Mathias Cormann (WA, Liberal Party, Vice-President of the Executive Council) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Acting Deputy President, as I advised the Senate in my letter dated 6 February 2020, as the Minister representing the Prime Minister in the Senate I have claimed public interest immunity over the document referred to in the motion on the grounds that this document informed, and was the subject of, cabinet deliberations. As is well recognised in the Westminster system, it is in the public interest to preserve the confidentiality of cabinet deliberations to ensure the best possible decisions are made following thorough consideration and discussion—

Stirling Griff (SA, Centre Alliance) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Patrick?

Rex Patrick (SA, Centre Alliance) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

A point of order, Mr Acting Deputy President: the minister is making a public interest immunity claim in respect of deliberations of cabinet—that is, discussions that took place in the cabinet—in circumstances where Senator Lambie's OPD seeks to access a report prepared by the secretary outside of cabinet. The point of order is on relevance.

Stirling Griff (SA, Centre Alliance) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The minister is making a statement, which in this particular instance the minister will continue.

Mathias Cormann (WA, Liberal Party, Vice-President of the Executive Council) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you very much, Mr Acting Deputy President. As I have indicated, this is a document that was prepared for the consideration of the public governance committee of the cabinet, which is part of the deliberative processes of cabinet. As is well recognised in the Westminster system, it is in the public interest to preserve the confidentiality of cabinet deliberations to ensure the best possible decisions are made following thorough consideration and discussion of relevant proposals within cabinet. Disclosure of the document subject to the motion is not in the public interest, as it would reveal, and therefore harm, cabinet deliberations.

However, as I did also note in my letter, the report was the subject of a press conference from the Prime Minister on 2 February 2020, which is on the public record. Further, Mr Gaetjens has advised the Prime Minister that he intends to make a public statement in due course; in fact, I understand that he will have the opportunity to appear in front of the select committee established by the Senate to inquire into these matters.

Jacqui Lambie (Tasmania, Jacqui Lambie Network) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the minister's response.

I find it very shameful. What a sorry, sorry affair this is, and what a poor show from our government. Australians deserve an explanation. You can tell us whatever rot you want to in here. This is why there is no trust from the Australian people. Senator McKenzie stepped down because she had not declared her membership of a shooting club that received $36,000 under the Community Sport Infrastructure Grants Program to pay for new toilets. The government still maintains that she didn't do anything wrong in targeting the sports funding to marginal electorates that the coalition wanted to win in the 2019 election.

It was the right thing for Senator McKenzie to resign—well, better late than never! I said within 12 hours she had to go, and I had no problem in texting her and telling her that either. Her behaviour was disgraceful. But, by pinning her resignation on a conflict of interest, the government are trying to pretend that using taxpayers' money to bolster their re-election campaign is acceptable behaviour. They're saying that pork barrelling is acceptable behaviour. They're saying that using a supposedly independent $100 million grant scheme as a slush fund is, once again, acceptable political behaviour. They're telling us that they don't see a problem with using a spreadsheet colour-coded by electorate to overrule the independent advice of Sport Australia. They don't see any issue with the fact that worthy projects missed out on funding because they weren't in electorates that the coalition needed to win and knew they did haven't the numbers to win.

Now they're telling us not to worry about the independent review from the very well-respected Auditor-General. Apparently, the auditors got it wrong. The PM is asking us, instead of putting our trust in the Auditor-General, to believe in a PM&C review into whether Senator McKenzie breached the ministerial standards. The person in charge of the review was Mr Phil Gaetjens, the head of PM&C. He is supposed to be an objective observer but he's really the PM's former chief of staff. If that is not a conflict of interest, my God, what is wrong with you people in here? Now we've been told we can't see the report? We just have to take the PM's word, his mate's word about whether Senator McKenzie's behaviour was unethical? We don't need his word, because every Australian out there can see it is unethical. What is going on in here?

Without seeing the report, the public can't know how Mr Gaetjens investigated the matter or how he came to his conclusions. That would be because, I imagine, the report is below the standard required. I'm not the only one saying this. Nearly every Australian out there is saying it. If you think you're pulling the wool over their eyes, that is shameful, absolutely shameful. I want trust. I want trust back in politicians, and you're doing everything you can to destroy that—everything. I've had a gutful.

We're supposed to trust this so-called independent process that found that Senator McKenzie made a mistake in not declaring her shooting club membership, but not that she misused taxpayer funds. According to the Prime Minister we're supposed to trust that there was no basis for the suggestion that political considerations were the primary determining factor. Does he take us all for morons? Does he? Does he take millions of Australians out there for absolute morons? Shameful! Apparently all this should be more convincing than the Auditor-General. The Auditor-General is going up against the PM's mate, and apparently we should trust the PM when he says the report shows there is nothing to see here, nothing to see here, but he does haven't the guts to show that report here and show it to millions of Australians that want to see that report. Like I said, another shameful day in politics today. I cannot believe the Minister representing the Prime Minister didn't blush when he was running his lines over there. He feels no shame; he has no conscience. He might as well as fronted up here and declared the sky isn't blue. We've seen the evidence; we've seen the spreadsheets; we know what you've been up to. At least have the courage, the spine, to release the PM&C report so that the Australian people can make up their own minds about why the PM's buddy would disagree with the Auditor-General.

