Murray Watt (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you, Madam Deputy President—I am certainly someone who respects their elders, and I was only following the lead of Senator Macdonald in the way that I referred to other senators in this chamber. I am sorry the Attorney-General took offence at that.

What we saw in the Attorney-General's statement earlier today was an unbelievable act of throwing former Treasurer Joe Hockey under the bus. The Attorney-General did it not once, not twice, not three times—he did it 19 times over the course of half an hour. The name 'Hockey' was mentioned on average about once every 60 seconds, in a desperate attempt by the Attorney-General to distance himself and others serving ministers of this government from this terrible scandal. Not only has Senator Brandis thrown a former trusted colleague under the bus, but we then, in one of the last questions of question time, also had Senator Cormann, a Western Australian senator and the Minister for Finance, who must have known about this deal, desperately trying to distance himself from this deal. Not content with throwing Joe Hockey under the bus, Senator Cormann decided to throw his Western Australian Liberal colleague Mike Nahan, the Treasurer, under the bus.

Mike Nahan has previously been on the record in the Western Australian parliament saying that the Assistant Treasurer, Kelly O'Dwyer, gave direction or advice to the Australian Taxation Office. Unfortunately, he was interrupted midway through that answer, but it was very clear that he was talking about Ms O'Dwyer giving direction or advice to the ATO to not get involved in this legal action, and that the ATO acted 'contrary to that direction or advice'. The finance minister, Senator Cormann, was quite happy to throw Mike Nahan under the bus, and it will be very interesting to see what Mike Nahan has to say about that. You would wonder why a Western Australian Treasurer would be willing to go on the record and say what arrangements existed between the Assistant Treasurer and the ATO. Now we have Senator Cormann saying, effectively, that Mike Nahan made that up. I would be very interested to hear from Mike Nahan about what actually happened and what discussions actually occurred between ministers in this government and statutory agencies, because it is very clear that we are not going to get answers from the senators and ministers who appear in this chamber.

The other thing that has been very notable over the course of the debate on this matter today is the enthusiasm that Western Australian senators have for jumping up and defending this deal. This demonstrates, so obviously, that this deal was about an arrangement to try to overcome the ongoing complaints that Western Australia has about GST distribution. We have had Western Australian senator after Western Australian senator get to their feet and defend this deal as recognising the fact that—in their minds—Western Australia gets a bad deal through GST distribution, and this was a way of rectifying that. As a senator from Queensland, I would be very interested in knowing what kind of arrangements are being made with the Queensland government to recognise its GST needs. What arrangements are being made with New South Wales, with Tasmania, with South Australia—or is it only Western Australia that gets a special deal from the—