Murray Watt (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Northern Australia) Share this | Hansard source

I also rise to make a few remarks in this debate. At the outset, the point to be made is this: ask any average person in the street in Australia and they will agree that the actions of Mr Pyne—I'll focus my remarks on Mr Pyne due to time constraints—are a clear breach of this government's ministerial standards. I remarked before that Mr Pyne used to parade around this place in his long period in parliament describing himself as a 'fixer'. He was a fixer; he would get things fixed. Well, I think there's no doubt that Mr Pyne has very much fixed himself a very good little earner for his life post politics and it's not the kind of fix that the Australian public want to see.

I've just had a look at the letter from Mr Parkinson, secretary of Prime Minister and Cabinet, who was asked to review this situation by the Prime Minister. I've never met Mr Parkinson, but, from everyone I've ever spoken to who has met him, he's a highly respected public servant. I have no quibble with him, but I do have to take issue with the findings of his review, because, as I say, I think they fall a long way short of what most Australians would expect of their former politicians.

So what this all concerns is the government's Statement of Ministerial Standards. The particular clause that is relevant is clause 2.25 of those standards. Essentially, that clause requires two things of former ministers of this parliament and of the government. This is the first:

… for an eighteen month period after ceasing to be a Minister, they will not lobby, advocate or have business meetings with members of the government, parliament, public service or defence force on any matters on which they have had official dealings as Minister in their last eighteen months in office.

The second restriction imposed on former ministers by clause 2.25 is this:

Ministers are also required to undertake that, on leaving office, they will not take personal advantage of information to which they have had access as a Minister, where that information is not generally available to the public.

Now, I've got no reason to believe that Mr Pyne has already breached the first part of that clause, or indeed that he ever will. I take Mr Pyne at face value when he says that he will not 'lobby, advocate or have business dealings with members of the government, parliament, Public Service or Defence Force on matters with which he has had official dealings'. I would hope that Mr Pyne is not silly enough to commit such a flagrant breach of these standards by going and having those types of meetings in breach of the standard. But I don't think there can be any doubt that for a minister to take up an appointment, as Mr Pyne has done so soon after he has finished as a minister—I don't see any way Mr Pyne can arrange his affairs so that he won't end up breaching the second part of clause 2.25, which requires him to 'not take personal advantage of information' to which he has had access as a minister 'where that information is not generally available to the public'.

Mr Pyne's own statement on this matter talks about his very long history in parliament, his long history as a minister, his knowledge of politics, his knowledge that he has acquired over that period of time. I simply do not believe it is possible to just park all that knowledge—that 'information to which they have had access as a minister', which is the wording in the standards. It defies belief that you can just park, somewhere, all of that information that you have acquired as a minister and not have that in your head as you're undertaking meetings with a future employer on matters that are relevant to your former portfolio.

I will go through what Mr Pyne has said in his own media statement. He said:

I know my responsibilities under the Code and I will abide by them.

Well, thanks very much! We know how much we can trust this government to follow through on its promises. Here we've got a former minister saying it's all okay; he knows what he's got to do and he's going to abide by that. It's an open-and-shut case. As we used to say in Queensland about Joh Bjelke-Petersen, 'Don't you worry about that.' Well, I'm sorry, but I do worry about that, and I think most Australians do as well. Mr Pyne goes on to say:

I have not taken personal advantage of information I received as a Minister in the Defence portfolio that is not otherwise publicly available.

Okay, let's give him the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps he has not done so at this point in time. He goes on to say:

The providing of occasional high-level strategic advice does not require … using any information a former Minister may have learnt as a Minister that is not generally available to the public.

This seems to be the crux of Mr Pyne's argument as to why he is not and will not be in breach of the Statement of Ministerial Standards. What he's arguing is that the role that he has taken on in his post-political career will only involve providing occasional high-level strategic advice about matters related to his former portfolio, but that that won't use any of the information that he acquired in his official capacity. He says, 'For example, in the Defence portfolio,' and lists all these public documents that are out there, like the defence white paper and the Defence industry policy statement. There are the sorts of things that are freely available to the public, so the only information that he's going to make use of in providing high-level strategic advice is already on the public record. He says:

Giving advice about those policies does not require using information that a former minister has learnt that is not generally available to the public.

My question is: if all that EY or any prospective employer of Mr Pyne is going to get out of employing Mr Pyne is that he's going to walk into their office with a whole series of public reports that anyone can download off the internet, why would they bother employing him? I don't know how much he is getting paid. It's probably a lot of money. Why not save yourself the cost of engaging Mr Pyne and print out a copy of every one of those documents he's talking about? Some of those are big documents. They might cost $10 each to print out a copy of. That would be a whole lot cheaper than engaging Mr Pyne. Are we really expected to believe that Mr Pyne has not been engaged because of what he knows that lies behind those documents? If all EY or any other prospective employer of Mr Pyne wanted to do was to take advantage of information on the public record, they'd just go and do that. They don't need Mr Pyne or anyone else in order to do that. What employers are looking for is the information behind those public documents, the kind of information that is held by a former minister such as Mr Pyne. Mr Pyne's media statement is intended to assure us. He says:

I intend to ensure that anyone I provide advice to has rigorous processes and procedures in place to ensure I am not put in a position where the ministerial code of conduct might be breached.

We don't know what any of these processes that he's going to put in place are. Again, as Senator Keneally said before, Mr Pyne's argument simply comes down to two words. They are: 'Trust me.' He's saying: 'I know the code. I'm not going to breach the code. I won't have a meeting with someone I shouldn't. I'm not going to use information that I've got. I will park that over there and never touch it, never make use of it. I will practically forget it before I take on my role.'