If the process really was that thorough and independent, they shouldn't have anything to hide. Completely, absolutely, it wreaks of cover-up. It reeks of absolute cover-up. It's the stench of it. Stop protecting yourselves and start governing the country. Start being bloody honest with the people in this country. I don't buy all this 'it's a cabinet document' rubbish. Reports of this nature do get made public and they should be made public as a matter of course.

As David Speers wrote for the ABC over the weekend, there are cases of the PM&C reviews into potential breaches of the ministerial standards being published. Martin Parkinson's report on the post parliamentary jobs taken up by Julie Bishop and Christopher Pyne were published in full last year. Before that, the public saw a summary of the PM&C review into Bruce Bilson's lobbying job after he left office. It wasn't the whole kit and caboodle but at least it was something. Why is the report on Senator McKenzie's behaviour any different? Could it be the government doesn't want to say either way about whether they think the pork barrelling is wrong or are they worried about sending other ministers down the gurgler if they admit this behaviour is unacceptable?

Seriously, the government are so good at avoiding taking responsibilities for their actions, they could teach a thing or two to Donald Trump. This is why we need a truly independent administration of the ministerial standards. Right now it's up to the Prime Minister or the secretary of the PM&C or a mate to decide whether a minister's actions are a breach of the code. But we've seen time and time and time again that the standards aren't enforced. They aren't upheld, they aren't binding and there's no accountability for ministers' behaviours or for those who blatantly ignore these rules. It isn't right that so many people in this place can get away with behaving in a way that doesn't align with public expectations. I assure you that you are way below those public expectations of how elected representatives should behave in this place.

Our licence to be here comes from voters. We have a responsibility to them to act in a way that aligns with public expectations and to hold each other to account when that doesn't happen. When it's up to the government to investigate themselves—God forbid; I don't know how you get away with investigating yourselves—that's when things go wrong. They do go wrong and are going wrong right now. I tell you now that that's got to stop. It's too easy for them to hide things away or ignore the facts in front of them. It's too easy to hold onto reports and information the public has a right to know about. When it's left up to the government, the enforcers of the rules have too much of an incentive to say that everything is fine and dandy, when most Australians would know that something reeks. Once again, it stinks.

I've been saying for a long time that there should be an independent body, like an independent parliamentary expenses authority, to oversee this sort of stuff. The body should be able to undertake its own reviews independently, make recommendations to the Prime Minister and publish all its findings. It should not be beholden to the public needs of government at the time. For even more serious corruption issues, we need a federal ICAC. Unfortunately, there will always be people in this place who abuse their power, and I tell you you see it frequently. It's getting great; you can nearly pick it out for breakfast. An integrity commission with teeth is the only way to make sure that they don't get away with it anymore. We urgently need to bring in more accountability and transparency of the behaviour of the people in power here. Until we do, this parliament will continue to lose the trust of voters. Honestly, that is the most shameful thing. You sit up here and you actually believe you are so untouchable.

Katy Gallagher (ACT, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Finance) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I also rise to take note of the minister's response to the Senate order for the production of documents relating to the report on ministerial standards and sports grants by the Secretary of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, Mr Gaetjens. I support very much a lot of what Senator Lambie said today and I think it's no wonder Senator Cormann left the chamber very quickly after giving that extraordinarily weak explanation of why the Senate will not be afforded the right to access the report that this government is doing everything it can to keep secret. Minister Cormann's answer was shamefully inadequate and didn't convincingly outline any reason why this report should be kept secret.

This arrogant government has decided to claim that the release of this report into the sports rorts saga would not be in the public interest, but then it fails to explain why. After selectively quoting from the document to cover his political needs, the Prime Minister now seeks to hide behind cabinet-in-confidence to protect the government from further scrutiny. Finally, the claim of cabinet-in-confidence is at odds with past practice even of this government, which publicly released other reports prepared by former secretaries of PM&C, namely into the Pyne, Bishop and Billson matters.

This government with this response today treats senators in this place and, through us, the Australian people as mugs. It's a patronising, arrogant response which says to the Australian people: 'We know better than you. Trust us. Everything will be okay. Let's just ride out this latest integrity failure of this government and move on.' The Prime Minister is keeping this report secret as a shield from proper accountability to the Australian people, but, by keeping this report secret, it also sends another, more sinister message. It represents a view that this Prime Minister thinks he is untouchable from the forms of this place—no accountability, no transparency, no problem. And, of course, if the rules or guidelines get in the way, change them, ignore them or rip up the rulebook and then blame others.

Let's have a look at why the government is saying it won't release this report. Just because a document was used by cabinet does not mean it is cabinet-in-confidence. According to Odgers, it has to be established that disclosure of the document would actually reveal cabinet deliberations. Senator Lambie's order for production of documents did not seek any information relating to the deliberations of cabinet. It merely sought access to a report that was commissioned outside of cabinet, which Minister Cormann was unable to establish in his brief comments today. Minister Cormann failed to address this in the limited words he did say, but he weakened his own argument by outlining that some of the Gaetjens report's key findings were already in the public domain—the bits that the government want us to see and believe. The reality is that the Prime Minister chose to quote selectively from the report in his press conference, telling Australia simply to believe him and to take his word for it.

