Larissa Waters (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I seek leave to make a statement of three minutes.

Leave granted.

Senator Wong has just outlined the facts of this situation very well. This is exactly why the Greens moved for an explanation from Minister Cormann, which was given on Tuesday. It was a very unsatisfactory explanation; it simply said that Minister Taylor had disclosed that he had some interest in a company that he tried to claim was completely unrelated to another company. Long story short, this minister is trying to get out of complying with the law that everybody else has to comply with. He's doing so by virtue of being a cabinet minister, and phoning his friend—the Treasurer, who was the then environment minister—to try to get special treatment.

We moved for an inquiry into this gross breach of ministerial standards. We weren't going to get support for that, for reasons that I will go into soon, so the Labor Party moved for their own inquiry. We don't care whose inquiry gets up; this needs to be investigated. Sadly, what's now happened is that we see the crossbench are saying they don't want to support either inquiry. Why not? Why are Centre Alliance and One Nation running a protection racket for this government and this cabinet? What are they getting out of this? Our understanding was there was some support for perhaps one or even both of these inquiries. That's now changed, and we want to know why. There is some very serious conduct—we think it's corrupt; it's certainly a breach of the ministerial standards—that, now, the crossbench might be turning a blind eye to, presumably because this government has pressured them not to back this inquiry. We know that there were arrangements made to support the tax cuts and to perhaps investigate some gas arrangements. That's Minister Taylor's patch. What is Minister Taylor now doing? What is he threatening the crossbench—Centre Alliance and One Nation—with? What has he offered in order that they don't vote for this investigation into Minister Taylor's own potentially dodgy conduct?

What is our job here, as senators, and what is our job as a crossbench? The Greens want to look into this flagrant corruption. As I said, we don't mind if it's our inquiry or Labor's inquiry. We'll vote for both of them. Ours is on for a vote on Monday as well, folks, and we'll be seeking support for that. But I have not yet heard a decent reason why we shouldn't look into this issue.