstrated, at best, a reckless disregard for the truth.

At the heart of this matter is the failure of the Assistant Minister for Health to explain how an individual with interests in a lobbying firm with food clients came to be appointed as her chief of staff; and her failure to explain how that chief of staff came to order a government health information website to be shut down. I first asked a question about the taking down of the health star rating system website during question time on 11 February, the first sitting day of the year. Rather than providing a full and frank account of the actions taken by herself and by her office, the minister presented a completely fanciful account. She claimed that the website had been inadvertently placed, and that state and territory ministers had decided to conduct a cost-benefit analysis in a more expansive way than had previously been decided, before the voluntary star rating system would proceed. Neither of the minister's claims was true. And, having got off to this bad start, her answers to legitimate questions about this matter have only become more and more evasive, more and more misleading, and more and more untruthful. And this pattern of behaviour culminated earlier today when she failed to comply with the Senate's order to produce the letter—not just any letter, but the letter which she says sets out undertakings from her former chief of staff to address the conflict of interest in her office.

This matter goes to the heart of ministerial responsibilities in our system of government. Ministers are required to exercise their ministerial duties in a disinterested manner—that is, unaffected by bias or irrelevant considerations, including private advantage for others. Ministers are also required to demonstrate that their decisions are made with the sole objective of advancing the public interest, and to explain their actions to the parliament.

The Assistant Minister for Health's principal adviser had interests in a lobbying firm with food industry clients at the same time as he was advising her and acting for her in relation to policy matters affecting the food industry. This minister has failed to demonstrate how she was able to conduct her affairs in a disinterested manner, acting solely in the public interest, when she had a conflict of interest at the heart of her office. Despite admitting that her staff member's direct and family interests in a lobbying firm were known to her, the minister failed to take effective action to require him to divest his shareholding in the relevant businesses. The Assistant Minister for Health has failed to uphold ministerial standards, and the Prime Minister has failed to enforce compliance.

Let me take senators through the facts of the conflict of interest in Senator Nash's office. We know that Mr Furnival was engaged as her chief of staff from 19 September 2013. He was a director and a 50 per cent shareholder of Strategic Issues Management, which wholly owns a lobbying business, Australian Public Affairs. Australian Public Affairs has a number of clients in the food industry, including Mondelez, which owns Kraft; Cadbury; and the Australian Beverages Council, which represents soft drink and fruit juice manufacturers.

This is a textbook example of a conflict of interest. Yet Senator Nash denies and continues to deny that there was anything untoward here. So let me spell it out. The assistant health minister makes decisions which directly affect the commercial interests and the profits of companies in the food industry. While she was making these decisions, her most senior adviser owned a lobbying firm which profited from helping food industry clients get what they wanted out of the government. As I said, this is a textbook example of a conflict of interest. But it is not just a hypothetical example; it is a conflict of interest which has been played out in the real world. And, as we all know, on 5 February, the assistant minister decided to take down the health star rating system website, a website designed to help Australians make healthy food choices. It is an important initiative in the effort to prevent serious health conditions, such as obesity, diabetes and heart disease. Public health experts strongly supported the star rating website. It is a system that was more than two years in the making, and a project agreed to by federal, state and territory governments in December 2011. Yet all it took was one phone call to Senator Nash's office from the Australian Food and Grocery Council. The next thing that happened was the assistant minister's chief of staff instructed her department to take down the website immediately. That is a highly unusual chain of events.

Senate estimates heard evidence of the flurry of four phone calls, late in the afternoon of 5 February, from the minister's office to the department, demanding that the website be taken down. The departmental officer responsible quite properly referred the matter to a deputy secretary in the department. At the same time as the minister was ordering the website be taken down at the behest of the Food and Grocery Council, her most senior adviser had a financial interest in a lobbying firm representing confectionery and food manufacturers. This has undermined confidence in the minister, stakeholders and the wider public. In fact, Australians are entitled to ask whether her title should be changed from Assistant Minister for Health to 'Senator for Snack Foods'.

This erosion of public confidence is exactly why there is an onus on ministers to ensure that there are no real or perceived conflicts of interest in their decision-making. It is a responsibility recognised in the Prime Minister's Statement of Standards for Ministerial Staff, which requires staff members to divest themselves of any interest in companies or businesses involved in the area of their ministers' portfolio responsibilities. Under these standards, this minister should have required her chief of staff to divest himself of his interests in Strategic Issues Management. This did not happen until 13 February this year, after questions were asked in the Senate—five months after his employment with the assistant minister commenced; after she took down the website, and only after the conflict of interest was publicly exposed.

I did agree with one thing that Senator Brandis said in his speech. He said, 'Accusing someone of misleading is a serious matter.' And it is. I will take the Senate through why it is that the opposition maintains this accusation.

First mislead: during question time on 11 February, Senator Nash said:

There is no connection, whatsoever, between my chief of staff and the company Australian Public Affairs.

That is not true. It took Senator Nash six hours, on 11 February, to come into the Senate and reveal that Mr Furnival did in fact have an interest in Australian Public Affairs.

Second mislead: during question time on 13 February 2014, Senator Nash said that one of the reasons that the health star rating website was removed is that the Legislative and Governance Forum on Food Regulation:

… took a unanimous decision to have an extensive cost-benefit analysis done.

