Mr BEAZLEY (3:05 PM) —I move:

That this House censures the Prime Minister for his failure to uphold his Ministerial Code of Conduct in regard to the actions of the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Industry, Science and Resources:

(1) in failing to include in his Statement of Members' Interests his interests as Director and Company Secretary of Cape York Concrete Pty Ltd;

(2) in failing to include in his Statement of Members' Interests his interests as Director and Company Secretary of Vervale Pty Ltd;

(3) in engaging in the business of Vervale Pty Ltd, negotiating with the ANZ Bank while a Parliamentary Secretary over the sale of Hurricane Station on Cape York Peninsula;

(4) in retaining a directorship in companies in which the shareholdings extend beyond his own family, in breach of the Prime Minister's Code of Conduct;

(5) in being the beneficiary (through Cape York Concrete) of a business contract with the Australian Defence Force;

(6) in being thereby in probable contravention of section 44(v ) of the Constitution which states that `Any person who . . . holds any direct or indirect pecuniary interest in any agreement with the Public Service of the Commonwealth . . . shall be incapable of sitting as a . . . member of the House of Representatives'; and

(7) for blatantly misleading the House during Question Time today.

In moving this motion, I am conscious of this fact and impelled to it because it was not necessarily our intention to move a censure motion here today. We sought to obtain information from the Prime Minister; what we got were lies. He started, in answer to the first question, a lie when he said that he had not been questioned yesterday on the matter of whether or not the member for Leichhardt had other company interests which he had failed to declare.

The Prime Minister stood in this place before the people of Australia and said he answered the question he was asked. When you look at the question in the Hansard record of yesterday, you see amply clearly that he was asked a question on precisely that matter. And more of that misleading was evident when he got up just then and read from the information that was provided to him yesterday by the member for Leichhardt. We had some assumption that perhaps the member for Leichhardt had directly misled the Prime Minister in that regard and we find of course that the member for Leichhardt had not.

So what does that mean? That means that the Prime Minister—the member for Leichhardt having informed the Prime Minister of those matters and having sought the defence of the Prime Minister in regard to an assumption that he is not somehow involved in the day-to-day affairs of the companies that he represents as a director and a secretary—made no inquiries of the member for Leichhardt, none whatsoever apparently, in regard to the activities of companies other than Cape York Concrete. He made no inquiries of him in regard to the operations of the company Vervale. Yet by a simple checking of the record in regard to Vervale—a simple checking process that we can engage in as the opposition without the capacity to question Mr Entsch directly, as the Prime Minister has the capacity to question Mr Entsch—we find that not only is Entsch up to his eyeballs in the day-to-day administration of this particular company, including tabling its company returns, but also he is actively, on behalf of his business partners, conducting negotiations with the ANZ Bank in such a public fashion that he feels constrained as a parliamentary secretary in this government to refer to them as a `bunch of bastards' in the process of that negotiation.

What standards exist in this government? Let me read to you the standards that are supposed to exist, because what we have had here is a process of unbelievable sophistry, classing black as white and left as right, in the process of trying to crawfish, crawl, out of what has been held for many years as a pretty ordinary standard of conduct which is required and is pretty easily achieved. I quote from the Prime Minister's code of conduct, of which he was once proud, but which is now entirely honoured in the breach—not occasionally honoured in the breach, entirely honoured in the breach. The standards of conduct which Entsch fails repeatedly are these:

Ministers (this and subsequent references to ministers should be read as including parliamentary secretaries) must not engage in any professional practice or in the daily work of any business. They must not accept retainers or income from personal exertion other than that laid down as their remuneration as ministers and parliamentarians.

It goes on:

Ministers are required to resign directorships in public companies and may retain directorships in private companies only if any such company operates, for example, a family farm, business or portfolio of investments, and if retention of the directorship is not likely to conflict with the minister's public duty.

But then just in case this is insufficient guidance for somebody who finds themselves potentially in this situation:

. . . a minister should question the retention of a directorship in a company in which share holdings extend beyond the minister's own family.

Finally, it says:

Ministers are required to divest themselves, or relinquish control, of all shares and similar interests in any company or business involved in the area of their portfolio responsibilities.

So what we have here, as far as this individual, Entsch, is concerned and so far as the Prime Minister's protection is concerned, is a blatant breach of the ministerial code of conduct. I detect in that piece of grovelling to the Prime Minister, in that unexamined statement that Entsch apparently handed him yesterday, a bit of a mea culpa saying, `Sorry, when I picked up that shareholding register which asks for directors and any other interests which may bring you into a conflict of interest, it didn't seem to me that it would naturally suggest itself that I should so declare; because I have a shareholding in them, that would be a sufficient declaration.'

