Glenn Lazarus (Queensland, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I present the report of the Legal and Constitutional Affairs References Committee on the circumstances surrounding a letter sent to the Attorney-General, together with the Hansard record of proceedings and documents presented to the committee.

Order that the report be printed.

I move:

That the Senate take note of the report.

I came in on this report a little way into its beginning. I was interested in the subject and, obviously, it was very serious. The report's recommendations reflect that everyone agrees there was an issue. We have recommended some clear and positive ways in which this incident will not happen again. Hopefully, the recommendations will be taken on board.

I would like to thank the secretariat for a wonderful report and all the people involved with Hansard. I note in the government senators' dissenting report that they have referred to the chair as a Green Independent senator. I assume that is just an oversight, because misleading the Senate is very, very unparliamentary! In saying that, I commend this report to the Senate.

Jacinta Collins (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Cabinet Secretary) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would like to speak to this report as well. In advance, I will also be seeking leave to continue my remarks.

Labor senators have provided additional comments to this report and I would encourage those who have followed this matter, which has attracted a fair degree of public interest, to have a look at those comments as well. I thank Senator Lazarus for his contribution, coming in part way through the process to the report. Labor senators have focused on some critical concerns about the politicisation of the Public Service in our remarks, and I would encourage people to look at those.

Let me commence by reminding senators where this all began. In May, counsel assisting the New South Wales coronial inquest into the tragic Martin Place Lindt Cafe siege refer to a letter that the siege perpetrator, Man Haron Monis, had written to the Attorney-General, Senator Brandis. My colleague, the shadow Attorney-General, Mr Dreyfus, and I both noticed that the letter was not referred to in the joint Commonwealth New South Wales review of events leading up to the siege. At budget estimates on 29 May the Attorney-General's Department told us that the letter from Monis to the Attorney-General had both been provided and considered by the siege review.

The next day, the shadow Attorney-General asked the foreign minister, who represents the Attorney in the other place, whether there had been any changes to correspondence handling procedures since Australia's terror threat had been raised to its higher level. There the saga deteriorates considerably. The foreign minister responded, describing the Labor Party as contemptible for daring to ask the question. How dare we question this government on matters related to national security! As Laura Tingle observed, for instance, in the Australian Financial Review:

National security being the new religion, it's a bit rude to ask ... questions ...

That was the response. Four days later, the foreign minister corrected the record after question time—no apologies; no stepping back from her gross overreach in insulting people for daring to ask questions. There is the timing—four days later—and after question time the shadow Attorney-General was denied the opportunity to ask questions in the House, despite this attack.

Labor, quite reasonably, suspected a carefully-orchestrated strategy had been deployed to avoid scrutiny while the House was sitting, and the evidence seen by this committee has confirmed that suspicion. This is what we now know as a result of asking questions. The letter in question was never provided to the siege review. The Attorney-General's Department and the Prime Minister's department knew in February—not May or June, but back in February—that the letter had never been provided to the review. Not only did the Attorney-General's Department not provide the letter in question to the siege review it omitted to provide all correspondence after November 2010, lost behind a second tab on a spreadsheet—all recent correspondence subject to the task force review was overlooked by the Attorney-General's Department.

And there was a sixth correspondence item that did not even make it to the spreadsheet which also was not provided by the Attorney-General's Department to the review. Yet, the attorney's office received unambiguous advice before question time on the Monday of that week, 1 June, that the evidence was incorrect but it allowed four question times to pass before they corrected the record. Meanwhile, on 3 June, the Attorney-General's Department spent a full working day nuancing a few paragraphs on a letter to their minister rather than correcting the record as they knew it needed to be corrected.

Now, the Attorney-General's Department stated in oral testimony that they knew the letter was not provided to the siege review but they had to determine whether it was provided by some other source—a fishing exercise. Mr Moraitis, the Secretary of the Attorney-General's Department, attempted to soothe the committee that his motivation was that he provide an absolutely correct answer. Mr Sheehan, his deputy secretary, assured us almost 40 times that the internal review was necessary and did not delay a necessary correction. But after making these soothing noises at the hearing, a note from the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet was handed across the table. That note contradicted 2½ hours of assurances provided by the Attorney-General's Department, and that was the beginning of the contradictions.

Because of inaccurate summary tables provided by the Attorney-General's Department, the committee sought and obtained correspondence between the departments. We sought the Attorney-General's question time brief. We sought and received roughly 1,000 pages of correspondence and emails. None of the assurances made by Mr Moraitis and Mr Sheehan about the need for an internal review were supported by this documentary evidence. Those assurances were in fact contradicted.

Ms Jones, for example, was so certain about the need to correct the record that she offered on 1 June to break her leave to come into the office and sign a letter for the purpose of correcting the record. We also found that the Attorney-General's deputy chief of staff, Mr Faulks, was advised of Ms Jones's offer to correct the record before question time on that Monday. So why then did it take four days to correct the record?

Material presented to the committee shows two streams of activity on the Monday morning. One was to find out what went wrong and the other was to prepare to correct the record. But, that evening there was a meeting between the Attorney-General and his secretary in which a decision was made to delay correcting the record until after question time at the end of that week. Following the meeting, Deputy Secretary Sheehan provided instructions via email to all relevant officers in the department. In that email he, for the first time, linked the review to correcting the record, and he specifies three business days for the time frame of the review—Thursday afternoon, coinciding with the end of a sitting week.

We were unimpressed to learn during this inquiry that staff in the Attorney-General's Department spent a full business day nuancing a letter to their minister on the topic rather than getting on with the business of informing the parliament that they had made a mistake. It is little wonder that the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet said that the Attorney-General's Department was—and I remind senators—'ducking for cover'.

'No,' Secretary Moraitis protested that his officers were 'running around like headless chooks'. I would describe the Attorney-General's Department's behaviour as that of officers who have been politicised by their minister. The Attorney-General wanted to avoid scrutiny about his own political overreach and that of the foreign minister in the other place, and he had once again co-opted his secretary in that goal.

But in the end the record was corrected. 'So what is the big deal?' some people have asked. Well, we think it matters when we are talking about a government that has made national security 'a new religion'. It matters when we are talking about this minister and a department that has at its heart out national security apparatus. This is about trust in the minister and his officers—trust in their honesty, capability and accountability to this parliament. The Attorney-General and his department knew that they had made a mistake. The foreign minister had made a mistake, but their instincts were to manage the politics rather than to rectify that mistake. How can we trust that response in the future?

Our new Prime Minister has an opportunity to set new standards. Michelle Grattan raised some of the issues with Mr Turnbull's behaviour when he was last leader of the coalition in opposition. But he had the opportunity to learn from some of these issues during—as senators will recall—the Godwin Grech saga. We know that the Attorney-General, through his censures here and other elements of his behaviour, did not learn during that saga. I hope that Mr Turnbull did. Our security and our safety are too important to politicise when the Prime Minister decides on the next Attorney-General.

John Williams (NSW, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! Senator Collins, your time has expired.

Jacinta Collins (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Cabinet Secretary) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I seek leave to continue my remarks later.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.