Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I regret to say that there is barely a skerrick of truth in what you have just heard from the chairman of this committee, and I have to say that even speaking on this report—if I could call it that—is an embarrassment to me. The report itself—the whole inquiry—is an embarrassment to the Senate. It diminishes the Senate that taxpayer's money has been spent in pursuing this political fascination that the Labor Party have with the Attorney-General. There have been a series of inquiries, instituted by this committee, solely for the purpose of trying to get a 'gotcha moment' on the Attorney-General. We went through that Solicitor-General inquiry—a complete and abject waste of money. Not one skerrick of evidence that the Attorney-General had done anything wrong came forward in that report. Similarly, with this inquiry, not a skerrick of evidence has come forward that suggests any wrongdoing by the Commonwealth government—the federal government—or, I suspect, the then Western Australian government. Other speakers will go into the background of the Bell issue. Suffice it for me to say that it all arose from corruption in the Labor government in Western Australia aeons ago, in the time of—what was the Premier's name?