Allegra Spender (Wentworth, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

ENDER () (): I rise to support the member for North Sydney's speech and amendments. I want to raise a question relating to this about transparency. The minister has said the government wants to be able to make cabinet-in-confidence decisions, but I am concerned that it is at the cost of transparency in this House. For example, in Senate estimates yesterday, there was a question to the Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development, Communications and the Arts asking for information on projects that have been paused for review versus election commitments that would be delivered without scrutiny. The senator asked the department of infrastructure for a breakdown of election commitments by electorate and was informed that the new government has informed the department they cannot release information on a per-electorate basis.

The issue for me and many people is that the government came to government saying that they would do politics differently—they would stop the pork-barrelling, stop the sports rorts and stop the car park rorts. This information should be provided on an electorate basis so that, in the House and across the community, we can assess: is this done for political reasons or is it not? We need to increase the transparency in this House, and that applies to whoever is in government, not just when the coalition is in government but absolutely when the Labor Party is in government too.

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