David Shoebridge (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I also take note of the minister's statement. There's a reason why the government tried to hide this report, and it's because, on any fair reading of it, it shows why veterans and current serving members in Defence have no faith in the Inspector-General of the Australian Defence Force. The report says:

In times of conflict the lives of those who serve in the ADF can be put in hazard in the interests of their community. Such a risk is assumed by every individual who chooses to subject themselves to the command imperatives of military service. But the risks of rough justice, bullying, sexual abuse, inappropriate conduct or humiliation are of an entirely different character.

That is the conduct that the inspector-general is meant to be policing and conducting enforcement activity against through the military justice system, and no-one in the organisation who isn't of at least one-star rank has any faith in the inspector-general. The report also says:

The Review has become aware that a not insignificant body of well-motivated critics of the IGADF do hold a perception that the IGADF is 'umbilically-linked' to the command structure of the ADF. The existence of that perception is too widely based as would permit it to be ignored.

No-one has faith in the inspector general, and that's why the government buried the report.

Now we've had the most extraordinary performance from this government. Barely a week after the royal commission handed down its findings, Senator Lambie and a majority of members in this place are trying to get the government to release this report, and the government are hiding and hiding and hiding, desperately trying to not release the report. Then, when I and my office look on the royal commission website and find it has been published by the royal commissioners as an exhibit, we download it, share it with Senator Lambie and undertake to share it with the public and the veteran and serving community. And what does this government do? It deletes it from the website.

They have been spinning and spinning and spinning in the last 24 to 48 hours. They leak a story to the Age, to James Massola, and they tell him that it was an accidental leak by the royal commission. There's a headline saying it was an accidental leak or an unintentional publication. That's their spin. It is not true—false, lies, not true. It was intentionally published by the royal commission, an act of the royal commissioners, not some employed secretary or some staff member who's responsible to the Attorney-General's Department. It was a decision of the royal commissioners. Their letters patent ended on Monday last week when they handed the royal commission's report to the government. In fact, when they handed their report to the government, their role ended. The royal commission ended. Their security passes were wiped, their access to documents was wiped and the royal commission ended.

Now we're getting this spin from the government, including this extraordinary statement that purports to be a statement from the royal commission but which could not be a statement from the royal commission because the royal commission ended on Monday last week. There's an employee of either the Attorney-General's Department or the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet—I am not sure—calling themselves the secretary of the royal commission and purporting to make a statement on the part of the royal commission, when the royal commission ended. This isn't a statement made by the royal commissioners. I don't think they've even been consulted about the decision to remove a public exhibit that the royal commissioners had determined to publish. And why did they determine to publish it? Because they want their report to have credibility and, to the extent they relied upon any evidence, they undertook to publish it so that the veteran community and the serving members in the ADF could see the basis upon which the decisions were made. Then some official, without any reference to those royal commissioners, decided to delete it from the website.

As for the government's position about accidental leaks and unintentional this and that—'Oh it was all meant to be covered by confidentiality'—I'm going to call bullshit on that, and now I'm going to withdraw that comment.