Jenny McAllister (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Like a TV sitcom that has gone on for far too long, Senator Brandis keeps coming up with storylines that are barely credible. This government has now jumped the shark. It is not credible, for example, that there was no arrangement between the Western Australian government and the Commonwealth government. It flies in the face of the voices in the Western Australian government that were quoted in The West Australian newspaper over the weekend. What did we hear from Mike Nahan? He believed he had won Commonwealth support for the Western Australian legislation in a verbal and written agreement. That is what the paper on the weekend quoted him as saying. Those are the facts that are on the table. I have not heard anyone repudiate that that was the belief of the Western Australian government.

It seems awfully convenient that the only person who could possibly have been a party to this agreement is the former Treasurer, who happens to be in the United States. It is very convenient. Mr Hockey was the one who did it all apparently, if we are to believe the statements made this morning, but he is not here to defend himself. The Minister for Finance was asked questions about this in question time and he claimed he was unaware of this agreement. I find those claims extraordinary. We have become quite used to seeing the Attorney-General play the pedant but we had the unedifying sight this afternoon of the finance minister forced to split hairs about the definition of an 'arrangement' to cover for the incompetence of 'Calamity' George.

He keeps pointing to the evidence that is on the record rather than commenting on what actually happened. These are not the same things. The letters that have been tabled in this place are not the extent of the arrangement if we are to believe the evidence of the Liberal Party in Western Australia. What did Colin Barnett say? What was he quoted in the paper last weekend as saying? He said:

We always knew it was a fairly high-risk strategy, but we needed to have a go and we were relying on the Federal Government to be supportive, which they were, but then the ATO went their own way …

Those are the facts that need to be addressed, not the facts laid out in a letter drafted in appropriate language to cover the situation by members of the government. What needs to be addressed are the claims that have been put on record in The West Australian by some very good investigative journalists doing their job.

I come back to the finance minister. There are really only two options for Senator Cormann: either he was involved in this tricky plan cooked up by members of the government or—and this is perhaps even more extraordinary—he was left out of the loop on a decision that was worth $300 million to the Commonwealth budget. So the evidence this afternoon from the finance minister that he knew nothing about it or indeed that there was no arrangement at all does not stand up. It does not stand up because there are facts other than the letters that have been tabled here that suggest that there was an arrangement. There most certainly was an arrangement between members of this government and members of the Western Australian government. What remains to be examined is: who was aware of it and who was involved? These are questions that members in this place have refused to answer during the time allocated to questions.

The Attorney-General has also continued to refuse to answer basic questions. The address this morning raises many more issues than it settles. I note the Attorney-General's attempts in question time this afternoon to draw a very careful distinction between instruction and direction. I am sure it suits the Attorney to talk about instruction rather than direction because instruction is a narrow process provided from a client to counsel. The Attorney is able, as I understand it, to say that, because the client in this case was the ATO and because the Solicitor-General was the counsel, then there was no logical way that the Attorney-General could have instructed the Solicitor-General to do anything. However, that is not what the questioning was about. The questioning was in fact about what the Attorney asked the Solicitor-General to do, what other members of the government asked the Solicitor-General to do and what other members of the government asked the Attorney-General to ask the Solicitor-General to do. We want to understand what it is that took place in trying to direct individuals in the conduct of this case before the High Court. These questions are all outstanding and they need to be answered in this chamber.

Question agreed to.