That is just absurd. No-one believes that. No-one believes that that's what's required under the Statement of Ministerial Standards. That's why the public have reacted so badly to yet another example of a former minister of this government going off to line their pockets in the private sector armed with information that they acquired in their official capacity.

This is obviously an issue for Mr Pyne and his failure to comply with the ministerial standards. But, beyond Mr Pyne, it's also very directly an issue for the Prime Minister, Mr Morrison. It's very disappointing that, so soon after the election when the government was returned, we see the Prime Minister fail the integrity test at the very first hurdle. We've all seen the comments from Mr Morrison, the Prime Minister, since he won the election about how he was going to do politics differently. He was going to dial down the volume of politics. He has been promising us a new government. Don't look at all the rabble that we have had over the last six years, with two different Prime Ministers, a couple of different Deputy Prime Ministers and all sorts of knifings and assassinations. Don't worry about all that—everything is new under this Prime Minister.

I have to say that Mr Morrison might be promising a brand-new government, but what we're already seeing in this instance are the same old dodgy standards from this tired Liberal-National government that utterly lacks integrity. It doesn't take you long to think of examples from the last term of office where we saw ministers of this government fail the integrity test. We had Peter Dutton and the au pairs. We had numerous directors appointed by the Minister for Resources and Northern Australia, Senator Canavan, to the Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility, and those directors had massive conflicts of interest and in some cases were LNP donors, members or supporters being appointed to bodies that were going to be doling out millions of dollars to projects from which they could potentially benefit themselves.

We've had all sorts of jobs-for-mates scandals, and Senator Keneally listed many of those. I don't think she got to the dozens of appointments to the AAT that have been made by this government, of former staffers, former members of parliaments, mates, people they met in the pub, people they met down the street. That seems to be the test for being appointed to the AAT by this government. We had Senator O'Sullivan, who sat in here, chairing estimates committees and asking questions of public servants about projects that he and his family businesses had direct financial stakes in. That's carried over into this term with the matters involving Mr Taylor, the energy minister, over having meetings with departmental officials regarding projects in which he and his family have personal interests as well.

In just the last three years we saw numerous examples where ministers in this government clearly had no regard for matters of integrity and couldn't separate their personal interests from their official interests. Within weeks of being re-elected, we've got another example where Mr Morrison is prepared to turn a blind eye to an absolutely clear breach of his own ministerial standards by one of his former ministers. Mr Morrison has been talking a lot. He's been out there lecturing all sorts of people about the need to restore the community's trust. He gave a speech to a business conference last year where he lectured businesses about the need for business to restore the community's trust, and that is something that needs to occur. He was out there lecturing Cricket Australia about the need to restore trust after the ball-tampering scandal and various other things that that sport was involved in. Again, he was right on that point. But what you won't see him do is lecture his own ministers or his own former ministers about the way—and the need—to restore trust in politics.

All of us who are involved in politics know that trust in politics in Australia is at an all-time low. Cynicism about politics could not be higher in Australia, and it's exactly because of matters like that involving Mr Pyne that trust is so low. This kind of thing, where you've got a minister who takes up an appointment related to his former portfolio within weeks of leaving parliament, is exactly what Australians hate about politics. And here it is happening again under a government which has consistently failed to meet the integrity test.

Mr Morrison also likes to talk a lot about the Canberra bubble, and how all the rest of us need to get out of the Canberra bubble and realise that the things we're obsessed with aren't what the average Australian cares about. I have to say that, by saying Mr Pyne has a clean bill of health, Mr Morrison has demonstrated that he, more than anyone, is stuck in the Canberra bubble. Just leave this chamber, just leave this building, and you will find that every single Australian you speak to says that what Mr Pyne has done here is inappropriate and is in clear breach of the ministerial standards. For Mr Morrison to deny that demonstrates that he, more than anyone, is stuck in the Canberra bubble.

If you don't want to believe me, if you think that I'm just having a bit of a political attack on Mr Morrison, just listen to some of the comments that have been made by some of the current serving Liberal and National Party members of parliament regarding this matter. We've had Senator Abetz—I think he is now the father of the Senate; he's the longest serving senator, if I'm right, from either party, and he knows a bit about ministerial standards as a former minister himself—on the public record in relation to Mr Pyne saying, 'There is an issue here; I acknowledge and accept that.' So this isn't just me as a member of the opposition saying that Mr Pyne has done the wrong thing and that Mr Morrison should take action. Senator Abetz has said it. Mr Pasin, one of the Liberal members of parliament for South Australia, has said that Mr Pyne's post-politics role doesn't meet the pub test:

Ultimately this a question of personal judgment - ministers who leave this place, who have been given the great privilege of those offices within the executive, should think seriously about whether decisions they make once they leave are in the spirit of the code or not. It doesn't reflect well on the political class.

So, again, it is not just me saying there's a problem here—that Mr Pyne has failed to meet the standards and that Mr Morrison has turned a blind eye; at least two members of his own government are saying the same thing.

I suppose what this also says, when we've got government backbenchers out there making these kinds of comments, is that all the division we saw within this government over the last three years is just simmering below the surface. It doesn't take a lot to get Senator Eric Abetz out there, criticising more moderate members of the Liberal Party. He took the first opportunity he could in coming and having a swing at Mr Pyne, and Mr Pasin wasn't far behind him. So I predict that, just as we saw a lack of integrity from this government and constant division within this government in the last term, we're going to be seeing it again. And it's on full display so early in the term, in the case of Mr Pyne.