2016-11-09
MR BARBER (Northern Metropolitan) — What are we talking about here? Mrs Peulich may want to give her version of what she thinks happened for the historical record — historical in the sense that the minister has now resigned — but I am taking a different approach. The issue here is that it appears that a minister was unable to distinguish between resources that were provided to him for his work — that is, a ministerial driver to take him to ministerial functions and appointments — and resources that might have been for purposes of a personal or domestic nature. That is a serious issue. Any time a minister of the Crown cannot distinguish between public resources provided for the purposes of them doing their work and resources for their own private use — their own domestic arrangements and personal needs — that is a problem. There does not seem to be much disagreement that the minister did not see the distinction. He certainly did not see the distinction when he ordered his dogs to be driven. He did not see the distinction when this matter was exposed and he was approached by the media. And then belatedly he seems to have been told by his own government that he had done the wrong thing, at which point he reluctantly admitted that he had done the wrong thing. He did the wrong thing; we all agree with that. But the question is one of accountability.
Accountability does not always mean that you have to resign or fall on your sword anytime something goes wrong in your portfolio. Accountability means that you have to be able to stand up and give an accounting of what happened, how it happened and how you have taken action to ensure that it will not happen again.
During question time today the Minister for Families and Children was asked about how someone managed to walk out of a low-security youth detention centre, and the minister attempted to give an account — well, she said she is investigating it and she will at some future date give an accounting about what happened, how it happened and what she has done to make sure that it will not happen again.
But in this case the matter was purely personal. It was about the minister himself in relation to the use of the resources that had been provided to him. The minister in the initial stages, and even really to this moment, has been unable to give an accounting of how many times this happened, whether he had some reasonable excuse and whether he was in breach of any codes or guidelines that he ought to have known about and that he ought to have observed.
Mrs Peulich is quite right in saying that there are fairly explicit provisions within the ministerial code of conduct. For example, section 2.7 says:
Ministers and parliamentary secretaries are to regard the skills and abilities of public servants as a public resource, and are expected to ensure that public servants are deployed only for appropriate public purposes.
That of course would include a ministerial driver. It says likewise in other sections. Section 2.9 says:
In particular, ministers and parliamentary secretaries are provided with various 'ministerial' office facilities and equipment at public expense in order that public business may be conducted. The use of these resources should be consistent with the requirements of section 2.8.
Section 2.8 is about having proper regard to efficient and effective administration, ensuring that facilities and personnel provided at public expense are not subject to wasteful or extravagant use. This inability to understand what are public resources for public purposes versus private resources seems to be where the minister tripped up. There are quite explicit terms in the code of conduct if he had any doubt.
I do not know, because I have never had a ministerial car, whether there are specific — —
[Speech was interrupted.]
Mr BARBER — I am not feeling particularly neglected because I have not had a ministerial car. There are many ministers and ex-ministers in this chamber who could perhaps explain. They could step forward and give their own testimony as to whether there are specific guidelines about the use of cars that ministers are to understand and that drivers would understand and whether there was any room for any misunderstanding. If there is a manual or a procedure for how cars are to be used — and I would be amazed if there is not — someone ought to bring me a copy here and explain that to me as well, because I do not know. But if that is the case, then again there may have been a further breach of what might have been a fairly explicit document.
Some people are calling for the rules to be tightened, but as far as I understand, the rules are all fairly clear. Of course you always have the opportunity to err on the side of caution and not come too close to crossing any particular lines. You should stay well away from those lines, and if you think they are unclear, that is all the more reason to do so.
The minister having resigned does not necessarily take care of the accountability problem, and I think that is the essence of Mrs Peulich's motion that was hastily redrafted after the minister actually resigned earlier today. In fact it is possible to avoid accountability by resigning. I think what Mrs Peulich is seeking to do here is to say, 'The minister is no longer the minister, but the Premier ought to be able to give an accounting of what happened, how it happened and what steps the Premier will take in order to ensure that it does not happen again'.
This Premier did not come to office promising high standards in public life. There have been plenty of premiers and prime ministers who did, either because they came to government or because they took over from an earlier leader of their own party. Let us face it: this is not the first time in the world of Westminster parliaments that someone has been accused of misusing a resource that was provided to them for public purposes.
