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

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answers given by the Minister for Finance (Senator Birmingham) and the Minister for Senior Australians and Aged Care Services (Senator Colbeck) to questions without notice asked by the Leader of the Opposition in the Senate (Senator Wong) and Senators Chisholm, O'Neill and Gallagher today relating to the COVID-19 pandemic and to Mr Brian Houston.

For a long time, we've known we have a Prime Minister who doesn't take responsibility, who blames others, who's full of excuses and who's addicted to secrecy and allergic to the truth. We've seen it over and over again, in car park rorts, in sports rorts and in his disappearance to Hawaii in the middle of the bushfires. Sadly, we've even seen these character flaws in relation to some of the most serious criminal allegations possible, involving sexual offences against children.

For several years it has been a matter of public record that one of the Prime Minister's closest friends, his pastor and mentor Brian Houston, has been accused of a grave crime, that of concealing evidence of child sex offences committed by his father, former pastor Frank Houston. In October 2015, the royal commission into child sexual abuse found that Brian Houston had failed to report allegations of child sexual abuse by his father and facilitated a payment to the alleged victim that he failed to disclose to the church. Despite these allegations, which are from as long ago as October 2015, the Prime Minister has showered his friend, the alleged criminal Mr Houston, with praise. Just this year, at a conference in April, the Prime Minister publicly thanked Mr Houston for his ongoing personal support. But, along the way, the Prime Minister has been his usual evasive, shifty and forked-tongued self over his intervention to have Mr Houston invited to an official event at the White House under President Trump—the same Mr Houston who has now been charged with concealing child sexual offences and who has been given a travel exemption to leave the country by Mr Morrison's government. Who can forget the Prime Minister dodging questions for months on end about his intervention for Mr Houston? The quotes, over and over, at press conferences both in the United States and in Australia—'I don't comment on gossip'; 'I don't feel the need to comment on those things'; 'I don't comment on unsourced reports'; and 'that's a matter for the White House'—even inventing national security and international relations grounds to avoid scrutiny on this legitimate topic.

In total, the Prime Minister refused to answer questions about his intervention to assist Mr Houston to attend the event at the White House 18 times. In total, the Prime Minister, his ministers and government refused to answer questions about this legitimate topic a total of 43 times. And, of course, this was all before finally, grudgingly, the Prime Minister admitted that his office had asked for Mr Houston to be invited to the event at the White House—even though he knew of the allegations against Mr Houston, which have been public for at least five years.

Why can't this Prime Minister just tell the truth? It's because he is a slippery politician who never takes responsibility and never gives straight answers. Even today, the government's discomfort with the Prime Minister was plain to see in the answers from Senator Birmingham. When asked why the Prime Minister had refused to say 18 times whether he had intervened to assist Mr Houston, Senator Birmingham responded by saying, 'I have nothing to add.' He used the national security excuse: 'Not to my knowledge.' He didn't even have an answer to when the Prime Minister last communicated with Mr Houston—that's how much Senator Birmingham knows that this topic is something the government doesn't want to talk about.

Some in the government have tried to characterise these questions, both from Labor and from the media, as an attack on the Prime Minister's religion, and nothing could be further from the truth. What it's about is the character of a prime minister who sought to invite a man accused of concealing child sexual offences to an official function at the White House. What it's about is the character of a prime minister who denied it and who dodged it and ducked it for months. What it's about is the character of a prime minister who, when finally found out, dismissed the issues involving child sexual offences as 'not that big a deal'. What it's about is a prime minister who never takes responsibility, who never gives straight answers, who blames others, who is full of excuses, who refuses to answer legitimate questions and who covers up at every opportunity—about car park rorts, about sports rorts and even about his intervention to assist a man accused of concealing child sexual offences. Australians are fast working out this Prime Minister, and they don't like what they see. (Time expired)