James Paterson (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

What a compelling piece of evidence was just presented to the Senate by Senator Collins! SBS Comedy thinks that this is a matter of seriousness and one worthy of attention. Well, there we have it. I think in the legal business this is what you call a 'resting your case', Senator Collins, and I am sure that the jury will go away and consider very seriously your compelling arguments!

Here we go again: Labor senators are deciding to finish the year in much the same way that they have conducted themselves throughout it, and that is pursuing an attack of personal smear and innuendo and criticism of Senator Brandis instead of pursuing matters of great weighty policy that are of concern to the Australian people. In every question in question time yesterday, in every question in question time today, in the take note after question time yesterday, in the take note after question time today, in the MPI yesterday and again in the MPI today we were advised that Labor senators want to spend hours and hours of the Senate's time on this issue on which they have no evidence to support their claims. This is not what the Australian people sent us here to do. This is not what they expect we do here on their behalf. They expect us to think about, to discuss, to debate, to even argue about the things that affect their lives and about the things that have a tangible impact on the way they live their lives—the great policy issues of today. They do not expect us to agree and they do not expect us to get along, but they do expect us to focus on the things that actually matter to them. We have heard in other debates that if something does not stop them at a barbecue then it should not be dealt with. Well, I would be very surprised if there is a barbecue anywhere in Australia that has been stopped to discuss this issue.

I have a prediction to make and that is that this attack will peter out just like the previous attack along these lines has petered out. There will be nothing to show of it after hours of the Senate's time has been wasted. The most famous resident of Higgins, the member for Isaacs, Mr Dreyfus, has gone off half-cocked yet again. He has prematurely called for the resignation of Senator Brandis. Barely waiting for the ink to dry on the newspaper reports in The West Australian, barely waiting for any evidence at all, he has leapt to the most extreme conclusion and the most outrageous option and called for the resignation of Senator Brandis.

Not coming from Western Australia and also being a young person not intimately familiar with the WA Inc era, I found it very interesting to listen to some of the history of this issue that we have heard on this debate in the chamber.

I commend Senator Brandis for his very detailed and lengthy statement. I particularly want to draw the attention of senators to the introduction he made to that statement, because I think the history of this issue is illustrative. He said:

Between 1991 and 1993 – a quarter of a century ago – members of the Bell Group of companies, a diversified conglomerate based in Western Australia, went into liquidation. That liquidation is still ongoing, and nowhere near being completed. It is the most complicated and costly corporate winding-up in Australian history. So far, it has involved some 30 separate legal proceedings, in four countries. In Australia, it has involved complex proceedings in the High Court, the Federal Court and the Supreme Court of Western Australia. The hearing of the main case alone, in the Supreme Court of Western Australia, lasted for 404 days and resulted in a judgment by Justice Owen running to 2,643-pages. There is no reliable figure as to the costs so far incurred in the winding-up, in professional fees paid to insolvency practitioners, solicitors, barristers and others. However everybody agrees that the costs so far are in the order of hundreds of millions of dollars. And, of course, every dollar spent on professional fees and other costs, is a dollar that the creditors will never see.

There are many other interesting things in Senator Brandis's statement, which I commend to the Senate. But I also want to highlight very briefly in my remaining time the contribution of another Senate colleague of mine, Senator Back, who also went to the history of this issue. He has foreshadowed that, helpfully, he will be returning to this issue, given that it is going to be a topic of the MPI later on today. I look forward to hearing what he has to say, because he lent some very interesting perspective to this issue as someone who lived in Western Australia in that time.

I commend particularly the comments he made about the government that was in charge at the time of the Bell Group liquidation, about the events leading up to that liquidation, about the involvement of Mr Brian Burke and his government in that liquidation and about the very exorbitant costs that the people of Western Australia have had to bear as a result of the handling of it by Mr Burke and by members of his government. I look forward to his contribution later, although I also hope that at some point the Senate will move on from these matters to more weighty ones.