Personal Explanations — ACC, Minister—Actions Resulting in Ministerial Resignation

I seek leave of the House to make a personal explanation in respect of my former role as Minister for ACC and issues that have been raised in recent days.

💬 Mr SPEAKER: Leave is sought for that purpose. Is there any objection? There is no objection.

This afternoon I have tendered my resignation from all of my portfolios to the Prime Minister, and the Prime Minister has quite properly accepted my resignation. I do so because I made not one error of judgment but two in dealing with a conflict of interest in respect of a friend who had made repeated attempts to me, during my period as Minister for ACC, to advocate and interfere on her case.

The first error I made was in July last year, when she said to me that there were concerns about what her status was prior to her accident. I provided a letter providing knowledge of her in that pre-accident period. The letter did make it plain that I did not seek, in any way, to interfere in ACC decisions about her claim and was made in the role of being a friend. It was an error of judgment, firstly, in doing the letter, but more so in it being on ministerial letterhead. Yesterday I asked ACC to go through and check all of the correspondence that I had over my 3 years as Minister, and there was quite a lot, with this particular person. The letter that I, for instance, wrote in March last year very properly said “I cannot interfere in your case. There are proper processes for you to go through.” In December prior to that, in 2010, I too wrote another letter to her in response, and acted absolutely properly and managed the conflict of interest correctly as well.

The second instance that brings me to the point that the proper thing for me to do is to resign is that there was a letter in March of 2010 where a member of Parliament was advocating for this person to the Associate Minister for ACC, who was then Pansy Wong. Pansy Wong, quite properly, said that this was a friend of hers too—she was on her campaign committee—and declared a conflict of interest and referred that letter back to me. ACC prepared a formal response to that letter, and I signed out that error back to that constituent without acknowledging that I too had a conflict of interest. It was that second letter, in which I having erred not once but erred twice, that has brought about my resignation this morning.

I do want to put on the public record that I did not in my view interfere in any way in the judgment calls that ACC made about that particular person’s claim, but I do accept that the signing of those two letters is not up to the standard this Parliament can rightly expect of its Ministers. I firstly want to again apologise to the Prime Minister, to my caucus colleagues, and to my family and staff. It is my intention to serve out this term of Parliament. I love this place. I am disappointed I am not going to be able to continue my work in some of those areas I have a passion for, but I apologise to all my fellow representatives for those misjudgments.

💬 Mr SPEAKER: I thank the member.

I seek the leave of the House to table the four letters, albeit one letter does have some personal information, and I assure the House the only information that has been removed is personal information that it is not proper to put before the House, so that it is quite clear as to the events that have occurred.

💬 Mr SPEAKER: Leave is sought for those documents to be tabled. Is there any objection? There is no objection.

Documents, by leave, laid on the Table of the House.