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

The Commonwealth Entities Legislation Amendment Bill 2026 is, supposedly, presented as a governance modernisation measure. It is aimed at aligning certain statutory office holders with, apparently, contemporary accountability standards. It applies to the following entities: the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research, the Australian Trade and Investment Commission, the Australian Safeguards and Non-Proliferation Office and the Office of Parliamentary Counsel.

Australians are, at present, living under one of the most secretive and least transparent federal governments that we have seen. I recall as a boy growing up on a farm at Brucedale—nine miles, we used to say, from Wagga Wagga. I can remember the then federal member—he'd been a state member before that—the honourable Wal Fife, the late Wal Fife. He was the member for Wagga Wagga in the state parliament from 1957 to 1975 and then he stood for federal Parliament and won. He served Farrer from 1975 to 1984 and then, after a redistribution of boundaries, Hume from 1984 until his retirement in 1993. When my late father, Lance, was farming along the Olympic Way and Wal was driving past back to his home in Wagga Wagga and saw Dad, he'd pull up. I can remember the two of them having long conversations over the fence. Dad would always say to me, 'Now there's the local member,' and he was so highly respected—as he should have been.

I don't think the electorate in general has the same respect for politicians—certainly not for party politicians—and that is of deep regret. It is a shame, because you don't get to be elected to the House of Representatives unless you get a high proportion of votes, and we should have accountability, transparency and respect for those office holders. We should.

I can remember when I first came to this place in 2010. Harry Jenkins, the then speaker, said, 'Don't ever look across the parliament and think that someone there doesn't deserve their place here, because they've earned the number of votes required, they've earned the respect of their electorates and they've earned their place to sit in the House of Representatives.' The Senate's a different story altogether. I'm not paraphrasing Mr Jenkins, but that is a truism. But, regrettably, there isn't the same respect for members of parliament these days. And these things—mobile phones and social media—have had a part to play in this.

This particular bill, the Commonwealth Entities Legislation Amendment Bill 2026, might be seen as being a perfunctory bill, and it is. But we've just seen, in the House of Representatives just now, another successful bid by the government to shut down debate, unfortunately. The Chief Government Whip, the member for Lalor, has gone in and moved a motion to stifle debate, and this happens again and again and again. When Labor came to office in May 2022, the Prime Minister elect, the member for Grayndler, said at the time, 'We will be more accountable; we will be more transparent than the last mob.' Labor hasn't been. And, unfortunately, that has added to the distrust of party politics. And I love party politics; I do. I think it's important for the Westminster system.

Does this particular piece of legislation assist and aid that process? Time and again, this government's instinct is to control information, to sidestep scrutiny and to move what would be seen as key decisions out of the parliament's line of sight. And that is a pity.

As I said, I am a believer in the Westminster system, and a big believer that ministers have to have accountability. Ministers must have the final say. I have stood in this place and in the House and talked about my concerns about how our ministers' responsibilities are being watered down because, at the end of the day, the buck has to stop somewhere. And, generally speaking, it always was the minister's office—the minister's pen. I don't think that we should have a bureaucracy down the hill getting the final say or rubber-stamping ministers' decisions. I say this with genuine intent: it's up to ministers and future ministers—and I'm looking at the member for Sturt because I'm sure she will one day be a minister—to not just take the word of their bureaucrats when they put papers that they need to sign into their in-tray, papers that will into law or into regulation matters or issues that are important and of vital concern to the general public. Make sure you read every item.

What we've seen from this Labor government is a pattern of watering down a minister's responsibility. I think what it also does is erode the culpability, the transparency and the 'buck stops here' axiom for ministerial responsibility. The party political system has served Australia well since 1901, since Federation. We have seen—and I can say that safely in this room right now because there aren't any of them here—the Independents and the teals make out as if they're running the show, and they are not. Labor's in power now. They won the most seats; government is formed in the House of Representatives.

What we don't want to see—and this is just learned advice; take it on board if you will—is a situation that's happened in some European countries, where the independents or minorities are running the show and they're changing the prime minister every five minutes. We've done enough of that since, quite frankly, Kevin Rudd got speared halfway through his first term. But what we don't want to see is the teals—they're already out there making out as if they're running every precept of parliament and every procedure, yet they will never be around a cabinet table—let's hope they're not—making the decisions. Ministers make the decisions. The buck has to stop with them. I don't like to see the watering down of the ministers' responsibilities. But what we are seeing is transparency being eroded.

Instead of lifting the parliamentary standards, what we've seen is Labor making accountability harder. I'm not that in favour—although I have had discussions with the Prime Minister about this—of charging for freedom-of-information access. That said, when I was the deputy prime minister, I would have about two staff members doing almost nothing other than answering freedom-of-information requests most days. Usually, the requests were from Labor—would-be ministers and shadow ministers pretending as though there was something behind every closet and under every box that needed to be in the full glare of the public. The Prime Minister himself said to me that it is just bogging down good democracy. I don't necessarily disagree with him on that score, but we do need to have public accountability. We do need to have transparency. I don't think, as with a lot of things, that this government is getting it right, with all due respect.

The matters here—because this bill is not being proposed in a vacuum—do sit squarely within the same culture: reduce transparency, centralise control and weaken parliamentary oversight. I don't think that is a good thing. That just gives rise to these teals and the Independents thinking, 'There is obviously something to be seen here, so we'll make a big fuss of it, and we'll go out into the media and we'll get all the undue attention that Senator Pocock and his cohort in the upper house often get about the power of statutory offices and the power of ministers.' Heaven help us! Ministers are there because they are given that responsibility by the Prime Minister because somebody has to look after certain portfolios, and hopefully Independents never will. That's the core issue. If you combine greater ministerial powers with weaker visibility, you won't get what's called in this bill 'modernisation'. I know this bill is there to supposedly 'modernise' governance measures.

According to what Labor's trying to do, it's going to move some maximum terms to five years. It's going to expand termination grounds to include serious misconduct—I would have thought that would have been there already—and, for most roles, unsatisfactory performance. If it were in the private sector, sometimes you can't get rid of people for unsatisfactory performance to save yourself. I know. I've been in those sorts of positions, and you have to manage people out. The difficulty there is that, if you make a mistake in the private sector that's going to cost millions or billions of dollars, you lose your job like that in an instant. You do it in the federal parliament, you get promoted. That's just the way it is.

The bill would allow ministers to set written performance standards which can be used when assessing unsatisfactory performance—okay. It would introduce express suspension powers and give the minister a new power to issue general written directions to the Office of Parliamentary Counsel. I'm not against ministers just doing their job. If only they would! If only sometimes they could! I'm really not. But, individually, many of these elements are not unprecedented. Again, I refer to the fact that it's just getting ministers to do their job. We certainly, as a coalition, as Liberals and Nationals together—

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