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

I also rise to support this amendment. Out of all of the bill, this is probably the most important part to change. I thank the member for Indi for making these changes. I want to reiterate what was said by the member for Clark in terms of robodebt. The government has made a huge deal, and rightly so, about the impact of robodebt on individuals and the enormous stain that it is on Australian political public service history. Something which was so clearly put in the robodebt royal commission has been ignored. In some cases it seems to mischaracterise some of what of the robodebt royal commission said. Saying that somehow this fits within the robodebt royal commission's observations and recommendations is very disappointing, and I'm disappointed.

I'm disappointed, I'll be honest, with the Prime Minister who, in a question I asked specifically on this issue, denied that robodebt had anything to do with FOI, when in fact the robodebt royal commission is explicit in that, in relation to cabinet confidentiality and how that inhibited a negative for robodebt.

I'd also like to make the observation, more broadly, about what we're trying to do in this country to improve the quality of debate. Mike Burgess, the head of ASIO, spoke yesterday, very powerfully, at the Lowy Institute, talking about the need to disagree well, to have fact based and broad based conversations and to do this in an effective way. Let's be honest: the parliament doesn't do that very often. But, to do that well, we actually need the information to back it up. We do need the frank and fearless advice of the Public Service to be more available to the country, rather than less available to the country, so that we can have the debates that we need to have in this country about difficult political and public issues.

There are many difficult challenges that we are facing as a country—economically and socially. As a member of the public rather than as a member of the parliament, I would love more of that information to be out there in the public domain so that, as a member of the public, I can be better informed about whether the government is serving the people or whether it's not, about what policies we should or shouldn't be considering and about what policies have been considered and why, justifiably, they have been left alone.

In the dearth and vacuum of information, you will have other players who play, and I respect many of the think tanks and others who play in the space. But there are also many bad actors who play in this space, who try and fill the void of good public data and good public debate with sometimes quite misleading information. That actually decreases trust.

So I urge the government to completely rethink its approach on this FOI bill. What would it take to increase transparency in this country to give people more confidence in government and more information and certainty so our community can be more well-informed about what are the good policy choices that we should be urging our government to be making and what are the difficult trade-offs that we should be urging our government to be making? Let's be honest: there are very difficult trade-offs here, but most Australians do not have access to the Public Service advice that helps make those difficult trade-offs clear. So I very much support the FOI recommendations coming out of the robodebt royal commission. We should be decreasing, rather than increasing, restrictions to cabinet documents.

So I once again recommend and urge the government to support the member for Indi's amendments. I think they go to the heart of building trust in government by building a better public debate, and I think both of those things are really critical.

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