That is not true. The communique of the forum's meeting on 13 December shows that it took no such decision, unanimous or otherwise. In an attempt to justify her own unjustifiable decision the minister has pretended it was a decision of the forum.

Third mislead: in estimates last week, Senator Nash said that after she engaged Mr Furnival, he:

… resigned as a director from all the related companies.

That is not true. ASIC records show Mr Furnival continued to be a director of Strategic Issues Management until 13 February 2014.

Fourth mislead: yesterday in the Senate, Senator Nash said—and I, again, quote:

Mondelez has not been a client of APA—

that is, Australian Public Affairs—

since my former chief of staff worked for me.

Again, that is not true. Mr Furnival was engaged as the assistant minister's chief of staff on 19 September 2013. The Australian Public Affairs entry on the federal register of lobbyists listed Mondelez as a client as of 11 February this year. Australian Public Affairs also updated its entry on the Victorian register of lobbyists on Monday of this week, and that entry continues to list Mondelez as a client. So it is demonstrably untrue. And I even gave the minister the courtesy of sending her the extracts yesterday afternoon and inviting her to correct the record, which she has not done.

It is a fundamental feature of our system of government that ministers are accountable to the parliament and, through the parliament, to the Australian people. But the Assistant Minister for Health has persistently refused to account for her conduct. She has refused to outline the appointment process that resulted in the engagement of her former chief of staff. She has refused to explain her failure to uphold the government's Statement of Standards for Ministerial Staff, which require ministerial staff to divest themselves of interests in business involved in their minister's portfolio area, something which was not done. She has refused to tell the Senate when the Australian Food and Grocery Council called her office on 5 February which staffer took the call in her office. And she has today refused an order of the Senate to produce the letter setting out the actions that would be taken to address conflicts of interest between the business affairs of her former chief of staff and his ministerial staff role.

We have also seen senior members of this government give entirely inconsistent accounts of how the conflict of interest in Senator Nash's office was being dealt with. The Prime Minister has said the conflict was dealt with by requiring Senator Nash's former chief of staff to divest his shareholding in the lobbying business—that is what the Prime Minister told the House of Representatives. But the Special Minister of State, Senator Ronaldson, has conceded that the Government Staffing Committee, which is run out of the Prime Minister's office, did not require Mr Furnival to divest. Senator Nash has said she ensured there was no conflict of interest through a series of undertakings from her chief of staff. Last week she told Senate estimates that these undertakings were set out in a letter her former chief of staff submitted on his engagement. She has rested her whole defence of her conduct on her claim that she imposed undertakings to avoid the conflict of interest, and today she has refused to table the document she claims sets out those undertakings.

Senator Nash has breached the Prime Minister's statement of ministerial standards. The Prime Minister's own standards provide that ministers must ensure that official decisions 'are unaffected by bias or irrelevant consideration such as considerations of private advantage or disadvantage'. Senator Nash has breached this requirement. The Prime Minister's standards also provide that ministers must provide an 'honest and comprehensive account of their exercise of public office' in response to questions from members of parliament. Senator Nash has breached this requirement. The Prime Minister's standards provide that ministers are 'expected to be honest in the conduct of public office and take all reasonable steps to ensure that they do not mislead the public or the parliament', and Senator Nash has breached this requirement.

As I said in the debate on the suspension of standing orders, this is not about whether or not the Assistant Minister for Health is a decent person. It is not about that; it is about whether she is a decent minister. Regrettably, her behaviour as a minister falls so far short of acceptable standards that she must be censured by this Senate. This is not a step, a procedure, that this opposition takes lightly. And, as I said at the outset, I should not need to move a censure motion. The Prime Minister should have acted. He should have acted to uphold his own statement of ministerial standards. He should have acted to uphold the content of his promise to the Australian people to ensure accountability and transparency. The very first statement of his own statement of ministerial standards says:

Ministers and Parliamentary Secretaries are entrusted with the conduct of public business and must act in a manner that is consistent with the highest standards of integrity and propriety.

Yet all this Prime Minister has done is turn a blind eye to his assistant minister's conduct.

This is the very first big test of the integrity of the Abbott government and of the Prime Minister. And the Prime Minister and this government have failed this test comprehensively. The Prime Minister has shown that he is not serious about leading a government that upholds basic standards of transparency, accountability and honesty. His failure to take action against Senator Nash is part of a wider pattern in this government—a culture of secrecy, a culture of misleading the public and a culture of refusing to be accountable to the parliament and, through the parliament, to the Australian people.

In conclusion, there was a conflict of interest at the heart of the assistant health minister's office. Her chief of staff owned a lobbying firm representing food industry clients while she was making decisions affecting the commercial interests of those clients. This raises serious questions over her decision to take down the website designed to help Australians make healthy food choices. Senator Nash has breached the government's own ministerial standards. She has repeatedly made misleading statements to the parliament. She has repeatedly refused to answer legitimate questions about her conduct. She has refused to comply with an order of the Senate—an order simply requiring her to table the very document that she claims proves she ensured that there was no conflict of interest. For these reasons, the Assistant Minister for Health should be censured by this chamber and, if the Senate passes this censure motion, she should resign.