We in this place all know that the Gaetjens report got the Prime Minister out of a tricky political situation. He knew he had to get rid of Senator McKenzie, but he couldn't do that without implicating himself and countless other members of this government if she departed over the actual rorting of the scheme. Enter the Secretary of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet and former chief of staff to the Prime Minister with a quick and dirty investigation to provide the PM with the McKenzie exit strategy he needed. What a surprise to learn that the secret Gaetjens report has in fact cleared his government of any wrongdoing in relation to the allocation of sports grants! Case closed. Us mugs here and the Australian people are meant to believe that in just 16 days the secretary was able to reach the ultimate public finding that it 'did not find evidence that this process was unduly influenced by reference to marginal or targeted electorates'. He was able to investigate this matter fully over 16 days, presumably interview a number of people and reach conclusions with, I hope, a similar rigour to that which would have applied to the ANAO's inquiry and report. The Auditor-General, on the other hand, presented unequivocal evidence of bias towards seats targeted by the coalition in the 2019 federal election. Indeed, the report found:

There was … bias in the award of grant funding—

which—

was not consistent with the assessed merit of applications.

So the not releasing of this report leaves us with two possible conclusions. The first is that Mr Gaetjens's report reflects poorly on the Prime Minister and his government—otherwise, why wouldn't he release it? The second is that the report was simply a ruse to get rid of Senator McKenzie, without acknowledging any wrongdoing with the blatant pork-barrelling that occurred within the sports grants, and that the investigation, if there actually was any, was nothing other than to write a script to get a dodgy government with a weakened Prime Minister off the hook. If that is so, the Secretary of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet is not acting with the appropriate level of impartiality that his office requires. Without the release of the full report, it is impossible to understand just how our nation's most senior public servant could form a view that is the complete opposite of that of the independent Auditor-General.

We are not the only ones to think that the Gaetjens report looks like a political stitch-up. On Thursday, Mike Keating, a former Secretary of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, said:

… having been involved in a similar situation, I find the fact that Gaetjens' report apparently ignored these fundamental considerations of good government and ministerial conduct inconceivable. In my view the Gaetjens' report reflects poorly on its author.

It would seem on the evidence that Gaetjens has produced a report whose only purpose was to get the Government off a political hook.

Instead of owning up to the sports rorts saga, the Prime Minister is trashing the Public Service. In his recent speech at the National Press Club, the Prime Minister doubled down on the legitimacy of his government's pork barrelling. Instead of owning up to the government's failings on the grants program and taking any responsibility at all, he attacked the role of the APS to conduct merit based assessments of grant applications. This makes a mockery of the fact that the minister had tasked Sport Australia with assessing the applications against the published criteria, as they were asked to do by this government.

The sports rorts saga has crystallised what we know and what Australians are increasingly starting to realise about this Prime Minister, that we have a Prime Minister who thinks he doesn't need to answer openly, honestly and respectfully to the Australian people. Against a backdrop of persistent claims of maladministration and industrial-scale pork barrelling from Australia's chief auditor, he simply commissioned another report which conveniently finds 'nothing to see here'. We see also a Prime Minister who, when under pressure, seeks to lay blame with anyone but himself, even if that has to be public servants from Sport Australia or those pesky journalists who keep asking probing questions.

The government might like to think they're untouchable right now. Their failure to comply with the Senate order for the production of documents shows again the level of arrogance they govern with and the worrying level of secrecy this government enforces. My message to this government is that arrogance, secrecy and failures of government are not looked upon favourably by the Australian people. Australians do not like to be treated as mugs.

Labor will not let this go, as some in the government want. We will continue to investigate these rorts. We will continue to defend the APS from the blame-shifting of this government. We will continue to stand up for an independent impartial public service as one of the key institutions of our democratic system, something this government has total disregard for. Australians know that everything about this sports rorts saga stinks because they can cut through all the faff, the words, the explanation and the bluster and see it for what it was—an out-of-control government on the eve of an election abusing taxpayers' money by using it to help them sandbag seats and win others. Today the government has confirmed what we've all come to expect—no accountability, no transparency, no respect for the conventions of this place, no care at all. It's up to the Senate to take a stand against this and work together to make sure we hold this government to account, because Australians deserve much better than this.

Larissa Waters (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What an absolute farce that this afternoon the Senate has tried to require the Prime Minister to have some shred of integrity and disclose a report that somehow magically exonerated himself and his ministers and that they haven't even the guts to table. This whole situation is just so wrong. The Prime Minister should have released the Gaetjens report into the conduct of his ministers abusing public funds and spending public money with extreme arrogance without the Senate having to ask him to do so. Yet, having had the opportunity today to think twice and to disclose that report, we've had the Leader of the Government in the Senate come in and say, 'It's cabinet-in-confidence, and it would not be in the public interest to disclose this report.' It certainly wouldn't be in his government's interest to disclose this report because what is patently clear is that this government turns a blind eye to corruption, particularly when it is in its own ranks.