Unfortunately the set of issues that are raised are all too familiar, but I just find it interesting that the Premier did not come to office promising new standards and a lifting of standards in relation to public life. I believe that is because he was not in a position to do so. He does not exercise the authority over his own party to say, 'We're going to have a new way of doing things'. If he had said that, then he would be able to say to his ministers, 'This is what I promised to the Victorian public, and now you're all going to get in line'. But he did not do that — and that is because I think he knows that there are too many people inside the modern Labor Party who do not see the distinction or do not care about what is provided to them for the purpose of serving the public versus what is part of the game, part of the rort.
Mrs Peulich has drawn parallels with the treatment of another former minister, Mr Somyurek, in relation to some improprieties in his ministerial office. But I also point out that at the moment, as far as we know, there is a fairly large group of MPs who are under investigation — Labor MPs — by the Ombudsman for misuse of their parliamentary entitlements. The suggestion has been made that electorate officers employed by those MPs were not doing parliamentary business as employees of the Parliament but in fact were seconded to the Labor Party to help it run its campaign.
That is a matter that is still under investigation. I make no judgements or finding of facts. Those are the allegations that have come from some of the staffers themselves and they are being investigated. Now, the scale of that runs into potentially a wage bill of hundreds of thousands of dollars, so I ask: how is it that the Premier could have enforced on Mr Herbert the requirement to pay back a few hundred dollars when large numbers of his own MPs are currently under investigation by the Ombudsman for misuse of public resources valued in hundreds of thousands of dollars?
How does the Premier hand out this kind of punishment to what on the scale of it, in terms of dollars, seems to be a much smaller infraction than the one being investigated by the Ombudsman? I do not believe the Premier did sack the minister. I do not believe the Premier had the authority to sack the minister. I do not think he had the muscle within his own party to pressure this minister. I think it was the minister's own factional colleagues who decided that his time had come and one of them could do a better job than he was doing.
That is all most unfortunate. It has been an unfortunate incident that was just made public, and in fact we are not going to necessarily see any lifting of standards or new procedures or new rules put into place. This issue related to ministerial resources that are part of the government system. As an aside I note that the Premier at one point did attempt to introduce what has been longstanding Greens policy, which is a parliamentary standards commissioner who would, as part of their remit, consider the proper use of parliamentary resources provided to MPs. The Premier, according to reports, was unable to get that through his own cabinet, so there is no independent body that can investigate the use by MPs of their resources, although I draw a distinction between what we are talking about here, which is ministerial and public service resources.
I do not wish in any way to prolong Mr Herbert's misery or participate in some exercise of getting a few more licks into the guy now that he has resigned. That is not what I am on about. The strict wording of the motion calls on the Premier to launch an investigation of the matter relating to the conduct that is being described or alleged, some of which the former minister has already admitted to. I presume it is implicit that if the Premier was to launch that investigation, he would then at some point disclose the investigation results. The Premier would give an accounting of what happened. How many times were these dogs being ferried around? Were there other issues in relation to the minister's drivers?
The issue of the failure to disclose a principal place of residence is, of course, a matter for the Parliament. It is part of parliamentary disclosure requirements. The parliamentary disclosure requirements, by the way, are so out of date it is ridiculous. The disclosure rules and the associated code of conduct, I think, were thought up in 1972 and implemented in 1975 and basically have not been touched since. The Special Minister of State has the ability to create regulations under the Members of Parliament (Register of Interests) Act 1978. There are even fines under that act for the failure to meet your obligations. In fact the Special Minister of State has the ability through regulation to update that code and the rules that relate to disclosure.
Some people have commented that while the disclosure of assets is required, the detail is insufficient. I disclose in a little bit more detail my limited property portfolio: an acre of bush in the Otways and a principal place of residence in West Brunswick. I am in the White Pages anyway, so I am not particularly worried about that disclosure. Others have commented that the rules around disclosure are insufficient. I just make the point that the government of the day could change that via regulation or the act could be updated if the government wanted to have a conversation with all the different parties in the Parliament about what we would find is an acceptable set of changes.
Without joining in on some members of the opposition's glee that another scalp is now hanging off their belt, the strict wording of the motion is calling for an investigation of the matter. I do believe the former minister has been unable or unwilling to give a full accounting of what happened, and therefore it is appropriate that we support this motion.
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