Is Albo In Contempt Over Haines Dirt Sheet?

I sat alongside Helen Haines on the crossbenches of the 46th Parliament. Although I disagreed with much of her politics, I found her thoroughly professional and a decent person to work with. Like Australians across the country, I am shocked and saddened by the attack on her.

However, the reports that a “dirt sheet” targeting Haines was circulated from the Prime Minister’s office raise a separate and serious question of parliamentary accountability and cannot be brushed under the carpet.

According to published reports, the dirt file circulated after Haines criticised a $6 million grant to Marrickville Golf Club in Anthony Albanese’s electorate.

Helen Haines was simply doing her job as an elected member of Parliament; holding the government to account and scrutinising the government’s use of taxpayers’ money. 

And rightfully so. Albanese stood to benefit personally from this gift of taxpayers’ money, by owning a house in the very same street as the golf club, and then he misled Parliament in an attempt to cover up and downplay his association with the golf club. 

If the response to that scrutiny was an attempt to intimidate Haines and others into silence, this raises an issue far more serious than ordinary political nastiness.

It raises the question of contempt of Parliament. How so? Let’s go through the details…

Section 49 of the Constitution provides the constitutional foundation for parliamentary powers, privileges and immunities. The relevant statutory test is found in section 4 of the Parliamentary Privileges Act 1987: conduct must amount, or be intended or likely to amount, to improper interference with a House, a committee, or a member’s performance of parliamentary duties.

The exact wording of section 49 of the Constitution casts a wide net:

“… any act which … obstructs or impedes any Member … in the discharge of his duty, or which has a tendency, directly or indirectly, to produce such results … even though there is no precedent of the offence”

The issue, therefore, is whether the dirt sheet was just political criticism—or conduct that "directly or indirectly" interfered with Haines’s parliamentary work.

Yes, it may be argued that this was just typical Albanese; a revenge attack by a nasty man wanting to get back at someone who criticised him.

But it went beyond that. This was not just an ordinary dirt sheet. With the timing of its release,  Albanese’s conduct had a “tendency, directly or indirectly, to produce a result” of intimidating Helen Haines; sending her the message to “back off” from discharging her duty as a member of Parliament. Criticise Albanese in Parliament and we'll come after you, so shut up.   

Further, or in the alternative, Albanese’s conduct “directly or indirectly” sent a message to the other crossbenchers in the Federal Parliament: if you do your duty as a federal parliamentarian and attempt to hold the government to account, to scrutinise the misuse of public money and corrupt conduct by the government, we will come after you personally by releasing a dirt file. You will become the next target, so stay silent. 

The use of intimidation to silence Members Parliament is nothing other than a form of censorship. Just another attack on free speech.  

So who commissioned the dirt file? Who prepared it? Who authorised its circulation? What evidence supported its insinuations?

And was its purpose to answer Haines’s criticism, or to discourage her (and others) from continuing it?

These are the questions the Prime Minister must answer.

And there is a significant historical precedent concerning what penalties should apply for such conduct. 

In 1955, the House of Representatives dealt with articles published in the Bankstown Observer targeting Charles Morgan, the Member for Reid. The Privileges Committee found that the newspaper’s proprietor, Raymond Fitzpatrick, and its editor, Frank Browne, had sought to intimidate Morgan in his parliamentary conduct and discredit him to silence him. 

On 10 June 1955, following a motion moved by Prime Minister Robert Menzies, the House ordered both men imprisoned for 90 days. Their subsequent legal challenges were unsuccessful, and they served their sentences in the Canberra police lock-up and Goulburn Gaol.

This case demonstrates that attempts to silence a parliamentarian through intimidation have long been treated as a serious matter.

The media should pursue those questions about Albanese with the same determination they would apply to any other government. However, what chance is there of that, with most of the media in Albanese’s pocket through the $67 million in taxpayers’ money they receive from Albanese’s so-called Journalism Assistance Fund?

The central issue remains straightforward: was the release of the dirt sheet on Helen Haines and its timing aimed at preventing a member from doing her parliamentary duty, with the purpose of discouraging and silencing her, or others, from continuing to hold the government to account?

If the evidence establishes that, the matter should be treated as a contempt of Parliament, regardless of who authorised it. 

The Prime Minister must provide a full account of his office’s involvement is. The nation should insist on one.

“Without debate, without criticism, no Administration and no country can succeed, and no republic can survive.”
– John F. Kennedy