We all know that there's another opportunity for the government to disclose other documents tomorrow which go to just how much the Prime Minister was behind 'sports rort No. 1'. Of course, there's another sports rorts saga. Just when you thought it was safe to play sport again, there's yet more rorting—you're going to be accosted by a Liberal MP trying to give you money for a swimming pool you don't even want, when all you want is bushfire funding support. But that's another matter.

We have the extreme arrogance of this government in trying to cover up what is so obviously corruption of the highest order. I can't believe that they think they're going to get away with this. Is it any wonder that confidence and trust in democracy has been absolutely bottoming out for several years now? There's only now a tiny majority of people that have any trust in our democracy, and that is incredibly damaging and corrosive. On the flipside, the vast majority of Australians can see the clear need for a federal corruption watchdog, and that is clearly what's needed here. When you have ministerial standards that are clearly so weak that not even this blatant rorting is found to have breached them, they're not worth the paper they are written on. Not only is it about time that those standards are strengthened and independently enforced; it's perfectly clear that we actually need an independent corruption watchdog. We can't have the fox in charge of the henhouse any more. We can't have the PM's mate who used to be his chief of staff and who's now running the department just say: 'Nothing to see. Everybody go back to sleep. She'll be right. Watch the Prime Minister make a fool of himself and be distracted in some other way.' That is not how our democracy is supposed to work.

This is a debasement of the obligation of all of us in here to act in the interests of the public. This government is so arrogant it thinks it's going to get away with this. Well, it's got another thing coming. None of us in this chamber will let this lie. We have more OPDs coming this week for more documents that we will seek disclosure of. Even the press gallery is up in arms about the flagrancy of this secrecy. We've had secret governments before, mostly of this persuasion, but this is the worst that we have seen. Even previous Prime Minister and Cabinet secretary reports have been made public. Even the children overboard report, which was extremely damaging for the government, was tabled.

Clearly, the Liberals used to have some standards and now they have none! These ministerial standards are clearly not worth the paper they're written on. The Prime Minister is not enforcing his own standards. It's kind of interesting that the excuse given for not disclosing this report is that it's cabinet-in-confidence. Well, last time I read the Prime Minister's ministerial standards they didn't mention cabinet. They are in fact a document that the Prime Minister himself has written and is responsible for implementing. So something even more dodgy is going on if that process is now subject to cabinet deliberation.

No-one is going to buy this attempted fob-off by the Leader of the Government in the Senate today, and it's perfectly clear that this is exactly why support for this government—and, frankly, for both major parties—is on the decline. We've seen disclosure of inconvenient reports before; today we've seen sheer arrogance from this government, which thinks it can get away with bribing electors in marginal seats with public money and then have absolutely no transparency and accountability about it.

We will not let this rest. It's exactly why this chamber passed a bill to set up a federal corruption watchdog. I note that the government didn't vote for it, but everybody else voted for it. It passed this chamber and, gee, I wonder why it's been sitting on the bottom of the list in the House of Reps for five months? It's pretty clear to us that the reason the government said, reluctantly, a year and a half ago that, yes, we needed a federal watchdog but have done absolutely nothing to deliver one is that they know they've got an awful lot of skeletons in the closet. Some of them have been revealed in recent weeks. Perhaps there are more to come. But if we have the system that we've got at the moment, where it's the Prime Minister's whim either to choose to enforce or to turn a blind eye to flagrant breaches of the ministerial standards and to get his former mate—his former chief of staff—just to say, 'There's nothing to see here,' then nothing will get fixed in this government. The rorting will get worse, the arrogance will get worse—if we thought it could possibly do so; I'm sure they'll find a way—and public confidence in our system of democracy will continue to decline.

That is the most damaging thing of all. We have a responsibility here to act in the interests of the community and of the planet. If our citizens don't even think that this place speaks for them or represents their interests anymore then this government should bear full responsibility for that. Bring on the election, we say. We cannot wait to see the back of this terrible, self-invested and arrogant government!

Once again, big money is calling the shots. The government is trying to buy seats to win an election. It's getting massive donations from all sorts of vested interests, from big corporates through to the coal and fossil fuel sector. And, of course, there was $2 million from the gambling lobby in the year just before the election. This is democracy for sale, and there are no checks and balances to stop the hubris and the self-interest of this government. In my view it's criminal, and I think this is exactly why Australians are hanging their heads in shame about their government. Certainly, the rest of the world is looking at our government and laughing. They're laughing at the climate denial, they're laughing at the extreme arrogance of the continued rorting and the fact that big money seems to rule decision-making in this place. This is not how it's meant to be.