If it was a sufficient declaration, why is it there? If it was sufficiently understood, why did you sign the fact that you were a director of two other companies? You managed to get those ones right. You got that absolutely correct, but then with this particular one you did not get it. Why didn't you? The simple reason why you did not is that, if you had declared it and anybody had looked at your activities on a day-to-day basis, a reasonable assumption would be made by an ordinary person—but not the Prime Minister, who is dead-set scared of sacking any of his backbench—that when you are declaring that you are a director or a company secretary you have day-to-day contact.

What did that letter say, that letter which you produced in defence of yourself that was so gormlessly gobbled up by the Prime Minister yesterday and which is supposed to provide evidence that you are not involved in day-to-day contact? `We kept him on as company secretary because he is the easiest person to contact. We kept him on as company secretary because, if we had a few documents to sign, he was the easiest person to contact.' That clears you? That puts you right in it! And if the Prime Minister read it—and the Prime Minister says he has—it puts the Prime Minister right in it. A halfway commonsense interpretation of that is that any meaningful discussion about being involved in the day-to-day activities would surely entail a person being available in that regard.

This is an outfit—in the case of concrete constructions—which is signing contracts with the Commonwealth. This is an outfit—and we have not yet had time to explore this but, since you are hanging around, you can bet we will—which got a contract in circumstances, no matter what guarantees the Minister for Defence might be offering, which have been described by Boral, an infinitely more reputable company than yours, as dodgy, to say the least. We know who the cowboys are when we compare Boral with your company. What Boral objects to is the fact that the spirit of the guidelines which require a delegate of the Minister for Defence to seek a competitive tender were not adhered to in your case and you got that contract. I would lay London to a brick that if it had not been you, if it had been Fred Nerk as the 50 per cent owner, company secretary and director of that outfit, if it had been Fred Nerk of Cairns whose signature was on the document and not `W. Entsch, Parliamentary Secretary and Member', the chances of that outfit getting a contract over Boral or getting itself engaged over Boral were somewhere between Buckley's and none.

The circumstances in which you find yourself here, Prime Minister, are completely untenable. You have an argument from Henry Burmester about whether or not this might offend against the Webster judgment. Well, Mr Prime Minister, there is another High Court and a few other people taking a look at this, and it is a High Court which has taken probity issues more seriously than it did 20 or 30 years ago. So this one might well be tested. I bet your sweet bippy you are not in there with Henry. If you have to defend this one in the High Court, I bet you are not in there with Henry—who has put in the proposition now for you—to do it. You will be in there with a much higher priced array than Henry, because if you are not you are dead-set gone.

What we actually have is rottenness from top to bottom in evasion, absolute evasion, of the obligation to properly declare. There is absolute incredibility in the suggestion that you would not understand what it is that you are declaring. There is a difference, Mr Entsch, between having to declare a shareholding and directorships and company secretaryships for a very good reason. There is a substantial possibility that the exercise merely of a shareholding does not constitute control—mind you, it is not much of a possi bility if it happens to be 50 per cent of them. But it is quite conceivable that at some point in time there will be a set of circumstances where you have 500 BHP shares, you are not a director, you declare them and you retain your position. As you understand, because you declared your directorship on at least two other occasions while evading these three, if you are a director and the company secretary and you have the accountant writing and saying that you are company secretary because you are around more often than the other partner to sign documents, there is a probability that you exercise control. And in exercising control you run into other problems that you have with the code of conduct—this pretty ordinary code of conduct, I have to say—and you get yourself into a situation where you compromise the fact that you are supposed to be operating as a parliamentary secretary or a minister on behalf of the people of Australia and not yourself and that you are supposed to be doing it in a disinterested way.

The reason Boral are raising this sort of stuff, over the Prime Minister's objections, is that they do not think you are acting in a disinterested sort of way; they think that people are being influenced to go against the spirit of those guidelines by virtue of the fact that you are a parliamentary secretary. You would have thought that if you were going to get a couple of competitive tenders there would be some thought given to Boral. So you have to seek a few reasons as to why that was not so.

