Senator BRANDIS (3:48 PM) —Far from refusing to take responsibility for what happened in DIMIA, Senator Vanstone has assumed responsibility in the most obvious and practical way. On 8 February, she commissioned former Commissioner Palmer to undertake a searching inquiry into DIMIA to find out where the problems were, to rip the covers off the department’s processes and to come up with recommendations to fix them. That report was published, and here it is. What an absurd argument from Senator Evans and what a humiliating, demeaning performance from Senator Faulkner earlier on in the afternoon who, as a former cabinet minister, one would expect more from. What a humiliating performance, Senator Evans, because every argument you raise and every charge you make against Senator Vanstone comes from the very report—the Palmer report—which she herself commissioned.

The government and Senator Vanstone did not have to commission the Palmer inquiry, but they did. They did not have to give Commissioner Palmer the broadest imaginable terms of reference, but they did. They did not have to extend the Palmer inquiry’s terms of reference not once but twice, yet they did. When they received the recommendations—critical recommendations on which Senator Evans bases his whole case against the government—what did the minister do? She said: ‘We accept these recommendations. We publish the report and we will act upon them.’ That is accepting responsibility in the most practical way—that is, by getting to the bottom of the problem and moving swiftly to fix it.

What did Senator Evans, Senator O’Brien—and it was all a bit beyond Senator O’Brien—and Senator Faulkner not say? Nobody alleges that these mistakes, with terrible consequences for Mrs Solon and Ms Rau, and this misconduct which has come to light were personally the mistakes of Senator Vanstone, the minister.

Senator Wong —That is not the principle of ministerial accountability.

Senator BRANDIS —I will come to that, Senator Wong. Nor do they say that Senator Vanstone knew of those mistakes at the time they were made or that she ought to have done so. These were mistakes. Nobody has denied that grave mistakes with serious consequences for the individuals involved were made. Nobody says that the minister was personally responsible for those mistakes or aware of them. What they say is that somehow ministerial responsibility means that a minister should assume a personal culpability for the mistakes made at the most junior levels of the department by officers making decisions of which she was unaware. That is a bizarre notion of what ministerial responsibility means and it is unsupported by anyone who could speak with authority on what ministerial responsibility means.

There are two Australian academics who have written at great length about what ministerial responsibility means in our system. One is Professor Hugh Emy and the other is Professor Patrick Weller, the latter of whom has devoted a long and distinguished career to studying ministerial conduct and ministerial responsibility. This is what Professor Emy says:

And Professor Emy writes that there has been no precedent in the whole of Australian constitutional history of a minister being expected to resign on the basis of mistakes made by officials within his department of which he was neither aware nor ought reasonably to have been aware.

The leading study of the responsibility of ministers, though, was written by Professor Patrick Weller in 1980, and co-authored by a journalist known to all of us in this chamber—a very distinguished journalist—Michelle Grattan. What Patrick Weller and Michelle Grattan had to say about ministerial responsibility was this:

‘Undertake to correct them’—and that is precisely what Senator Vanstone did, in a situation where nobody can honestly assert that the minister was personally responsible for the errors and nobody can honestly assert that the minister knew that the errors had been made at the time they were made.

Senator Vanstone, with all the authority of the Prime Minister and the rest of the government, commissioned the Palmer report to get to the bottom of it. Unlike opposition senators who have spoken in this debate I have actually been through the Palmer report, and I cannot immediately think of a precedent of a minister, made aware of a grave mistake made by junior officers of their department, of which not only did they not know, but in the routine of administration could not possibly be expected to know, commissioning such a searching inquiry into their department.

It certainly did not happen during the Keating government. If it did, if I am mistaken about that, Senator Wong, when you speak in the debate perhaps you would be good enough to inform us of the occasions during the term of the Keating government when a minister, made aware of problems within their department, commissioned such a searching inquiry into the department’s processes, routines and procedures as did Senator Vanstone when she commissioned the Palmer inquiry. And, Senator Wong, when you speak, perhaps you would be good enough to tell us—because I am not aware of it—of any precedent of the Hawke government doing it, or of the Whitlam government doing it or, indeed, of any non-Labor governments doing it. To my knowledge, it is unprecedented in Australian constitutional history for a minister, made aware of serious administrative errors at a low level of decision-making within their department, commissioning an inquiry as searching as this.