It's not just that we've seen sports rorts saga No. 1 swept under the carpet; now there is sports rorts No. 2! And of course there is the ongoing saga with Minister Angus Taylor, who has had very dubious dealings with various water companies and various land-clearing issues involving family companies. He was then referred to the AFP for potentially doctoring documents. Again, the AFP have said, 'Look, it's going to take too long to look at it; we're just going to park this.' There is no independent, external investigative body that is holding the government to account—that is even holding them to standards that governments gone by have held themselves to. This government has just given up on accountability and transparency. They just 'reject the premise of the question'. If we hear that phrase one more time I am sure we'll collectively feel even sicker than we do, witnessing the conduct that happens in this place every single day. There is no accountability. The Australian people desperately deserve a federal corruption watchdog. It's going to be very busy indeed.

For 10 years the Greens have been pushing for this. It has been 16 months since the government said: 'Sure, fine. We'll do something about it. We agree.' This was because the election was just around the corner. A year ago this government said an ICAC, a corruption watchdog, was 'imminent'. That was a year ago. We have not seen a draft bill. A bill passed this chamber to set up a corruption watchdog—one with teeth, one that would actually have covered the scandals that we have seen throughout the news since the election, and even before. It would have been a government watchdog with teeth, but this government just does not want the transparency, it doesn't want the scrutiny, it can't hack the accountability. It's continuing to try to sweep things under the carpet. Well, the Australian people are not fooled by your fool at the helm. They deserve better, and we all look forward to them having their say at the next possible opportunity.

Tim Ayres (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise too, like the previous speakers, with a sense of disappointment about the government's failure to respond properly to the order for the production of documents that Senator Lambie moved in the Senate last week. It really leaves the Senate in a position where the Australian people are being asked who they believe. Do they believe the Australian National Audit Office, or do they believe what the Prime Minister said his friend Phil Gaetjens wrote up in his report? Do they believe the Auditor-General, or do they believe the Prime Minister's former chief of staff, the most political of appointments to that important, supposedly impartial position? Do they believe in common sense, or do they believe in the evasions, the dissembling and the cover-ups that have come to characterise the way that this government behaves, the way that this government purports to govern itself?

The only purpose that's served by this cover-up, by this failure to disclose, is to diminish Mr Gaetjens himself and to diminish this tawdry excuse for a government. One of the Senate's jobs is provide accountability of the government. Instead, here you have got members of the government, particularly what remains of the National Party members of this government, out there in regional electorates pretending that what this government did was somehow in the interests of country people, was somehow in the interests of rural and regional people. They rorted the scheme, they say, because it was in the interests of country communities—as if country communities couldn't do well being evaluated properly in a $100 million sports scheme.

Well, the evidence will show quite a different thing happened to country communities when Senator McKenzie and the Liberal Party headquarters got their hands on $100 million of public money. They knew what to do in the context of the election: they sent the money to privileged, inner-city and city electorates in the political interests of the Liberal Party. And the other thing that the National Party, or what remains of them, are trawling around in the bush—I had to listen to it a little bit over the course of last week—is: 'This this all just Canberra bubble nonsense. You don't need to worry about this.' Well, public accountability actually matters. The way that $100 million of taxpayers' money is spent really matters. If you take—deliberately take—$100 million of public money for your own narrow political purposes then there's is a word for that. It's corruption. Do you think any ordinary Australian could take $100 million of public money absolutely for the purpose, as the Auditor-General spelt out pretty clearly, of buying votes in the context of an election that they believed that they would lose; commission an investigation into themselves conducted by their political friend, who owes his job to their patronage; sack a fall guy, Senator McKenzie, for an apparent conflict of interest which, while a serious matter in itself, is in fact the smallest matter that's occurred over this sordid saga; refuse to release the inquiry; and hope that everybody moves on?

This is a government that's incapable of shame. I saw the Leader of the Government in the Senate leave as soon as he'd made his statement. I'd like to think that was because he felt some sense of shame, but it's probably because he had another appointment. The basis upon which this order for production of documents was refused—that somehow it's cabinet-in-confidence—is wrong and, in fact, is the coward's castle of excuses for refusing to provide documents. Previous governments have provided documents that were much more embarrassing and that have done much more damage without complaint, but this government will do everything to avoid public scrutiny.

I think it's wrong in fact too. I have been provided with an excerpt from Odgers that says:

It is accepted that deliberations of the Executive Council and of the cabinet should be able to be conducted in secrecy so as to preserve the freedom of deliberation of those bodies. This ground, however, relates only to disclosure of deliberations. There has been a tendency for governments to claim that anything with a connection to cabinet is confidential. A claim that a document is a cabinet document should not be accepted; as has been made clear in relation to such claims in court proceedings, it has to be established that disclosure of the document would reveal cabinet deliberations. The claim cannot be made simply because a document has the word "cabinet" in or on it.

It's pretty straightforward. The claim that this document is cabinet-in-confidence is misleading. It is a claim, made on behalf of the government, that is dishonest. It is a claim that is designed to provide a shield and to mean that this government somehow evades public scrutiny. Well, I'm here to tell you that we on this side will fight tooth and nail over the coming months to make sure that all the facts about this sordid affair come out and that Australians understand completely who did what, who said what to who, how this sordid plot was put together, who executed it, and who in the Prime Minister's office and the Liberal Party and National Party campaign offices were responsible.

