Senator JACINTA COLLINS (3:22 PM) —I commend Senator Humphries for at least addressing the substantive nature of this debate, on speaking on the same matter. He asks, `Where is the evidence?' Let us address that issue. But firstly, I would like to say that this is not a tenuous personal attack on Dr Shergold. I doubt that Dr Shergold, for instance, would accuse me of withering treatment in relation to his position. What this argument is about is a further demonstration of yet another example of the integrity problems at the core of the Howard government. It is difficult these days to remember that phrase `honest John Howard'. This is another one of those examples. This is a case of the government, it is alleged—and we are having great difficulties getting the information to prove otherwise—excising important information from critical reports: on this occasion, higher education; on past occasions, hepatitis. This is akin to that problem that has been named `plausible deniability'. It is one of the critical credibility problems for this government. I am, because of past history, quite critical of the letter that has been tabled from Dr Harmer. Why am I critical? Because if you read the second paragraph on the second page, it does not say that the material had been taken out of the draft provided to the minister's office; it simply says the decision to remove all material had been made. I would like to know when that material was removed.

The other difficulty is that we have reports that this report did go to the minister's office as early as April, not November as reported in this letter. Now that was at a point when Dr Harmer was not secretary of the department. The question here is: when Dr Shergold was secretary, was that material passed over? It was not to the knowledge of Dr Harmer. We are not accusing Dr Harmer—or certainly I am not, from what I am aware of to date—of providing inaccurate information. The question is: is he providing incomplete information and why will Dr Shergold not respond directly to the reports that have been made? He has had four days to deny what has been reported in the Sydney Morning Herald: that it was he, Dr Shergold, who directly sought to have this material excised, and that it was to be excised because it was inconvenient to the government. Now, this is the Dr Shergold who, despite his claims of non-politicisation or of being nonpartisan as a public servant, also says some other very interesting things.

Senator Carr will recall, as I do, when he rolled up to estimates with a trolley load of material, with the press gallery already briefed about how much money it was going to cost the Commonwealth in answering Senate estimates questions—one of the most partisan pieces of behaviour I have ever seen in estimates, but of course this report was not on the trolley, was it? Of course not! I also remember when Dr Shergold politicised DEWRSB by seeking to impose Australian workplace agreements throughout that department. At the same time he is politicising these departments, he goes to the Prime Minister's office and claims that he is nonpartisan. Let us quote Dr Shergold, because he said, for instance, in a recent speech he gave:

And this is another example of failure to live up to his own rhetoric. His rhetoric, though, was that:

I wonder if that creativity is what guided Ross Hampton in what he did in the children overboard affair, when he created an impression that things occurred at night, to avoid critical evidence that was going to damage the government, or is it that attitude of creativity that guided, on this occasion, Dr Nelson's adviser Ross Hampton—previously with Minister Reith—to deny that the minister had tampered with the report? He said:

We now know from Dr Harmer that Ross Hampton is misleading us again. He has form, the government has form and Dr Shergold, unfortunately, has form too. (Time expired)

Question agreed to.