But when it all boils down to it, let us go to the culpability of this Prime Minister. This Prime Minister evidently was advised of all these things. This Prime Minister has picked up Entsch's declaration and seen him declare his company directorships on a couple of occasions—while he failed to declare on three others. The fellow rocks in and says, `Prime Minister, really there is no collision course here—nothing as far as concrete is concerned.' You would have thought maybe that the Prime Minister would have had a slight argument with him on the concrete issue. It is pretty darned difficult to see what the Prime Minister sees in that letter that had to be sent. But you would have thought that, even if it was not him, the old Max Moore-Wilton—the superefficient superbureaucrat we have operating here who cannot find out things about his parliamentary secretaries that the opposition can find out about in 24 hours flat—might have said, `We'll take a bit of a look at Vervale, take a bit of a look at what that might be doing.' But there was no initiative as far as you were concerned.

Why, Prime Minister? Because you wished to render yourself blind, deaf and dumb on this one. You decided from the outset you would not examine these circumstances on behalf of the people of this nation you are supposed to protect. What you decided was: `My parliamentary secretary is not going to go. I am going to defend him, no matter what. I do not want to inspect what is behind this. I want to mislead the House. I want to obfuscate in question time. I am going to defend you. I only have to last until the weekend and then the press will lose interest in this. They will be bored with it. We will lift the bat on this one and we will just let it pass, because there is only the poor old opposition out there to call for a bit of accountability and we can always blackguard them. So let us just skate through to the weekend and we will be able to survive on this one and not have to worry any more about it. These things too shall pass. You can tell the opposition that what they ought to be concerned about is the great economic issues of the day. You can tell the opposition that all you have to do is get up and ask us dorothy dixers every day. That is the job of the opposition.'

What we find from this Prime Minister is that he has been caught out. He has been caught out because he needed to do that examination and he has not done it. What do we hear from him on his own view about what is truth:

We want to assert the very simple principle that truth is absolute, truth is supreme, truth is never disposable in national political life.

J.W. Howard. What a ripper! But I have got something even better on the subject of truth, honesty and integrity. Entsch hardly ever speaks in this place. Entsch is up there imposing on the people of Leichhardt a massive GST and not challenging the Prime Minister on any of that, while at the same time he is into a $175,000 contract. What did Entsch have to say on one of the few things he talked about?

Mr SPEAKER —The Leader of the Opposition will refer to the member by his seat.

Mr BEAZLEY —What did the member for Leichhardt have to say on the few things he talks about? One is the Charter of Budget Honesty.

Mr Lloyd —A point of order, Mr Speaker—

Mr SPEAKER —I have already dealt with the identity matter.

Mr BEAZLEY —He says this:

I find it rather distasteful as an Australian that we as a government are being forced to enact legislation which in effect enshrines honesty as part of the political process. Honesty should be inherent in everything we do as representatives of the Australian people.

He goes on in the same speech, this paragon of virtue, this man who understands so well the processes of government, to say:

We in government have the intestinal fortitude to wear our accountability on our sleeve and to set the scene for the demise of political deception . . .

I tell you what: setting the scene for the demise of political deception, Sport, starts with your resignation. That is where it starts. That would set the seal on the demise of political deception. That would set the seal on the demise of political deception about people who do not declare their interests properly and ask us to believe that they cannot comprehend a simple document that is put before them. That would seal the demise of political deception when it deals with Prime Ministers who get up and misrepresent the questions they are asked for a smart alec appeal to the backbench.

He gets away with a lot with this Liberal-National Party backbench. There is a nefarious deal operating in this country. He gets up before them and he says, `Listen, if you object to what I am doing on the GST, forever hold your peace.' You would have thought there would have been a couple of them stand up and say, `Any questions.' But on the other hand there is this other side to the deal: `If you do not challenge me on this wretched, collapsing piece of public policy, I will not challenge you on probity, I will not challenge you on the standards. You can all keep your seats and have a contract with the Commonwealth. You can all keep your seats, you can keep your parliamentary secretaryships, and have business interests undeclared to the Australian people.'

What we have got here are shonky, shoddy standards from a Prime Minister grown too easy with a lack of accountability in this place and an ability to obfuscate every single question he is asked here. What we have got here is a wet, worthless, weak government that cannot sustain the basic integrity that is required from anyone who would represent the Australian people. What we have got here is an outfit deeply deserving of censure and a Prime Minister deeply deserving of censure for his lack of diligence, his indolence as far as his supporters are concerned, his arrogance and his ignorance on these matters, and his absolute unwillingness to sack somebody in an obvious position of breach. (Time expired)

Mr SPEAKER —Is the motion seconded?

Mr McMullan —I second the motion and reserve my right to speak.