As I said before, the communities that were hurt the most in the sports rorts scandal were country communities. I've heard the National Party MPs out there trying to imply, 'Yes, we rorted it, but we rorted it in your interests.' Well, what I'm told is that, of the 52 grant applications that were knocked back, 47 were in country and regional communities, and all the money flowed back into the city, into the seats that the Liberal Party cared about the most. There was the Mosman Rowing Club. Who knows what other funding arrangements were made to try and prop up the return of the poor old former member for Warringah?

The minister took the decision-making out of the hands of the independent process. The minister chose who got the novelty cheques and who didn't. Let's look at a few of these applications. The Tamworth Regional Council applied for a grant to install more lights at the Riverside Sports Complex. The lighting would have allowed more clubs to train on those fields in winter. The council applied for $432,304 and got an assessment score of 84, a score which should have guaranteed funding, but it didn't. Senator McKenzie knocked them off too. The Morrison government chose to send that money to a less worthy but more politically expedient place. You'd think that the member for New England—the member who, when he bothers to turn up, claims to represent the people of Tamworth—would be out fighting for their interests. But, no, that's not what he said. He said: 'We didn't vote for the bureaucrats, they were employed. We want the members of parliament to represent us. And if there is a blue between the bureaucrats and the minister then I think that is a good sign that the minister has actually got the gumption and the fortitude to stand up and fight.' Well, if I was in Tamworth, I'd want the bureaucrats standing up for me because I know that the member for New England won't fight. He couldn't fight his way out of a paper bag. When it really comes down to it, whose side is he on? Is he on the side of his constituency or is he on the side of the narrow, politically based self-interest of the Liberal Party and the National Party? He talks big about representing country communities. But what the show over there is all about is avoiding scrutiny; it's about doing the wrong thing; it's about being shonky; it's about being crook. They will stoop to any level to protect their own shallow, narrow, venal, opportunistic self-interest.

Rex Patrick (SA, Centre Alliance) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The government's public interest immunity is not made out. I would like to assist the chamber in detailing what could properly attach a cabinet-in-confidence label and what could not. There are three things that can be determined as cabinet-in-confidence. One of them is a submission to cabinet—a document that goes into the cabinet that, were it disclosed, would reveal something that was talked about in cabinet. The second thing is the deliberations of cabinet. We accept the principle of collective responsibility. We like the idea that the Prime Minister can have a different view from the Attorney and relevant ministers and that is kept secret because of that collective responsibility. It is important, and I accept that it is important. And the third thing that is entitled to the protection of a cabinet-in-confidence claim is a decision of cabinet—until, of course, the cabinet decides to announce it. So that's what we're dealing with—one of three choices.

Senator Lambie's order for the production of documents relates to a report prepared by the secretary of PM&C outside of the cabinet. It can't be the latter two—it can't be a deliberation of cabinet and it can't be a decision of cabinet—so the best claim that can be made is that it is a submission to cabinet. There are a couple of tests in the law as to whether a document is indeed a cabinet submission. The first of those is: was it submitted to cabinet? And my understanding is that perhaps in this case it was. The second and most important test is what is called the dominant purpose test: for what purpose was the document produced at the time of its birth? You can't simply have a report and then decide at some later stage that you are going to wheel it through cabinet, sprinkle a bit of cabinet fairy dust on it and then have it protected by the doctrine; that is not the case. And whether a document's dominant purpose at birth was as a submission to cabinet is a question of fact.

To inform us in relation to that fact, we have to go to some of the statements made by the Prime Minister when he announced that this document was being formed. He basically stated that he had asked the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet for advice in relation to any action in the application of the statement of ministerial standards. The Prime Minister is awaiting the secretary's advice and will continue to follow due process. That's what the Prime Minister indicated. There is nothing in there that says this was for cabinet. I will read from section 109 of the latest version of the Cabinet Handbook to give a feel of how important this dominant purpose is. It says:

If an attachment or supporting document has been brought into existence for the dominant purpose of submission for consideration by the Cabinet, then the attachment or supporting document must clearly state this. This ensures each document is appropriately identified as a Cabinet document and handled in line with the security requirements for Cabinet material.

I would like the government to return to this chamber some evidence—because we're dealing with a question of fact—that this document was intended at birth to be a cabinet submission. That should be very easy. If, indeed, there is no evidence of that then they must table the document.

I've FOIed this. I've been through the FOI process before and I have managed to have released to me documents that were purportedly cabinet documents. I know this space really well. As I said, I have FOIed this document. Won't it be a shame, when I get to the end of the two-years the process is likely to take me, if it's revealed to me that Mr Rex Patrick can get it, under FOI, but the Senate couldn't? We'll see how that pans out.

