Mr TANNER (3:48 PM) —The last time that the House sat the Minister for Employment, Workplace Relations and Small Business outlined his breach of the Remuneration Tribunal guidelines with respect to his telecard, how he gave the telecard number and the PIN number to his son, how it subsequently went astray to persons who he said at that stage were unknown and how he was prepared to pay back the $950 that his son had incurred at the time and when certain events had happened. Since that time, the minister has been dragged kicking and screaming to pay the full amount that the Commonwealth has incurred as a result of his breach of the guidelines. He has been forced, along with other members of the government, to provide a significantly greater amount of detail about the whole affair, which has gradually spilled out into the public arena, in spite of his best efforts and in spite of the best efforts of the government to try to ensure that the minimum amount of information was available.

We now know, as a result of information that has become available in the public arena, that the picture he painted in this place three weeks ago is a tissue of deceit and distortion. It was all designed to ensure that he could be shielded from the full responsibility of his actions and, more importantly, that his son could be shielded from full responsibility for his actions. What he has endeavoured to do from 10 October, when the matter first became public, up until now is to maximise the protection that he and his son enjoy, to minimise the extent to which they cop the responsibility for these actions and for the consequences that have flowed from them, to ensure that other people—people who may or may not be innocent—carry the blame for those actions and to cover up the cover-up, the attempts that occurred last year to prevent this issue from ever becoming public, from ever being exposed to the full light of day as to what had occurred. The minister has endeavoured all along to try to minimise the extent to which the public is aware of precisely what occurred between him, the Special Minister of State, the Minister for Finance and Administration and the Prime Minister.

Today we have seen a new strategy. You may recall that, a few weeks ago when this matter first came up, I talked about the multiple personalities of the minister—he moved from `Snarling Pete' to `Penitent Pete' in the blinking of an eye. Today we have a new one: we have `Whispering Pete'. It appears that the minister's approach today is that the lower the volume the less the culpability. We are clearly going to need improvements to the House's PA because he seems to believe that the way to deal with this matter is to soften his voice, go sotto voce and that that will mean the issue is less significant. The lower his voice the less serious the issue.

I am afraid it will not work, Minister, because the issues that are at stake here today go to the very core of questions about standards in public life. This is not a trivial matter. It is of enormous interest to ordinary citizens, ordinary taxpayers, because they do have to pay up. They do have to account for their transgressions. Whether it is dealing with the tax office, Centrelink or minor traffic violations, ordinary citizens do have to render account. Yet this minister has sought, at every turn, to evade his responsibilities, to cover up the actions that he has been involved in, to shift blame, and to prevent scrutiny of his actions.

Since the last sitting, almost every day has seen another contradiction exposed in the minister's story. He told us on the very first day, on 10 October, that he had stopped using his telecard in 1994. Yet on the Today program on 13 October he said that some of the staff calls that had been made post-1994 could well have been made by him, using the card at his staff member's home. He told us in the House on 10 October, `the details on the card and the PIN have come into the possession of people unknown to me.' Yet on 16 October—the morning after the existence of Ms X was revealed by the Solicitor-General—he said on AM, `I knew about Ms X. It was pretty obvious to me all along that this person had taken those details and effectively defrauded the Commonwealth.' He was not able to tell us about Ms X on 10 October; he was not able to say, `I know where it has gone,' he was not able to point out what had happened; but on 16 October, once it had come out into the public arena, he said, `Oh, yes, I knew about that all along.'

On 15 October, again with respect to Ms X, he said, `I think I met her, but I would not know her if I saw her again.' Yet, on the very same day, he said, `My son and I were both staying in the same place. From my point of view, all along it has been just as equally likely that she may have taken the details from me.' In other words, she used to hang around with him so much that she could have been there, at his shoulder, while he was making a phone call. She could have been there trying to hear the numbers, but he did not know who she was. That is a very interesting proposition, Minister.

On 10 October on 2GB and on the 7.30 Report, he said that the card could well have been taken by hotel receptionists. Hotel receptionists the length and breadth of the country were waiting to try to take Peter Reith's PIN number and telecard. Yet, in the same quote that I referred to before, he admitted that he knew from the outset that that was rubbish; the card had gone to Ms X, and the problems had arisen from the fact that his son had given the card to Ms X. Yet he was prepared to blacken the names of hotel receptionists in a desperate attempt to shift blame, to create a smokescreen, and to suggest that there were other causes for his own misdemeanours and for his own abuse.

On 16 October, on AM, he said that his son, Paul Reith, `didn't really know Ms X.' That was on 18 October. This woman apparently lived in the same house as his son for five months, but he did not know her. Not only that, but he offered her a flight on his father's private jet. It is a very strange proposition that you can offer somebody a flight on a private jet when you do not actually know them. I suppose merchant bankers do strange things from time to time, but I am afraid that is very hard to understand. I think the Federal Police are going to have to organise a line-up so that Mr Reith and his son can come along and ask, `Will the real Ms X please stand up?

On 3AW on 18 October, the minister said, `I have not been privy to the police investigations, to what the police have given to the independent Solicitor-General, or to what has been given to the independent Director of Public Prosecutions.' Yet, on 12 October—six days before—on 2BL, Mr Reith said, `I have had the full benefit of some of the evidence that the police have obtained as to how this whole thing happened. In a doorstop on 23 October he said:

On 18 October, in the 2AW statement, he contradicted that statement. He did not know anything about the police investigation at one point but, both before it and after it, he knew all about it.

