Julian Leeser (Berowra, Liberal Party, Shadow Attorney-General) Share this | Hansard source

It has been a long afternoon in the House of Representatives today. We have seen the hubris of a government with a supermajority giving itself a pat on the back in question time and evading questions about aged care that were asked of them by the opposition and that were raised with us by our constituents. This lack of transparency from the government is what today's MPI is all about because it evidences a disturbing pattern of behaviour that we have seen ever since the election of the Albanese government in 2022. It is a cancer that is eating away at the heart of the Labor Party. It takes the form of a pervasive and malevolent addiction to secrecy.

This is a government that always tries to limit and control the message. We saw this in the misinformation and disinformation bill, and I'm sorry we're seeing it again in the FOI bill that is going to be before the House in a few days. This government proposed reforms to the FOI Act, and they seem to be the misinformation and disinformation bill all over again. This government wants to stifle what people will say and what people will see.

This government talked a big game, we will remember, in opposition. They said lots before they came to power. They said they were going to be so much better than how they've turned out. Prior to the election, Mr Albanese promised the Australian people that, if they elected him and the Australian Labor Party to office, he and his ministers would deliver transparency, integrity and accountability in everything they did. They're the standards he wanted Australians to judge him by. Let me say those standards again: transparency, integrity and accountability. But what have Australians come to see from the Albanese government?

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