Alex Gallacher (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I too rise to take note of answers to Senator Cameron's question and to put some more contemporary facts on the table. I accept that the coalition is attempting to say that this was all so long ago that it's not relevant and it doesn't matter. But I think it's entirely superficial to say that what happened in those times is no longer relevant. If you go to the record of the parliament, you will find that the Select Committee on the Recent Allegations relating to Conditions and Circumstances at the Regional Processing Centre in Nauru found a glaring example of the lack of governance and due diligence of this particular minister.

The Leader of the Government in the Senate, sitting at the table today, was the only person, as the Minister for Finance, who was able to grant an expediency motion to the department of immigration to authorise the expenditure outside the public works committee of this parliament. That never, ever happened. There was no expediency motion through the House of Representatives. There was an incredible amount of expenditure in Nauru which did not go through the proper probity and governance of the parliament. Minister Morrison walked straight around the oldest standing committee of the parliament. And, when the department was asked about it, they conflated this view that 'it's aid to a foreign country and we don't have to refer it'. That was a subterfuge; that was not correct. If that is correct, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade do not have to notify when they're building a new embassy in Nairobi, in Jakarta or in Bangkok, and we know that they do all of those things.

Minister Morrison spent, over a period of his early ministership, $1.3 billion in Nauru. Four hundred and fifty million dollars was spent in 10 months; $2,000 was spent per day per asylum seeker; $1.3 million was spent a day; and $610,000 per asylum seeker was spent to live in a mouldy tent. No, I take that back—it was a marquee. But, after 402 days, it was a mouldy tent. If that expenditure of $36 million to build those mouldy tents had gone through the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Public Works, proper probity and scrutiny would have probably ensured that that wasn't a really good idea—to take people in the tropics, akin to Darwin, and stick them for 402 days in a mouldy tent at the cost of $36 million. It's detrimental to their health and detrimental to the people who are looking after them in that area. It was really poor governance and due diligence.

It doesn't stop there. They went and spent hand over fist, citing urgency and citing expediency but not following the due diligence for probity of parliament. None of it went through the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Public Works. The government response to that Senate select committee was, 'The department provided a response to the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Public Works on 14 August 2015.' That was a letter saying, 'We've got this legal advice that we don't have to come your way.' The next part is, 'The department will continue to ensure that future public works in the Republic of Nauru are referred.' So there's a clear example of this person purporting to be an exemplar of due diligence—an exemplar of public probity and governance hasn't got clean hands.

In the earlier parliament—the first parliament when they came in—they had a clear example from the Gillard-Rudd government where an expediency motion granted by the finance minister passed through the House of Representatives, and there was feedback to the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Public Works on progress. They didn't do any of that. It is as simple as this: they didn't realise that, because the old parliament had lapsed, they had to do the process again. So, in the process they were supposed to do in their rush to do whatever, they didn't follow due process. That relates directly back to Prime Minister Morrison. It's never been rebutted in this place. This speech is in the Hansard. It was never rebutted by the finance minister. It was never rebutted by any of those on the other side. It stands to be true.