On 15 October, in a doorstop, he said, `I was the one who suggested to the Prime Minister, in May, that there should be a police investigation.' Yet the Department of Finance and Administration minute to the Special Minister of State on 8 September 1999 makes it abundantly clear that it was the department of finance that suggested there should be a police investigation. It said, `It is proposed that the AFP will be provided with this information when it has been gathered, with a view to ascertaining whether it will investigate the matter. Indications from Internal Audit are that the AFP would wish to investigate.' More broadly, the government as a whole has been engaging in the same sort of cover-up and deception that the minister has. We may well recall Mr Reith saying that he stopped using his card in 1994, and yet the Prime Minister told 3AW on 20 October that when Telstra alerted the government to the misuse in July 1998, the department checked and it found that the minister was in the area where the calls that were dodgy had been made and therefore it was okay. But hang on—he told us he was no longer using the card and had not been using it for four years. The Prime Minister's defence as to why this early contact from Telstra was not revealed was, `We checked it and we found that the minister had been using the card.' Four years had gone by; that apparently is no inconsistency in the mind of the Prime Minister.

Time precludes me from going through all of the contradictions in the minister's story; for example, how is it that he knew the bit in the rule book that said, `You will be provided with a detailed account of your phone bill,' but he did not know the bit that said, `You are not supposed to give the card or the PIN number to anybody else.' There are a few little contradictions like that, and these are things that we will have to leave for another day. How is it that he could claim that the repayment of the $950 with respect to his son's bills would be tabled in parliament at some stage and therefore he is not engaged in a cover-up, yet he is unable to specify precisely how that would have been tabled in parliament had the matter not been revealed in the Canberra Times on 10 October?

The endless contradictions inherent in the minister's story from day one are only one part of the reason we desperately need a proper, independent judicial inquiry into this matter. Consider some of the other questions that are still unanswered. What contacts occurred between Telstra and the government prior to August 1999? Why did it take eight or nine months to involve the Australian Federal Police when DOFA advised that this should occur in September of 1999? Why do we not know who else—apart from Ms X, Mr Y, the minister, his staff and his son—used the card and whether those people were known to the minister? When was the Prime Minister's office first told? When was his department first told? Can we possibly believe that they were not made aware of this situation for a whole eight or nine months, while the minister is investigating and it is suggested that the Federal Police are involved? Can we possibly believe that the Prime Minister was not told and that his office was not told?

Why did the minister ring the Telstra whistleblower, Tom Healey, on 13 October to thank him for having spotted the problem—14 months after he spotted it? Fourteen months later the minister thought, `Gee, I'd better ring this bloke up in Telstra and thank him for sorting this out for me.' What else transpired in that conversation? Why has Telstra gagged Mr Healey? Why is Mr Healey no longer allowed to talk? These are some other issues. When did the department first advise the minister to pay the money back? Why didn't he act on that advice at that time? Why did the department minute say that $55,000 was involved? The minister said it was $50,000 and now we find it is $46,000. There may be a number of reasons for that, but one of the things we have not had explained is how many calls were made by the minister over that period and to what extent that differential is explained by the calls.

Mr Downer —He just explained it to you.

Mr TANNER —No, he did not, Minister. Why did the Solicitor-General accept Paul Reith's statement, corroborated by his father saying, `Yes, he did tell me that,' but, when it came to interviewing Ms X, not check with her father and mother, who could have corroborated her statements? Then he reached the conclusion that she was less credible than Paul Reith. Why won't the Prime Minister release the Director of Public Prosecutions' reasons, as were released in the case of the MRI scan scam? Why did the Minister for Finance and Administration, when asked about the May 1998 contact from Telstra with the government about the customer, not mention that there was a minute that showed that there was contact in July 1998? Why did the Prime Minister, who had previously been asked to identify all previous contacts, before August 1999, that Telstra had had with the government about the situation—and he knew about it straight after question time and he promised to come back and give the information to the parliament—not reveal that he knew straight after question time that he was aware that Telstra had contacted the government about this problem in August 1998? Why have all these facts been kept from the public and from the parliament for so long? Why did the government not go public at the initial stage and say, `We have a problem; here's what is being done about it'?

In conclusion, this issue is ultimately not just about the credibility of one minister; it is about the credibility of this government and, more broadly, about the credibility of this institution. It is about the credibility of parliament, of politicians and the political system—and we ignore the white-hot rage in the community about this issue at great peril. Once again we have a fundamental problem in our system exposed. While we have government investigating itself and while we have politicians investigating politicians, in these situations they will always fall prey to the temptation to dissemble, to cover up, to duckshove and to try to avoid coming to grips with the facts. We have managed in our society to move beyond the situation where we had police investigating police, so that when people have complaints against the police there is some means of independent investigation of those complaints.

The only conclusion we can reach in this situation is that we need an independent umpire, if for no other reason than so the community can have full confidence that, when members of parliament and ministers have entitlements that accrue as a result of their jobs, those entitlements will be administered properly and people will not abuse or misuse them, and when there are any complaints being made or there is any question mark arising from any scrutiny of a person's conduct, there is an independent umpire—somebody who is perhaps situated within the Auditor-General's Office and has an official responsibility on a statutory basis for auditing the behaviour of members of parliament and ministers with respect to their entitlements. We need to ensure that community confidence in the democratic system and the parliamentary system, which is leaching away as a result of the behaviour of people such as the Minister for Employment, Workplace Relations and Small Business, is restored. That can only be restored by two things in this case. In the specific it can be restored by a full, independent judicial inquiry into the minister's conduct—how the card went astray, what actions the government took, who knew—and it can be restored by establishing an independent auditor into the abuse of parliamentary entitlements. (Time expired)