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

I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

I seek leave to table an explanatory memorandum relating to the bill.

Leave granted.

I table an explanatory memorandum and I seek leave to have the second reading speech incorporated in Hansard.

Leave granted.

The speech read as follows—

If someone is struggling to get by on $282 a week in JobSeeker payments and they miss a job interview they get a warning, if they do it twice they can have their payments halted.

If a former Governor-General goes to jail, or is proven to engage in the most serious misconduct, they keep on receiving up to $600,000 a year in entitlements, that's about $11,500 a week, no questions asked.

It's one rule for the elite and another for the rest of the country.

How is that fair, how is that decent, how is that reasonable?

It is a usual principle in public law that where an allowance or honorarium is provided after service, that this can be withdrawn where it is no longer appropriate or in the public interest for it to be awarded.

This simple provision was not included in the Governor-General Act 1974 through what can only be assumed to be an unintentional omission.

This bill seeks to remedy this by creating a power to stop paying allowances to former Governors-General, or their spouses, where a former Governor-General has engaged in serious misconduct. That power can be exercised either through the Minister making a declaration, or through a House of Parliament, most likely the Senate, passing a resolution that a former Governor-General has engaged in serious misconduct, disentitling them or their spouse to the extremely generous post office entitlements of a Governor-General.

The bill mirrors the one proposed by former Greens Senator Rachel Siewert and I pay tribute to the work she did in bringing the original proposal to this place.

The proposed new section 4AGA defines a cessation event as occurring when either House of Parliament makes a declaration under the new section 4AGC, or when the Minister makes a declaration under section 4AGB.

In order for a declaration to be made, the Minister or a House of Parliament must be satisfied that a former Governor-General has engaged in serious misconduct which includes inappropriate, improper, wrong or unlawful conduct. Examples of serious misconduct could include serious corruption or fraud, covering up child sexual abuse, and other serious criminal offending. This is a high but appropriate bar to ensure the scheme accords with public expectations of when an allowance should no longer be provided.

The Governor-General has a unique role in the Australian political system, but that does not mean this office is above universally agreed checks and balances. It must have accountability.

The entitlement this bill relates to is the post-office retirement allowance after a Governor-General leaves office in which they are entitled to 60% of the salary of the Chief Justice of the High Court for life. At current rates, this is $364,890 per year that every former living Governor-General is entitled to. After a current or retired Governor-General passes away, their spouse is entitled to a lifelong allowance of five-eighths of the rate of a former Governor-General.

Benefits also include office facilities, transport and administrative support. All together this means former Governors-General can, and do, receive more than $600,000 a year.

Where those people have engaged in serious misconduct including covering up or failing to take action on child sexual abuse, the ongoing receipt of this payment looks to victims and survivors like the state is supporting the perpetrator and continuing to ignore their needs and interests. It feels like the worst of the history of institutional child abuse repeating.

This is about accountability. This is an extraordinarily generous pension and set of entitlements and that must come with some serious accountability.

When it is no longer in the public interest for it to be paid, there needs to be a capacity for the Minister or a House of Parliament to step in.

No one, whatever their current or former role, is entitled to a blank cheque payable each year by the public regardless of their conduct. This bill provides much needed accountability and transparency in the issuing of these pensions.

In 2018, survivors' advocates including Bravehearts, the Blue Knot Foundation, Care Leavers Australasia Network, End Rape on Campus, Beyond Abuse and the Queensland Child Sexual Abuse Legislative Reform Council, wrote to the then Prime Minister asking him to make this change.

Many victims and survivors of abuse have asked me to make this move, and I'm grateful to them for their continuing advocacy for justice, and their continuing belief that the political system will respond to their calls.

Supporting this bill will show survivors that this place listens and understands, and will no longer allow laws that shield abusers from consequences.

This is not an academic issue, this is a real life issue playing out right now. Former Governor-General Peter Hollingworth is currently facing an Anglican church inquiry into serious allegations of his mishandling of child sexual abuse claims.

While I deliver these words, former Governor-General Hollingworth continues to take and take from the public. In just the five years from 2016 to 2021, the former Governor-General took over $3 million in payments and entitlements—all for an 18-month-long job that he resigned from in disgrace.

That doesn't pass the pub test. So now it's time for this bill to pass the test of politics and become law.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse showed just how important it was for survivors for the law to reflect the harm done to them, and for laws that shielded those that failed them from accountability to be removed.

I ask for your support for this bill so that we can take this modest but meaningful step towards justice for survivors of sexual abuse.

I seek leave to continue my remarks.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.