Kim Carr (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister Assisting the Leader for Science) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Attorney General (Senator Brandis) to a question without notice asked by Senator Carr today relating to the report of the Standing Committee of Privileges, Search warrants and the Senate.

The exercise of the search warrants, which was the subject of the Privileges Committee report that was tabled yesterday found that the AFP raids into the office of former Senator Conroy and a staff member's home during last year's election campaign were an improper interference in the work of the parliament. The report also found that Senator Conroy had rightly claimed that photographs seized during the raids were in fact privileged, and the committee accepts that the documents may have been responsible for two NBN employees being sacked.

Now this is a circumstance where, during an election campaign and following the advice of the NBN to the minister responsible—who claims, of course, that he never spoke to the Prime Minister about this matter—the Prime Minister, we will all recall, on the night of the election said how outraged he was that the Labor Party had launched a campaign and that he was going to refer the matter to the police. Do you recall that on election night? The Prime Minister was seeking to involve the police in the political events of that election campaign where, during that election campaign, there were in fact raids undertaken against the Labor Party because of the exposure of the activities of this government with regard to the operations of the NBN.

We had a circumstance where the NBN itself acknowledged that at least one of two people who were subsequently removed from the NBN were not the subject of inquiry until that raid had actually occurred. That person confirmed to the committee that they had not previously been under investigation.

Of course the committee found that the AFP's actions were not a contempt of the parliament, because there is an extremely high bar set. You have to demonstrate in these circumstances that a person, who is accused of contempt, has the intention to actually undertake that contempt. That does not diminish the gravity of these issues. It does not for a moment diminish just how serious this question is.

We have heard today from the Attorney-General, the first law officer of the land, that this government intends to do nothing about this question; it has done nothing whatsoever about the question. It does not let the NBN off the hook in any way. It is extraordinary that, on the ABC this morning when we woke up, we heard broadcast that the NBN intended to prosecute their case against the whistleblowers despite the findings of the Privileges Committee report. What does the government have to say on this matter? Nothing. It does not see it as its responsibility to protect the privileges of this parliament. It sees it as nothing to do with it whatsoever.

What we do know is that the Prime Minister has his concerns about the opposition's attitude when his actions taken as Minister for Communications exposed a failure of this government. But that does not excuse the NBN Co's behaviour and, in particular, the chairman of the NBN, Dr Ziggy Switkowski. He is a man I have worked with closely and for whom I have a high regard. The very fact that he has had such a distinguished public service career—not only as the chair of the NBN Co but as chancellor of the RMIT, as head of ANSTO and a whole series of other responsibilities—demonstrates to me that he actually does know better. What he did during the election campaign was publish an article actually arguing in defence of these raids, which the secretary of the PM&C department subsequently said was a clear and unequivocal breach of the caretaker conventions of this country. It was a breach that was also undertaken by the department of communications, which had a draft of that article given to it by Dr Switkowski. It did nothing about that either.

We have a circumstance where staff members of Senator Conroy, as he then was, were read their rights and told that they were suspects—in the normal course of their work as staff members of a member of parliament. It is quite an extraordinary proposition that we have a circumstance where this government seeks, by their negligence, to allow this behaviour to go on. (Time expired)