Mr DOWNER (Minister for Foreign Affairs) (3:31 PM) —Mr Speaker—

Opposition members interjecting—

Mr SPEAKER —The chair will act as the standing orders provide with anyone who fails to extend the same courtesy to the Minister for Foreign Affairs as they extended to the Leader of the Opposition.

Mr DOWNER —Mr Speaker, I do not think there is anything more amusing in this parliament than the mock indignation of the Leader of the Opposition. Every time the Leader of the Opposition speaks in his sort of explosive, over-the-top way it reminds me of that great phrase of Disraeli's when describing Gladstone, his political opponent: that the man is `inebriated by the exuberance of his own verbosity'. It could not be put better. One knows so often with the Labor Party, in these sorts of debates that occur from time to time in the parliament, that they always judge others by their own standards. The Labor Party always assume that people on this side of the House are somehow involved in conspiracies, cover-ups and so on.

Opposition members interjecting—

Mr DOWNER —Why? Because it is your usual practice—that is why. You think on this side of the House we would behave in the same way as you, and that is a great historic miscalculation of the Labor Party. On that they have always been wrong.

The simple fact is of course that all of the Leader of the Opposition's phone calls are paid for by the taxpayer. The Department of Finance and Administration is responsible for his telephone accounts. So too in the case of the Minister for Employment, Workplace Relations and Small Business—these accounts go to the Department of Finance and Administration and they are paid by that department. In this particular case the government and the particular minister involved have been perfectly transparent and perfectly open. You judge us by your standards over there, but you are wrong to do so. What the Minister for Employment, Workplace Relations and Small Business did, when he found out what had happened to his credit card and the PIN, was immediately and obviously to get the Department of Finance and Administration to investigate the matter. The matter was investigated by the department and it was referred to the Federal Police. How could anyone object to that? That is a perfectly normal, perfectly natural, perfectly sensible and perfectly transparent thing to do.

Of course if he had not done that, that would have been a matter for indignation. But having referred the matter first to the department, with the matter then being referred to the police, this is perfectly normal procedure. The police then referred their findings to the Director of Public Prosecutions, who concluded that there was not sufficient evidence to charge people. The Director of Public Prosecutions came to that conclusion—not the government. The Prime Minister, consistent with the high standards he has always set, then moved to have the Solicitor-General further investigate the matter. The Solicitor-General will report back to the Prime Minister and the government soon, and decisions will be made on the basis of that.

Mr DOWNER —Let us try to analyse what has happened here. What has happened here—and the honourable member for Werriwa is right—is that there has been the theft of telephone calls and, naturally enough, these are not calls that have been made by the Minister for Employment, Workplace Relations and Small Business—they could not have been. When you look at the number of calls that were made during the relevant period I think there were 11,000 calls from 900 different places. How could the minister have possibly made those calls? Why is that relevant? That is relevant because in no way whatsoever did the minister personally benefit from those calls that were made. There is no personal gain here for the minister.

Mr DOWNER —The charge you are levelling against the minister suggests that he somehow embellished his own wealth and enhanced his own living standards from these $50,000 worth of calls, and the member for Werriwa claims he did. This is the standard of the Labor Party. Obviously he did not. Nobody who knows anything about this thinks for a minute that the minister personally benefited—nobody thinks that. The minister has admitted that $950 worth of over $50,000 worth of calls were made by his son, and that is a result of an investigation by the department. The minister has done what anybody should do—he has repaid that money. Is the Labor Party suggesting that he should not do that? No, he did the right thing. I would have thought over there that you would congratulate the minister for showing such integrity in doing the right thing.

As for the rest of the calls, funnily enough they were not made by the minister. Funnily enough, the minister did not personally benefit in any way from those calls, which were fraudulently made by a number of other people who have been investigated by the Federal Police. To try to turn this into some party political game and to launch all these attacks against the government is—I think it is parliamentary to say this—indeed hypocrisy and cant.

As if the Labor Party's record is such a pure record! As if the Leader of the Opposition himself has ever had the courage to take strong decisions as a leader and deal with people in his own party who have transgressed what you would have thought to be normal and acceptable standards of behaviour! Take, for example, Senator Bolkus. Senator Bolkus is not one of the members of this parliament who sets the highest of standards, and all members of this parliament know that. We remember that, in January 1998, not very long ago, Senator Bolkus read to journalists confidential court documents relating to Skase and his assets. This was a clear transgression and, naturally enough, simply made the task of trying to track down Mr Skase all the more difficult. Senator Bolkus did this, of course, for party political reasons.

