George Brandis (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Attorney-General) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On behalf of the Committee of Privileges, I present the 133rd report of the committee, entitled Possible false or misleading evidence before the Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee.

Ordered that the report be printed.

by leave—I move:

That the Senate endorse the finding at paragraph 1.31 of the 133rd report of the Committee of Privileges.

That finding is that no contempt was committed in respect of evidence given by Mr Robert Cornall AO, Secretary of the Attorney-General’s Department, or Commissioner Michael Keelty, Commissioner of the Australian Federal Police, to the Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee, or its predecessor, in respect of the Australian government’s knowledge of the rendition of Mr Mamdouh Habib to Egypt.

This matter was referred to the committee on 18 September 2007 on the motion of Senator Nettle, after the President gave the motion precedence in accordance with standing order 81. In giving precedence, the President summarised the matter as involving, and I quote:

… seemingly inconsistent answers given by officers at estimates hearings about the government’s knowledge that Mr Mamdouh Habib had been taken to Egypt. Some officers suggested a lack of knowledge or certainty on the part of government that Mr Habib was ever in Egypt, while other answers appeared to indicate a definite knowledge that he had been taken to Egypt.

The legal and constitutional affairs committee, at the request of Senator Nettle, had sought responses from Mr Cornall and Commissioner Keelty following the transmission of an ABC Four Corners program in June 2007 which raised questions about the veracity of their evidence. The committee was satisfied that it had not been given false or misleading evidence—except for Senator Nettle, who exercised her right to raise this as a matter of privilege.

The Committee of Privileges sought further responses from Mr Cornall and Commissioner Keelty, including as to the matters canvassed by Senator Nettle in raising the matter of privilege. The committee also asked the legal and constitutional affairs committee for an account of its consideration of this matter and of its deliberations on the responses the committee received from Commissioner Keelty and Mr Cornall as to whether they had given false or misleading evidence.

Paragraph 12(c) of privilege resolution 6, which sets out a non-exhaustive list of matters constituting contempts, provides that a witness shall not:

… give any evidence which the witness knows to be false or misleading in a material particular, or which the witness does not believe on reasonable grounds to be true or substantially true in every material particular.

Furthermore, privilege resolution 3, which sets out criteria to be taken into account when determining matters relating to contempt, requires the committee to take into account whether a person who committed an act which may be held to be a contempt:

(i) knowingly committed that act, or

(ii) had any reasonable excuse for the commission of that act.

The committee had no evidence before it to support any contention that either Commissioner Keelty or Mr Cornall intended to mislead the legal and constitutional legislation committee or its successor. An essential element of the contempt, therefore, could not be established, and on this basis the committee has found that no contempt has been committed.

I will read the conclusion, paragraph 1.31:

... The committee concludes that neither Commissioner Keelty nor Mr Cornall knowingly gave false or misleading evidence to the Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee in respect of their knowledge of whether Mr Mamdouh Habib had been taken to Egypt. The Committee therefore finds that no contempt was committed in this regard.

In fact, the committee went further, although it was unnecessary for the finding, in paragraph 1.29, when it concluded:

... Overall ... the committee concludes that, although in certain respects the evidence of Mr Cornall and Commissioner Keelty was equivocal, it was not in fact misleading given the state of these officers’ knowledge at the time and the terms of the relevant questions addressed to them.

The Committee of Privileges has dealt with numerous cases of possible false or misleading evidence and this is the sixth case involving evidence given by officers at estimates hearings. In the report, the committee has made some general criticisms of the quality of evidence given at estimates hearings, particularly where officers give the narrowest possible answers to questions posed by senators who are obviously interested in obtaining as full an account as possible of a particular matter. In fairness to officers, however, it ought also to be observed that the answers given depend in part upon the skill and precision with which the questions are posed. I commend the report to the Senate and I seek leave to continue my remarks.

Leave not granted.

John Hogg (Queensland, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Brandis, Senator Bartlett wishes to address the motion before the chair. Senator Bartlett, at the end of your speech you might seek leave to continue your remarks, unless there are other speakers in this chamber on this motion.

Andrew Bartlett (Queensland, Australian Democrats) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I will speak only briefly to it, Mr Deputy President. I would normally leave it to later, except opportunities for subsequently speaking to reports are fairly rare these days, so I thought I should speak to it when the opportunity arose. I am not a member of the Privileges Committee and I have not had the opportunity to read the report that has just been presented by Senator Brandis, although I think Senator Brandis gave a very good, succinct and clear detailing of its findings and conclusions. I am a member of the Senate Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs but I have not followed the detail of this issue, partly quite consciously. Once you are not across all the detail, it is better to just let it follow its course, rather than know half the facts.

I simply want to reinforce, firstly, what I assume is a unanimous finding, as all Privileges Committee findings are, to my knowledge, and say the nature of privilege and whether or not there is a breach of privilege or contempt is a quite specific allegation. It is one that I do not think is very well understood; that is, certainly once the media start reporting on it. Not surprisingly, this issue has had some controversy around it and some media coverage of it. I simply want to put on the record I think it is very much worth while for people, in ongoing debates around the broader issue of what the previous government and various officials did and did not know and when they did or did not know things, to actually read the specifics of what is in this report. So in having that debate, whatever their perspective on it, they will have it on an informed basis as to who said what and when and how that relates or does not relate to the specific issue of contempt and breach of privilege.

The wider matter of what the previous government knew with regard to the rendition of Mr Habib is important. I think it is one that certainly merits more examination, in the same way as making assertions about referring the matter to the Privileges Committee should not have been perceived as a prima facie indication of egregious fault. Also, the flip side is that this committee’s finding that there is no breach of privilege is not in itself a complete resolution of some of the questions that were raised about what was known with regard to the rendition of Mr Habib. So I simply take the opportunity to put that report in its broader context and to, once again, without having yet read the report, commend the Privileges Committee on its ability to deal with these issues within the specific ambit of its terms of reference, its role and its ability to do so in a unanimous way without getting distracted by the valid political debate around the wider issues. It is in that context very much worth absorbing the specifics of this report, and from that, hopefully, people will get a better understanding of what breaches of privilege do and do not mean when people raise these sorts of issues as part of wider public debate. I seek leave to continue my remarks later.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.