Matt Thistlethwaite (Kingsford Smith, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Treasury) Share this | Hansard source

Because of the behaviour of LNP members, naturally many members of the public were outraged. They were outraged at the conduct of the government members on the House of Representatives Economics Committee and the abuse of taxpayers' dollars. So many members of the public wrote to the committee. They sent emails and letters expressing their disgust at the procedure of the House of Representatives Economics Committee. Two of them were former members of the House of Representatives. We had a meeting of the House of Representatives Economics Committee a month ago and I moved a motion that, in the interests of transparency and accountability, the letters from members of the public be published, that the letters be put on the website of the committee. The committee voted, and the committee voted for all. Obviously, Labor and Greens members voted in support of publishing the letters and the coalition members voted against it. The chair used his casting vote to deny publication of those letters. So much for freedom, boys; so much for transparency and accountability. The chair, in one of the hearings, said:

... many of you know that I'm quite hardline on defending free speech and I won't back down ...

Hollow words.

Labor's policy is fiscally responsible. It's an approach to ensuring that you are closing tax loopholes that overwhelmingly benefit the well-off in this country, so we deal with the structural challenges that the budget is facing—namely, the ageing of the population. As the population ages, the need for health and aged-care services increases. We have 120,000 Australians on a waiting list for aged-care places in this country.

Mr Falinski interjecting—

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