Christopher Back (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

The fact that Senator Watt spent a third of his time attacking Senator Macdonald is simply an indication that he knew very well he had nothing to say. This whole situation has been based around rumour and innuendo. Before Senator Dastyari goes, I have always thought innuendo was an Italian suppository, and that is where this richly deserves to be. Let us remember what the Bell issue was all about. Bell was about the lowest form of rotten corruption visited upon the state Western Australia by the then Labor Burke government. It was a government that was rotten to the core. It was a government that tried to jump into bed totally as a result of incompetence. Senator Gallagher raised the point about corruption between the state and the federal government. I pointed out in this place that there was such corruption—it involved the government of Mr Hawke and was occasioned by a meeting in Mr Burke's office between Mr Hawke, Mr Burke, Mr Alan Bond, Mr Laurie Connell and others. What were they trying to do? In receipt of the substance of money to the Western Australian Labor Party, they were trying to influence Mr Hawke into not charging royalties on gold in this country.

The Bell situation was probably the worst corporate case in Australia's history, and it was all to do with the corruption of the Burke Labor government. Why this federal opposition wants to raise all this is absolutely and utterly beyond me. We all know that the correspondence from the Western Australian government to the federal government, following legislation that was unanimously passed in WA, indicated that the first creditor should be the federal government of Australia—despite the fact that the federal government and other creditors put not one penny into the billions of dollars of litigation, all of which was funded by the Western Australian taxpayer. But the correspondence from the Western Australian government of the time to the Treasurer of Australia was to say that the first creditor would be the Australian government. At no time did Attorney-General Brandis ever involve himself in the process that found its way to the High Court of Australia. For Senator Watt to say so belies his credibility as a lawyer rather than as a senator. (Time expired)

Debate adjourned.