Enhancing ministerial accountability: the role of the print media

On the other hand, Foreign Minister Alexander Downer survived in 1996 after being forced to admit misleading parliament. Downer had stated that no Asian ministers had complained to him about the scrapping of a $120-million aid scheme, but Labor revealed earlier letters of complaint (leaked by the Chinese embassy) from a Chinese vice-minister. Downer eventually admitted that seven senior government ministers from different countries had protested.

There has been little change in the post-war period in the number of resignations or calls to resign where ministers cannot sign up to government policy, or clash for personality or power reasons. Sometimes such clashes only come to light when ministers resign, though the close relationship between the press and ministers and their entourages usually allows for plenty of newspaper gossip about splits.

Conflict of interest is hardly new. In addition to two ministers resigning for this reason prior to 1949, there were two such related resignations under Fraser. The Minister for Primary Industry, Ian Sinclair, resigned in 1979 after the Finnane Report concluded that he was not honest in his business dealings, although he was later acquitted of such charges in 1980 and returned to the ministry. Treasurer Phillip Lynch resigned (1977) over allegations that he had used a family trust to minimise his tax obligations, although he was also subsequently cleared and reinstated as a minister.

But interest in conflict-of-interest issues has increased substantially. A search of SMH digital archives for "financial scandal" generates just fifty-six articles for the 1955–60 period and 105 for 1961–70, yet increased to 234 for 1971–80 and over 1000 for the 1981–95 period. The Factiva database generates an average sixty-one articles per year in the SMH between 1987 and 2007.

Early in our period, Menzies simply asked his ministers to declare any financial interests prior to cabinet discussion. The press then did not seem to care about the issue. Share ownership became controversial only by the mid-1980s. In 1986 there were calls for John Dawkins, Minister for Trade, and John Button, Minister for Industry, to resign because of their or their family members' shareholdings; neither did so.

Under Howard's tough Guidelines, however, four ministers or parliamentary secretaries were forced to resign over undeclared share ownership. Jim Short (Assistant Treasurer) and Brian Gibson (Parliamentary Secretary to Treasury) resigned in 1996; Geoff Prosser (Minister for Consumer Affairs) 1997; and Santo Santoro (Minister for Ageing) in 2007, although the last compounded his offence by lying to Howard. In 1997, though, the Minister for Industry, Science and Technology, John Moore, managed to survive, as didtheResources Minister Warwick Parer in 1999, following a softening of Howard's code.

Media and parliamentary attention to conflicts of interest did not wane. Under Rudd, the Defence Minister, Joel Fitzgibbon, resigned after the publication of details of his association with Chinese businesswoman Helen Liu, amid allegations that Defence officials felt under pressure to do business with Fitzgibbon's brother.

Similarly parliamentary expenses attracted little press interest until the 1980s and no particular advice was given to ministers with regard to expenses claims or trips paid for by others. As late as 1984, Kim Beazley, when Special Minister of State, sought cabinet approval to extend to de facto partners the same rights to travel allowances as spouses of ministers, office holders and members.

A search of SMH archives for "travel rorts" shows just two in the early 1980s, 54 for the 1987–96 period, eighty-nine in 1997 and sixty-two in 1998, and then declining to four by 2007 (an average 23 for the 1997–2007 period). News-hungry journalists were increasingly eager to expose travel expense scams. A 1990 editorial noted that within just five weeks of Labor's federal election victory, 25 Labor politicians had "recovered sufficiently to drag their campaign-weary bones overseas at public expense"; while another mocked Beazley's car expenses of $5,400 for fourteen days in Perth (his home city), a figure twice as much as the $2,700 spent in twelve days in Canberra.

Travel rorts erupted as a major parliamentary issue in 1996 following the defection from Labor of Senator Colston. In 1985 Labor had kept silent when Colston's wife complained that he had given airline tickets paid for by the Commonwealth and issued in her name to another woman; now two Labor Senators leaked details to the media in order to place pressure on Colston. Although the federal police case against Colston was dropped in 2001 due to his terminal illness, ministers now had to be much more careful about travel expenses. Besides the resignation of four Howard government ministers over travel rorts, all politicians were put on notice after the ALP Senator Nick Sherry attempted suicide when his travel claims were questioned.

Abuse-of-office issues remain of immense interest to the press, as they were under Fraser when several ministers resigned: the Health Minister Michael MacKellar after he admitted presenting a false customs declaration form (1982), and the Administrative Services Minister Reg Withers after the McGregor Royal Commission concluded that he had interfered improperly to get the name of an electorate changed.

Today, intense media scrutiny means that any perceived abuses of power are extensively reported and trigger calls to resign, which may affect the minister's career even if there is no immediate resignation.