Grievance Debate

Ministerial Conduct

The Hon. J.A.W. GARDNER (Morialta—Deputy Leader of the Opposition) (15:15): Ministerial standards and accountability are very important in this place. Standards and accountability are something the opposition takes very seriously, and the Ministerial Code of Conduct should not just be a set of words that the Premier of the day uses in order to describe a set of principles. It should be something that every minister lives and breathes. It should be the expectation that when they wake up in the morning, when they go to bed at night and at every moment that they are conducting their business they will abide by it.

There are a range of legislated and policy directed standards that are expected of everybody who is given the honour, the singular and unusual honour, of being a minister of the Crown in the great state of South Australia. You take an oath that you will uphold these standards. The Minister for Human Services has some questions to answer, particularly as to whether she has engaged in conduct that has been described earlier in question time.

The questions that the minister herself sought to denigrate throughout question time, sought to identify that she did not take seriously, and indeed seems to impute motives to members of the opposition who were simply seeking to ask questions about whether the standards of this house, of the government, and the expectations of the people of South Australia, were being met.

Those characterisations—using terms like 'petal' to describe opposition members asking a question—are beneath any minister. I think that it behoves the Premier to indeed reflect on his minister's conduct because for months we have been asking about the set of circumstances that a minister would find appropriate to send a political email, a self-confessed identified political email, to thousands of public servants throughout South Australia.

The gravity of that mistake has been downplayed at every turn by the minister, although it has been admitted as a mistake—until today in question time when the minister sought to revel in her own glory, describing her greatness and how she gets stopped all the time by public servants allegedly under her employ to tell her how good she is. Never before in the field of human endeavour, never before in South Australia's long and rich and coloured history has a minister been so loved by the people whose employment depends upon her favour.

Today was an extraordinary performance. As has been pointed out, there are members of the Labor benches on the back, a long way away, so far away that their interjections can barely be heard from those down in front, who loved today. He is still smiling. He has enjoyed it very much. He is excited about the opportunities that—

Members interjecting:

The DEPUTY SPEAKER:Order!

The Hon. J.A.W. GARDNER: But there was a very serious—

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Take your seat; there is a point of order.

Members interjecting:

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: The leader—

The Hon. D.J. Speirs: Yes?

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: —will not shout across the chamber.

The Hon. D.J. Speirs: I just wanted to invite him to the front bench.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: The leader will not respond to my directive. Okay?

The Hon. D.J. Speirs: It would be nice. Wow!

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Does the leader wish to remain?

The Hon. D.J. Speirs: I don't mind.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Okay, I can facilitate that. The member for Florey.

Mr BROWN: Sir, I would ask the member to withdraw 'impute improper motives' to me. I certainly was not laughing about the minister. I might be laughing at that clown over there, but no-one else.

Members interjecting:

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Okay. The member will continue.

Mr BROWN: Mr Deputy Speaker, I withdraw the word 'clown'.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: The member—

The Hon. J.A.W. GARDNER: There is a serious amount that has come up today from the minister's own mouth, and it appears that she does not realise it. In 2018, it was very clear that when the Hon. Stephen Wade received an email to his personal account that he did not indeed seek, members of the then opposition, now the government—the Premier, the member for West Torrens, and indeed the health minister—asked questions in this place about that very fact.

The then shadow minister for health put out a press release saying that the minister had questions to answer. I remind the house that this was in response to the minister having been in receipt of an email that was sent to his personal email account that he then identified for State Records. The shadow minister for health said, at the time:

It is a startling revelation that a state government minister has set up his own private email server. The ICAC Commissioner has previously given very strong warnings about conducting business on private email accounts. There are many questions that the minister must answer. Can the minister demonstrate that he has never used this account to conduct government business? What security measures are in place on the private email server? How do we know that information has not been compromised? I don't think the minister has any other choice but to hand over his private server to the Manager of State Records to ensure that there has not been a breach of any regulations, laws or security.

That is the standard that the Minister for Health—indeed the Premier and the member for West Torrens, by their also having questions in the House of Assembly—applied to the then minister for health just for having unknowingly been in receipt of an email.

This minister has had a political email sent out to public servants in, we would argue, contravention of the ministerial code of ethics. She has admitted that it was generated from a private email server. During the course of question time she has admitted that it was sent out, sent to the department for work business, on a private email.

I look forward to reading the Hansard. As far as I could hear, as far as those on this side of the house could hear, the minister seemed to state that she herself thought it was reasonable practice for government business to be conducted, whether by ministerial staff or, from what I heard, the minister herself (I stand to be corrected) using a private email.

That would be a direct violation of the standards set by the government when they were in opposition. It raises serious questions about abuse of the State Records Act, and it is in opposition to the former ICAC commissioner's statement. The minister has serious questions to answer. Today she has shown herself to be unworthy of the title.