Even if it is cabinet-in-confidence—and we've already heard some remarks about this—we need to understand that the principles of cabinet confidentiality are not creatures of statute; they are creatures of convention. They are longstanding and respected conventions but they are subservient to our Constitution. As Senator Ayres suggested, and as per his quote from Odgers, the courts, for example, when deciding whether or not someone can subpoena a cabinet document, have to balance up the public's interest in the principles of cabinet versus the public's interest in the administration of justice. It is for the court to decide, not the cabinet. If you want to know the cases, Mr Acting Deputy President, we have Commonwealth of Australia v Northern Land Council, High Court of Australia; we have Sankey v Whitlam, High Court of Australia. These are well-established legal principles from the highest court in this land. I note that Mr Bret Walker SC, who gave a presentation to the Senate about a year ago, made it very clear:

… it is clear that there is no absolute bar against the compulsory disclosure or tender into evidence of even the most core cabinet documents, such as those recording the secret deliberations of its members.

He went on to say:

The High Court has no difficulty with the courts carrying out a balancing process when the administration of justice is the public interest competing against the public interest in cabinet secrecy. It is ridiculous to suppose that the Senate could not carry out a corresponding exercise when the public interest in responsible government through accountability to a parliamentary chamber is involved.

The Constitution makes it very clear there is a high threshold, but we could insist upon it. But we don't know whether it's a cabinet submission. The government makes that claim; we need to see some evidence, particularly in relation to its dominant purpose at birth.

I say to this chamber: this is a multistage process. Senator Lambie has, through the Senate, asked to see this document, asked for it to be tabled. The minister has the right to present a public interest immunity response, but it is for the Senate to decide whether or not to accept it. There are further processes that we can now take to get access to this document. In the end, parliament is supreme. The Senate chamber will win this if it wants to. It will require some courage from the alternative government, who tend to back away from enforcement of these sorts of things. I have no doubt the Greens, Senator Hanson and Senator Lambie will provide support. We can get access to this document, and I'm happy to speak to any senator about the next steps.

Janet Rice (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Public interest immunity, hey? Secrecy, more secrecy, more secrecy to hide this government's corrupt practices. They are corrupt practices. This is corruption. This is the use of public funds to achieve an outcome that the government wants to see happen, not occurring under a process that is fair and just and accountable and transparent. Are we surprised? I'm not surprised. It didn't surprise me at all when Minister Cormann turned up and said 'public interest immunity', despite, as Senator Patrick just said, it almost certainly being unjustified. I'm not surprised, because this government has got form. We have got these sports rorts on top of other scandals: Minister Taylor, for example, with both the grasslands saga and the issue of the doctoring of documents with the City of Sydney—scandal after scandal after scandal.

Of course, whilst we are still coming to terms with this sports rorts scandal, we've got another one that lands on the desk—one that is actually even worse: $150 million of another sports program, the Female Facilities and Water Safety Stream program. It's a $150 million slush fund, a $150 million pork barrel, with no guidelines about how this money is going to be spent. They're not opening up the process to grant applications. Basically, here is $150 million that the government is going to use to buy itself an election. Under this new program we know that, on top of the sports rorts scandal that we are yet to see Phil Gaetjens's report about, the biggest single grant, for $25 million, was for a pool in Attorney-General Christian Porter's marginal seat of Pearce, which was announced three weeks before the election. This is the very example that typifies absolutely classic pork barrelling 101. Then there's the Sydney tidal pool under this new program as well. The local council weren't even aware the money had been awarded for this tidal pool. They weren't aware of the grant when they were listed as a recipient. And then the department listed another recipient, a local charity lobbying for the pool, but a member of the tidal pool committee said they didn't have any idea about that $4½ million and that he had no idea if it would be given the grant to build the pool. These examples show the scale of this blatant pork barrelling that is going on and the blatant corruption of using public funds to buy or attempt to buy election outcomes.

An analysis done by The Guardian of the 41 projects awarded under sports rorts version 2 found that almost 60 per cent of the projects were in marginal seats, including $30 million in the ultramarginal seat of Corangamite, which the government were desperate to hold onto, $25 million in Christian Porter's Western Australian seat of Peace and $20 million in the WA seat of Swan. When some other coalition-held seats which were under threat are taken into account, 73 per cent of projects were located in marginal or at-risk seats. By dollar value, $111 million of that $150 million of grants was spent in marginal seats.

This is not a level playing field. This is dodgy and this is unfair. We've got community sports clubs that are working hard to instil values of fairness, cooperation and inclusion in their members, and basically we've got the government saying, 'Stuff that; we only care about your club if it's in the seat that we want to win.' People are working so hard to raise money for their local community sports club, with sausage sizzles, trivia nights and raffles. They put in hours volunteering, washing uniforms, coaching the teams and running committee meetings. They put so much time and effort in, only to be told by this government: 'No, we don't care. Even if you demonstrate that the value of your application is really, really high, you don't get any money unless you're in our target seats.' The Greens see this selfish and unfair scheme that's been cooked up by the government, and we say it is enough. We need to have genuine time for real scrutiny and transparency. It is absolutely time for a federal anticorruption watchdog that has real teeth.

It is interesting that Minister Cormann talked about public interest immunity. It's interesting that he's talking about the public interest. Here are a few things that might be more in the public interest than another coalition cover-up. We need to get an honest account from the Prime Minister about the role that his office has played in sports rorts 1 and in sports rorts 2. We need a government that uses government funding in the public interest, to benefit the community, rather than a desperate cash splash to benefit its constituencies. We need a government that's got a real plan to tackle the climate emergency. We need a government that's willing to lift Newstart and to help people on income support—a government that believes in the public interest rather than in its own narrow-minded self-interest.

