Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

When Labor first took office in the term before this one, they came to power on the promise that they would be transparent and that there would be no secrets. 'Let the sunshine in,' they said, and the public believed them. The public took them at face value as to what they said they would do as far as accountability is concerned. Yet, time and time again, we are being faced with the prospect that this government is more secretive than any before it. That is a shame. Provisions within this particular bill, the Australian Centre for Disease Control Bill 2025, create many concerns around transparency and freedom of information.

We've heard in recent weeks that Labor now wants to put a cost on FOIs. I know that, when I was a minister in many portfolios, I had staff dedicated to just answering FOI submissions—mainly put forward by Labor shadow ministers. That's fair enough. We live in a democracy. Sometimes the request for information was just a try-on. More often than not, it was just political gameplay by Labor. My staff and department—the Department of Transport, Infrastructure and Regional Development—answered those queries in good faith, yet we knew that sometimes it was absolutely just political posturing by Labor. Yet now Labor wants to put a cost on those requests. Some might well say that this is a tax on truth, and it probably is.

In October last year, the Minister for Health, Disability and Ageing—someone who, I have to say, is not forthcoming with giving information—alleged that a lack of transparency had driven a decline in trust. This is the same minister who, when another member of parliament writes to him, gets his chief of staff to respond. I do not think that is good enough. I don't. I think that, if a member of parliament to a minister, their being from the other side of politics should not matter. The minister should have the decency to respond as a member of parliament to a member of parliament. But that doesn't happen. I shouldn't know the name of the chief of staff of the minister for health, quite frankly. I'm not about to put his name in Hansard; I don't believe that staff should be hauled before the House of Representatives. But I shouldn't be getting correspondence from the chief of staff; I should be getting it from the minister himself. Even if he just gives it a perfunctory glance and signs the bottom of the page, ministers should always read every bit of that correspondence—not just every line or every sentence but every word—but that doesn't happen with this particular minister.

Despite this clear recognition from the minister, this bill goes out of its way to stop information from being made public. That is indeed unfortunate, because it goes against the grain of what Labor said it would do when it came to office. That was to be more transparent, to be more accountable. Yet the opposite is the case. While the government claims the CDC's advice will be published by default, the devil is in the detail. It tells a different story. The director-general will have extraordinarily broad powers to withhold information. In this day and age, when the public is crying out for major parties and for the government of the day to be upfront and honest, the opposite is occurring. It's simply not good enough. It's not.

What we're seeing are vague and subjective terms that could be used to withhold almost any piece of information that the government finds to be an inconvenient truth. There are no clear appeal rights, and, again, this goes against the hallmarks of justice, the precepts of a fair go—all of those things that a democracy holds near and dear. There's no guarantee that the public or indeed the parliament—the people's House, the House of Representatives—will ever see the light of day when it comes to finding out information. It is terrible. It's not transparency. It's not accountability. It's not what Labor said it would do. And it is a shame because the public expect better. The public deserve better. And they're not getting it.

It's yet another attack on transparency and democracy from a government that wants to put accountability behind a paywall. I know the shadow Attorney-General has said this a number of times: it's a truth tax. And it's in this day and age, particularly from this government, which says it will hold everything to account, including itself. And they're doing exactly the opposite. And Labor member after Labor member comes in. They'll always have their carefully prepared notes, and they'll just read them like robots—probably AI driven. But the people who put Labor there expect better, and they're not getting it. It's such a shame.

Labor has had five years, almost, to make the case for this policy, prior to coming into government and since being in government. They have not successfully done so. We, perhaps for that reason alone, oppose this legislation. We believe it can go to a Senate inquiry. Labor can do what they like. They can. They have a 51 seat majority in this chamber. I understand that. It's numbers. 'We'll get it through this place.' But a Senate inquiry is necessary to delve into precisely what the implications of this particular legislation could involve.

On the broader question of disease control and being more prepared when—and hopefully it won't happen—another pandemic occurs, I have to say, the coalition's response to COVID-19 was first class. It was considered by the Johns Hopkins institute—

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