Why is Senator Vanstone being chastised by the Labor Party today? The reason is that Senator Vanstone set in place a process, on 8 February this year when she announced the Palmer inquiry, whereby she knew or could reasonably have expected that Mr Palmer would come back to her with a report that would expose nakedly, rawly, candidly, bluntly, the errors being made in the department. How in God’s name is that a minister running away from responsibility? How is that a minister refusing to be answerable when she herself commissions an investigation and then puts it in the public arena, knowing that, by the very fact of doing so, she is making bullets for the opposition to shoot at her, as they have done in an unworthy and intellectually dishonest fashion this afternoon?

In a case where the impugned decisions happened so low down the ministerial chain of command that the minister is not aware, and could not reasonably be aware, of them, the first step in ministerial responsibility is to identify what the problem is. And, as I have said, by commissioning as searching an inquiry as this country has ever seen into departmental processes, and thereby opening herself up to political criticism by those who do not descend below the level of rhetoric, Senator Vanstone has certainly fulfilled the first of those requirements.

But the second thing that ministerial responsibility means is that, when made aware by the report set in train by the minister of what the problems are, you fix them. When Senator Vanstone received the Palmer report, she did three things. First of all she released it. That might seem to senators something that she ought to have done, but more commonly than not, as you know Mr Deputy President, in governments of both political persuasions, when inquiries into departmental processes are made, they are not publicly released. So the first thing Senator Vanstone did was to release the report.

Let the point be made, lest it be missed in the fog of rhetoric from the opposition, who do not want to condescend to the facts—or, as Senator Evans rather preciously said, let us not have the legalities here; and I can understand, Senator Evans, why you are not interested in the legalities—that there is not one word in the Palmer report that is a criticism of Senator Vanstone. That is not because the terms of reference are too narrow. It is acknowledged that they are very wide. It is not because Mr Palmer was not a tenacious and thorough investigator—because by common acclaim and reputation he is. It is not for any reason other than there was no personal criticism of the minister to be offered, because Senator Vanstone neither knew nor could reasonably have been aware of the decisions made by junior officials in the department.

So this report was published, containing not a breath of criticism of Senator Vanstone. The second thing Senator Vanstone did after authorising its publication—and I acknowledge that it is a report critical of the culture of the department; we all know that—was to apologise, along with the Prime Minister, to the people concerned, as they ought and as they did without any hesitancy. The third thing Senator Vanstone did—and I think in terms of taking responsibility it was the most important thing she could have done—was to take responsibility for fixing the problems. She took responsibility for identifying them, she took responsibility for exhaustively and thoroughly investigating them, and she took responsibility for fixing them.

The measures that the Palmer report recommended, which Senator Vanstone has moved swiftly to implement, include: the establishment of a national verification and advice unit within the department to improve the process of identifying individuals who cannot be positively identified; the creation of detention review manager positions in the department to ensure constant revisiting of individual cases; improvements to the mental health services at Baxter immigration detention facility; additional non-compellable power for the minister to specify alternative arrangements for a person’s detention, with the result that there are now no children in immigration detention centres—a measure that arose not merely from Palmer but from a debate driven within the government parties; the addition of non-compellable powers for the minister acting personally to grant a visa to a person in detention; revision of the removal pending bridging visas to broaden their application and allow more detainees to be released; six-monthly reporting to the Ombudsman on persons in detention for two years or more; a legislative requirement time frame of three months for the processing of refugee claims at primary stage and of three-monthly review intervals; and a requirement on the department to complete all primary assessments of applications for permanent protection visas from the existing caseload of temporary protection visa holders by 31 October 2005. The minister has also announced more detailed changes in the detention centres, particularly at Baxter and Villawood.

Mr Deputy President, you could have heard the cheap rhetoric from Senator Faulkner, Senator O’Brien and Senator Evans—the demeaning, humiliating, rhetorical flourishes we have heard from the opposition—and been unaware that all of those decisions were made as a result of the Palmer report. You would have been unaware that the Palmer report contained not a breath of criticism of Senator Vanstone. You would have been unaware that this is as exhaustive a review of departmental processes as exists in Australia’s constitutional history. And you would have been unaware, listening to the Labor Party, that all that happened because Senator Vanstone, having been made aware of these mistakes, rolled up her sleeves and said, ‘Even though this might embarrass the government and it might make bullets for the opposition to fire at us, let’s get to the bottom of these problems and let us fix them.’ (Time expired)