Rex Patrick (SA, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on this matter of public importance, and I will take an approach slightly different to that of others. I just want to go to the letter to Senator Gallagher from Dr Brendan Murphy. In refusing to provide information to the Senate in relation to this, he writes:

The Australian government maintains the view that deliberations of National Cabinet should remain confidential. This includes information received by the National Cabinet. This is consistent with longstanding practice on Cabinet confidentiality.

That is an offensive comment provided to the Senate by Dr Brendan Murphy, who is trimming his political sails, because we know that this matter has been to the AAT and before Justice White. We know that national cabinet is, in fact, not a committee of the federal cabinet. Why is the executive government now taking the position that, even though a judicial officer, a justice of the Federal Court, has made a determination about the statutory meaning of the cabinet, somehow the Prime Minister can simply ignore that? Somehow the Prime Minister arrogantly pursues his quest for secrecy, and he ropes in Dr Brendan Murphy. I say to Dr Murphy, if he is listening, that that is a disgraceful position to take in terms of understanding the way our Constitution works, the way the separation of powers works and the way the roles of each of the different elements of our government—the executive, the parliament and the judiciary—work.

There's been a judicial determination as to what is a committee of the cabinet, and it is not the national cabinet, which doesn't have the necessary characteristics. Firstly, it is not a committee of the federal cabinet because it was established by COAG, not the federal cabinet. Secondly, its membership is not made up of members of the federal cabinet. Its members are actually the Prime Minister and the first ministers of each of the jurisdictions. It doesn't have collective responsibility or cabinet solidarity, because it can't, because the premiers and chief ministers of each of the different states and territories have a legal obligation to have allegiance only to their state or territory, and that was found by Justice White. A key principle of the cabinet is that, in a responsible system of government, the cabinet is responsible to a single parliament, not to nine parliaments, as is the case with the national cabinet.

The national cabinet is an intergovernmental committee. That's all it is, and it is disgraceful that the government is still adopting this principle that it is somehow something else. They've introduced a bill to try to overturn the judgement, and they can't get the numbers, even amongst their own ranks. The Assistant Minister to the Attorney-General, who is sitting listening to this debate, ought to be standing up for Justice White and the ruling that he made. It was very clear. You've got government members basically saying, 'We ignore what Justice White has said.' As the Assistant Minister to the Attorney-General, you ought to be standing up for our judicial officers and making sure that everyone understands the role that each of the different parts of our government plays. It's a disgrace that this information has not been made public on the basis that it's cabinet-in-confidence, because it's not.