George Brandis (Queensland, Liberal Party, Attorney-General) Share this | Hansard source

Senator Carr, you protest too much. But, in fact, the allegation you make is against the Australian Federal Police, because what you are alleging, Senator Carr—do not scurry out of the chamber like a coward—is that the Australian Federal Police improperly executed a search warrant.

When the Australian Federal Police decide to execute a search warrant they only do so on the basis that they are satisfied that there are reasonable grounds to do so—on the basis, usually, of a complaint made to them. To suggest that the AFP have done something improper or inappropriate, as Senator Carr does, is to say that they made a decision on the basis of a misapplication of the grounds or the test for the issuance of a search warrant, and to say that is disgraceful.

Senator Carr also attacked NBN Co. As he also knows, NBN Co is an independent statutory corporation. These events occurred, incidentally, during the caretaker period of an election campaign. There is no capacity whatsoever, in particular during an election campaign, for a minister to interfere in a decision by the appropriate executives of NBN Co to make a complaint to the police that a crime may have been committed. So the attack on the integrity of NBN Co is equally specious.

Senator Carr also implied, not in the contribution we have just heard but in the question he asked of me, that the Prime Minister may have had some role in these events, to which I can tell you—and this has already been put on the public record by the Minister for Communications, Senator Fifield, the portfolio minister responsible for NBN Co—that, categorically, that is not the truth, and any suggestion or innuendo that it is the case is a lie.

Lastly, Senator Carr referred to the caretaker conventions. Might I remind you, Madam Deputy President, that when Senator Carr was last a minister in a government, the government of which he was a member—the second Rudd government—had such scant respect for the caretaker conventions that the then Attorney General, who was also, as I recall, the Special Minister of State and the Minister for the Public Service and Integrity, of all things, said that the caretaker conventions were 'a matter of political practice'. That was the regard that the then Attorney General and the government of which Senator Carr was a member had for the caretaker conventions—that they regarded them as merely 'a matter of political practice'. What Senator Carr has said, as I said a moment ago, is a despicable smear on the Australian Federal Police and on other innocent Australians.