Senator Bolkus was censured not only by the House of Representatives—because you will say `Oh well, the Liberals and Nationals have a majority there'—but also by the Senate. Did the Leader of the Opposition do anything about it? No. He stuck by Senator Bolkus. This is the point: the Labor Party always judges others by their own standards. The Leader of the Opposition stood up here and said, `Some people are too strong in politics for the leader to sack.' Senator Bolkus is one of the leaders of the left faction in the Labor Party—I mean, no-one like that would be in the shadow cabinet on merit. He is one of the leaders of the left faction of the Labor Party. That is why he is in the shadow cabinet and it is why the Leader of the Opposition demonstrated that he lacked the strength to do anything about it.

There is a very current issue on the other side of the House which has still not been investigated, and that is that a member of the front bench of the Labor Party said, `Being the opposition spokesman on Aboriginal affairs is like being the toilet cleaner on the Titanic.'

Mr Tuckey —Have they found him?

Mr DOWNER —Have they looked? Has the Leader of the Opposition even looked? There was the mock indignation—`I wouldn't ever say anything like that; I condemn that,' but he never bothered to conduct an investigation. Has he called all the shadow ministers into his office, one by one, and asked them whether it was them? Was it the shadow minister sitting at the table? Did you make that remark?

Mr Tanner —No.

Mr DOWNER —He says no; that is one down. It is a pity that there are not any others here—such is the Labor Party. How many do we have? We have about four, I think, who said no, which means there are an awful lot left. We have asked a question; the Leader of the Opposition never bothered. Ministerial standards! You expect one set of standards on our side of the House when you practise another set on your side of the House. I would have thought that the Leader of the Opposition would have been careful about this.

I know the Minister for Forestry and Conservation is a Western Australian and will remember this story because it took place not very long ago and it is a Western Australian story. Back in 1991, a former Labor Premier was in a bit of trouble in a royal commission. His name was Brian Burke. That man was then the Australian ambassador to Ireland. We do not send people like that off as ambassadors; we do not do that—we send good people as ambassadors. There was a royal commission, and the royal commission was being presented with damning evidence about Mr Burke and his behaviour. We all know what happened subsequently to Mr Burke.

Let us look at Peter FitzSimons's biography, Beazley. I would not regard Peter FitzSimons as one of the great critics of the Leader of the Opposition. I will read from the biography; Hawke was the Prime Minister then:

Bob Hawke not setting high standards there? None of us would expect Bob to do that. But it is the last sentence that is rather revealing:

Oh dear, some people do not have very high standards. I mean, fancy being categorised with Richo—`whatever it takes'. Fancy being categorised with him as an arbiter of ministerial standards. All I can say is that that was a pretty embarrassing revelation. It is a good book, written by an enormous fan of the Leader of the Opposition, with plenty of damning evidence. I am not sure how much you would pay for it, but I think you can get it from the Parliamentary Library.

There are many other examples of ministerial impropriety and shadow ministerial impropriety in the Labor Party. When it comes to the Labor Party, one of the issues that should never be forgotten is policy impropriety and deceit of the Australian people. I do not think anybody on this side of the House and most Australians will forget the 1993 budget, when the l-a-w tax decreases were abandoned and wholesale sales tax was increased. Talk about fuel excise—fuel excise was increased. The Labor Party did this having gone into the 1993 election not only campaigning against the GST but also making it perfectly clear that Labor would not increase taxes. And you talk about propriety! When it came to the 1996 election people remembered that, and when it came to the 1998 election they remembered it. And you know what? When it comes to the 2001 election they will remember it as well. The man who wants to be the Prime Minister of this country is a man who has shown appalling standards of propriety when dealing with shadow ministers—their incompetence and their deceit—during his time as the Leader of the Opposition. He is a man who, in government, was apparently a great mate of Brian Burke's and stuck out for him in the face of all the damning evidence before a royal commission, and a man who sat in the cabinet and deceived the public in the 1993 election.

We all know that, during the lead-up to the 1996 election, the Leader of the Opposition was the man who left us with a $10 billion black hole after having claimed all the way through the election campaign that the budget was in surplus. All that sort of explosive rhetoric from the Leader of the Opposition—the red face, the finger-pointing, the excitement, the passion; I have often thought that he would explode one day—is so insincere. Honestly, all I can say is that it is so insincere. The Australian public remember; don't treat them as fools. The Labor Party have been making all sorts of phoney allegations against a minister who is a very decent Australian and a man who has done a great job as the minister for industrial relations in the face of enormous intimidation and threats from, particularly, the Labor Party's mates in the trade union movement. He and his family needed Federal Police protection full time because of threats that came from the mates and the roots of the Labor Party—that is, members of the trade union movement—

Government members interjecting—

Mr DOWNER —Yes, the controllers, as the member said. This is a man, the minister, of real courage and real decency. (Time expired)