But instead, we have now got yet another corrupt cover-up from the scandal-ridden coalition. The Greens believe in transparency, and we know that this is not transparent. This smells, and the Australian public know it smells as well. We believe in accountability, and the coalition absolutely have to take their hands out of the public purse and start being honest with the Australian people about what they've done, and whether they stand for anything more than just being elected. I can say that at the moment it certainly looks like they don't. The government have sent a clear message to anybody who lives in a safe seat, saying: 'You lose! You get nothing!' And people know it's true. It's no wonder that people have lost faith in politics; it's no wonder faith in politics is at an all-time low. No wonder people are cynical about politicians—we just can't blame them.

The government's excuse is, 'Well, Labor does it too.' As if that fixed anything! Prime Minster: we need you to get off the bench, lace up your boots and bring the Green's bill for a national integrity commission to a vote. The Senate voted recently to establish a committee into sports rorts round 1, and that was before this latest development. We will be examining the evidence. We know that Senator McKenzie has resigned, but we know that isn't the whole story. It's barely even the start of the story. In particular, what we need to know is what the Senate and the Australian public are so far having hidden from them: what role the Prime Minister's office played in this corrupt pool of cash. There are questions which the Prime Minister must answer. Did his office coordinate with Liberal Party strategists in the lead-up to the 2019 election in allocating these grants? What other programs did his office coordinate the allocation of funding for? And was the Prime Minister aware of his office's involvement in this scandal?

The Australian public needs answers to these critical questions. Anyone concerned about the state of our democracy needs answers to these critical questions. Our democracy is fragile, and to see it undermined by this latest attack is truly alarming. Any time we ask the government probing questions about this, the response we get from the government is that they 'reject the premise of the question'. Well, I have something to tell them: it's not a matter of rejecting the premise of the question. We need to reject the premise of this government. This government is corrupt. These scandals are just coming one after another and there is only one thing for it: the Australian public needs to vote this rotten government out of office.

Tony Sheldon (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to talk about Senator Lambie's motion calling on the government to table the Gaetjens report into the breach of the ministerial standards by Senator McKenzie.

This looks at a very fundamental issue: the whole question of what corruption is. What is the responsibility of government to act transparently in the case when confronted with the issue of corruption? Certainly, I would think that one of them is to clear the air. Secondly, I think that they would actually want the public to be confident that our democratic system is about transparency. When we look at the word 'corruption', the form it takes is dishonesty or criminal offence undertaken by a person or organisations. I looked at Wikipedia, because I thought that would be a bit of fun, just to see whether they've nailed it for the world—or if they've nailed this government. You make some assessments on this.

Wikipedia says when:

… entrusted with a position of authority, to acquire illicit benefit or abuse of power for one's private gain. Corruption may include many activities including bribery and embezzlement, though it may also involve practices that are legal in many countries. Political corruption occurs when an office-holder or other governmental employee acts in an official capacity for personal gain—

tens of millions of dollars, hundreds of millions of dollars; 'sports rorts 1'; 'sports rort 2'. The list goes on and on and on. Hardworking sports activists and communities right around this country are missing out because they weren't the ones who decided to have a rort delivered their way. They weren't people who had an opportunity to turn around and argue the right cases, because it was never about the right cases going forward. It was about corruption going forward. It was about self-interest going forward. It was about a lack of transparency going forward.

The government has failed to make a very fundamental report that was written outside cabinet available to the Australian community. It could have dealt with this very critical question of the rorting of the system. It could have looked at the very fundamental question of whether this was done in a fit or appropriate way by the government. It could be set up in a situation where transparency would allow the community to judge whether the investigation was carried out correctly in a fit and proper way.

I look at it with some amusement, unfortunately, and with some concern, because, when political corruption occurs when an office holder or other governmental employee acts in an official capacity for personal gain, corruption is most commonplace—and it says this in Wikipedia, 'Kleptocracies, oligarchies, narco states and Mafia states'. I'm not quite sure which state we're in, but I'll tell you what: it's certainly not a democratic state when you haven't got transparency on the seriousness of the allegations and the seriousness of the concerns that have been raised by the Australian public.

The government refused to table the Gaetjens report into breaches of ministerial standards. Instead the government claims the report is a cabinet document and is not to be made public—simply fundamentally outrageous. This contrasts with the report tabled by the government compiled by former Secretary Parkinson of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, relating to ministerial standards looking into whether former MPs Christopher Pyne and Julie Bishop had breached standards. The government has basically said that they released the report because it concerned people who have left the parliament but won't release the current one into McKenzie because she's still in parliament. What a ludicrous double standard. There's no technical nature to this.

Glenn Sterle (WA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Road Safety) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! It being 6.23 pm the time for debate has expired. I put the question to the Senate that the motion moved by Senator Lambie to take note of the report delivered by Senator Cormann be agreed to.

Question agreed to.