Julian Hill (Bruce, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Citizenship, Customs and Multicultural Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

I will give my friend the member for Berowra points for a valiant effort, but the troops look bored. They look sad, they look bored and they were looking at their phones. I'll give the member for Mallee a shout out; she was nodding appropriately. It's not easy to be a nodder in opposition, so well done.

Those poor souls watching the parliament from home, wondering 'What is this debate about?'—I think we've got one person left in the gallery—would be right to be confused at this debate. The opposition can choose for this hour of the parliament to bring any topic they like. They could talk about Medicare—well, they wouldn't want to talk about Medicare, they would have a nuclear explosion. They have one of their little nuclear meltdowns when they talk about Medicare. They could talk about the cost of living, energy prices, agriculture, defence, foreign affairs—anything that might have some relevance to the Australian people. But, instead, the Liberal and National parties choose to bring on this debate. It's their choice to bring on a debate at this hour about the culture of secrecy in government.

It feels like we may have entered a parallel universe. I checked the calendar when I saw the topic. Is it April Fools' Day? No, it's 2 September 2025. Is it the 'International Day of Irony'? It is possibly the most ironic thing that this mob—who brought you the shame and cover-up of robodebt, who brought you secret ministries and cabinet committees of one, and who failed to introduce a national anti-corruption commission—choose to bring on a debate about secrecy. It is the silliest thing since Tony Abbott knighted Sir Prince Philip, which the comedians then thought may, indeed, be the death of irony because nothing could ever be funnier. But here we are.

I am really happy—and the government is happy—to have this debate with this mob. It is an own goal—that's a little tip to the tactics committee—to bring on a debate on secrecy when you are the Liberal and National parties inheriting the wreck of the Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison legacy. It reminds me of the old saying: never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake. Now, you could quibble with two words there. You could quibble with the word 'enemy'—I did not describe the people on the other side as enemies; I described them as opponents. I wouldn't quibble with the word 'he' because, statistically and overwhelmingly, it's going to be accurate. But honestly, the mob who brought you the secret ministries—it's a serious point. It was funny. It was objectively the source of untold numbers of jokes, on social media and for the comedians around the country, that the former Liberal prime minister, Scott Morrison, swore himself in secretly as the Treasurer; the Minister for Home Affairs; the Minister for Science, Industry, Energy and Resources; and the Minister for Health. And, not content with that, he also secretly took on the finance ministry. He didn't tell anyone publicly, although he did tell quite a number of them. They're not going to be able to get away, if they want to bring on a debate about secrecy, by saying, 'Oh, that was that odious Scott Morrison character; he is gone.' The member for New England was all over it. Multiple members of the cabinet knew exactly what was going on. They knew exactly what Mr Morrison was like, and they knew what he was.

The inquiry by former High Court justice Bell said that the secret ministries were 'corrosive of trust in government'. The Solicitor-General found that the secret ministries of the Liberal government undermined the basic principles of our entire Westminster system of government and that it was a deliberate action. You don't accidentally appoint yourself as Treasurer, finance minister, home affairs minister and all the others. As I said, you can't blame Scott Morrison. The now leader of the opposition was a cabinet minister in that disgraced, degraded government that enabled this culture of secrecy, which corroded trust and corroded Australians' trust in government itself. No-one could have imagined that early last term, when this got revealed, we would have to introduce legislation into the parliament and debate the bill, week after week, to pass a law to say, 'You can't have secret ministers.' It seemed pretty obvious, as a basic principle of accountability, that Australians needed to know who the ministers were and that the parliament, from which authority for executive government flows, needed to know who the ministers were so they could hold them to account. You didn't think it would be necessary.

Then again, when I was chair of the audit committee we had to add an eighth principle—actually, it was when they had a majority, and I was the deputy chair—to the Commonwealth Grants Rules and Guidelines which said that ministers actually have to follow the guidelines. Even the now opposition, the majority, said, 'Yes, it's got pretty bad with the grants rorting. We probably should actually pass a rule that says you have to follow the rules.'

The previous prime minister was aided and abetted by his cabinet colleagues, as I said. I wouldn't be able to get away with recording in Hansard the description of the previous prime minister by Michael Keenan, the former cabinet minister who served alongside him, but you can google that. If you want to know what they were like, I encourage you, if you haven't read it, to read Bulldozed by Niki Savva. I actually read it when it came out and my step count that day was 506 steps, from the couch to the fridge to the bathroom and back again—so gripped was I with reading the inside account of the dysfunction that was the Morrison government, the trashing of democratic conventions and norms right throughout that period. Even John Howard had the decency and the common sense to criticise them. Yet when push came to shove, when a censure motion was brought to this House against the former prime minister for trashing the core conventions of the Westminster system, they walked out of the chamber. They couldn't even bring themselves to vote for it.

But it's not just domestic secrecy. Their lack of integrity and their addiction to secrecy trashed Australia's standing in Transparency International's global rankings—that is, the corruption perceptions index score. From 2013 to 2021, when this mob were in government, Australia saw the largest decline of any OECD country in Transparency International's rankings—absolutely shameful! On their watch, we fell from the seventh-least corrupt system in the world to eighteenth, it's a record low score for Australia. Why? Well, we heard a bit about FOI. The degradation of the FOI regime under the previous government certainly didn't help. There were absolutely savage cuts by the Abbott government when they were elected, completely stripping out the resources, and there was their failure to appoint a dedicated commissioner of FOI. They actually job-shared the privacy job, the FOI job and the information commissioner job with one person. So the same person who was supposed to be keeping stuff private was also responsible for making stuff available publicly. They failed to modernise the regime.

This government has boosted resources to the FOI commissioner—appointed an FOI commissioner—and overhauled the reporting to be more honest. There have been some silly media stories—a bit of hyperbole. That's because we changed the typology of reporting to properly distinguish between FOI requests that are released in part and those released in full. Unfortunately, some media outlets have muddled the reporting on that. But this week, proudly, the Attorney-General will introduce important reforms to improve and modernise FOI; to stop anonymous FOI requests—you'd think it would be pretty low-hanging fruit that you can't make an anonymous FOI request—to stop the secret FOI requests; to prioritise genuine requests; and to save dollars on the frivolous and automated requests. We heard the opposition's new little scare campaign—the truth tax. Remember he said it twice with emphasis for his social media cuts?

See this speech in context