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

We've seen the opposite. Former attorney-general the member for Isaacs loved preaching about accountability and integrity in opposition. Here's what he had to say: 'Appropriate, prompt and proactive disclosure of government-held information informs community, increases participation and enhances decision-making. It builds trust and confidence. It's required and permitted by the law and improves efficiency.' That was the member for Isaacs in opposition. They were making the point that transparency actually promotes frank and fearless advice. What about Minister Watt in opposition? He said:

We deserve answers and transparency. It's not negotiable—and it should not be negotiable—for the Prime Minister to comply with the standing orders and promptly answer these questions.

But, since he's come to government, he seems to have changed his tune. What about the Prime Minister? In the foreword to the Code of Conduct for Ministers, signed personally by the Prime Minister, we get this sort of sanctimony. He said:

Australians deserve good government.

The Albanese Government is committed to integrity … honesty and accountability and Ministers in my Government … will observe standards of probity, governance and behaviour worthy of the Australian people.

In making all that fanfare that he did in relation to his code of conduct, at clause 4, under 'Responsibility and accountability', he says this, and you only need to hear the words to see what a shadow between the promise and the reality there really is:

Ministers are required to provide an honest and comprehensive account of their exercise of public office, and of the activities of the agencies within their portfolios, in response to any reasonable and bona fide enquiry by a member of the Parliament or a Parliamentary Committee.

Is that what we've seen? Certainly not.

The tune now is very different. What we've seen, instead of transparency and accountability, has been the shutting down of information and shutting down of debate. We've seen a surge in FOI refusals. Now, only one in four FOI documents are fully released. The proportion of FOI requests that have been completely refused shot up by 27 per cent in the December quarter last year, and it's only increased since then. By 31 March this year, it had shot up to 31 per cent. Meanwhile, this government has presided over such a systematic maladministration of the FOI system that its own FOI commissioner, Leo Hardiman PSM KC, resigned his statutory appointment just 12 months into a five-year term. As was widely reported at the time, he was routinely ignored within his agency, and his very limited staff were being pointlessly diverted from FOI work. He gave a comprehensive and absolutely damning criticism of the government's approach when it comes to access to information. What's clear from the available evidence is that this government has been rejecting and ignoring ordinary requests for information on an industrial scale.

Then we have the non-disclosure agreements. Non-disclosure agreements have become a completely ordinary method in terms of the way this government conducts itself. We saw secrecy agreements in relation to workplace relations reforms, where Labor rammed through the wish list of its union paymasters. They gagged small businesses, employers and the industry groups that were directly targeted. Even on religious discrimination, hardly a matter of national security, we were told all too often by religious leaders that they were only being consulted on a confidential basis and they weren't given the full picture. Even Cassandra Goldie, the head of ACOSS, said in the Saturday Paper that legal gags have become routine with this government. She said:

Broad non-disclosure agreements needlessly stifle meaningful consultation and contribution from community sector organisations and people who hold direct experience and expertise of policies and services … Non-disclosure agreements also have a chilling impact on community sector organisations. Community sector organisations or individuals may sign agreements in fear of losing funding or being cut out of policy development processes.

Isn't this extraordinary from a Labor government that promised to be so different? The reason you ask someone to sign a legal gag is to enforce it against them or lock them out of consultation. This government should hang its head in shame.

Then we've had the secret manual. Can you believe this? We've had a government that has actually drafted a secret manual to help public servants avoid answering questions in Senate estimates. A document entitled Approaches to SEQoNs asked of all (or multiple) agencies was circulated among the agencies. Outrageously, rather than being responsive to this parliament as officials are required to do, this is a manual for obfuscation. Let me give you some examples. In answer to the basic question 'Has the department held any organised external retreats?', the response suggested by the Albanese government is, 'The data required is not captured centrally, and obtaining it would be an unreasonable diversion of resources.' In response to the question, 'How many staff within the department have put in place agreements to work on the King's Birthday or other public holidays?', they've said, 'Substitution arrangements for public holidays are locally managed and data on the number of employees who substitute a public holiday is not recorded centrally.' Thirdly, the response to 'Has the department engaged any external companies or individuals to provide training or advice to officials on the preparation of his Senate Estimates?' the answer is, 'This is not centrally recorded.' These are just three examples out of an 18-page document of evasion, deception and obfuscation, suggested by this government to avoid transparency.

What else have we seen? Flagrant flouting of the orders for production of documents in the Senate, such that the Centre for Public Integrity has made it clear that compliance with orders for production of documents in the other place has fallen to the lowest levels since 1993—those are the lowest levels in a generation. No government has been worse than this one on actually producing documents for scrutiny. Claims of public interest immunity—a claim used to oppose the release of documents—have tripled under this government and are being made every single week.

What else have we seen from this government? This government doesn't like transparency and it doesn't like being held to account, and we've seen this in the malicious and petty slashing of staff from those in opposition and on the crossbenches whose job it is to hold the government to account. This government broke with decades of bipartisanship to reduce the number of staff provided to the opposition and the crossbench. We're not talking about electorate office staff, which we all have as legislators—we're talking about the staff whose role it is to help members of parliament get across policy detail and hold the government to account. It's absurd, it's petty, it's a personal abuse of power, and it's all designed to shy away from scrutiny.

This brings us to the FOI proposals that we've read about in the papers today. I've had a briefing on the principles but I haven't seen the legislation. What has been reported overnight is a continuation of this very disturbing pattern of behaviour. At a time when transparency seems to be at a historic low, this government wants to push through laws designed to further restrict access to information and to charge Australians for accessing the documents that will hold government to account. I'm a pragmatic man. I will work with the government if there are sensible reforms in our national interest. But every Australian should be disturbed by a wholesale truth tax that will require Australians to pay to play to access information held by this government. A wholesale truth tax that requires Australians to pay to play on FOI sends a clear message that Labor believes that your information belongs to them, not to the Australian people.

Labor will try to defend this. They'll try to talk about AI bots—clearly, they know about AI bots if they're talking about them. They'll try to talk about vexatious AI requests—well, there are provisions dealing with that already. This is a government with a culture of cover-ups. All of these concerns point to an underlying culture that says the release of information must be managed and controlled. This is the culture that this government has built; a culture of secrecy, an allergy to scrutiny and a failure to keep to the standards that they themselves set in opposition. That's what they presented to the Australian people, and for that they stand condemned.

See this speech in context