Jane Hume (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

It must be close to Christmas, because there is pantomime being performed by those opposite. And as with all Christmas pantomimes, there are colourful characters—like Senator Sterle—cringe-worthy overacting, finger-pointing, confected outrage and audience attention seeking, and no more so than today. Today the opposition has once again, in a week in which important business of government is actually being done, staged a second-rate sideshow on an issue that is as irrelevant as it is opportunistic. The issue of this imagined arrangement between the Commonwealth and the Western Australian government in the Bell Group liquidation is just that: it is a sideshow, it is a witch-hunt and it is aimed squarely at a senator who clearly gets under the skin of the opposition.

The Attorney-General, Senator Brandis, made a comprehensive statement on the Bell Group issue yesterday, and Senator Wong promised that the ALP would carefully consider the Attorney-General's statement. Well, it is painfully apparent that they have not done so. Senator Brandis told this chamber yesterday that there was never an arrangement between the federal government and Western Australia over how to bring the long-running legal dispute to a close or how to carve up $1.8 billion in disputed proceeds. The Bell Group litigation is infamous for its length and its costs. It is the most complex and costly corporate winding up in Australian history. So far it has involved some 30 separate legal proceedings in four countries as well as proceedings in Australia, in the High Court, the Federal Court and the Supreme Court of Western Australia.

As he unambiguously explained to this chamber, the Attorney-General accepted the legal advice of former Solicitor-General Justin Gleeson that the Commonwealth should challenge the Western Australian government over its wind-up of the Bell Group. Every decision that the Attorney-General made on the matter did protect the interests of the Commonwealth, by supporting the decision of the ATO to intervene in the matter and deciding to accept Mr Gleeson's advice that the Commonwealth of Australia should also intervene in the matter. There was never an agreement between the Attorney-General and his WA Counterpart, Mr Mischin, which was acknowledged.