Doug Cameron (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Human Services) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answers given by the Minister for Regional Development (Senator Nash) and the Attorney-General (Senator Brandis) to questions without notice asked by Senators Watt and Chisholm today relating to the award of contracts to Newlands Civil Construction.

This is a very serious issue, and I don't think this issue has been given the due diligence from the Attorney-General in relation to how serious this is. The Attorney-General has dismissed this on a couple of occasions now, and this goes to the very serious issue of whether Senator O'Sullivan has a direct or indirect interest in a range of Commonwealth funded projects that are jointly funded by the state and the Commonwealth.

Senator O'Sullivan denied to AAP that he either directly or indirectly holds a pecuniary interest in any agreement with the Public Service of the Commonwealth. This is not about an agreement with the Public Service of the Commonwealth; this is about a direct or indirect pecuniary interest. After the questions were asked of Senator O'Sullivan, Senator O'Sullivan updated his pecuniary interests in this area on 16 June 2017, and it says under O'Sullivan and Sons Pty Ltd, 'remove its subsidiary Newlands Civil Construction Pty Ltd'. This was done on 16 June 2017.

Newlands Civil Construction has been subcontracted to work on an 80 per cent federally funded government project which is worth about $2.5 million. Senator O'Sullivan went on to say, importantly, that a review by Newlands Civil Construction has proven that it does not hold any agreement with any company or any entity that has an agreement with the Public Service of the Commonwealth. So what we are expected to do, as Senator Brandis has done, is accept that Barry Jr, the son of Senator O'Sullivan, who is now the managing director of Newlands, says, 'There's nothing to see here; nothing to see here.' This is a company whose managing director, between 1991 and 2013, was Senator O'Sullivan.