Ruth Webber (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to make some brief remarks—and I promise other members in the chamber that they will be brief—in support of the remarks made by Senator McLucas. I was there for most of the two days of the health and ageing estimates committees and, having been in this place and participated in estimates committees for almost four years now, I was interested to note the minister’s inability or lack of will to attend the estimates committees. We have all been through arrangements where replacement ministers are offered up. In fact at one point Senator Kemp wandered into the Community Affairs Legislation Committee because he was sent to replace a minister and he wandered into the wrong committee. We invited him to sit down because we had not seen a minister for a while and we did have some matters of policy we wanted to put to the government. But unfortunately he realised that he was in the wrong place and he left, so we were back where we were.

I want to compare what happened in the community affairs estimates with what happened in the environment estimates. At the beginning of every estimates process, as Senator McLucas has said, it is outlined for all of us the questions that are appropriate to put to ministers and the questions that it is appropriate to put to officials. Ministers answer questions on policy, although if you have got a policy question in health you have got to wait now until November before you can get an answer out of the government. But if you have got policy questions on detail of expenditure or administration you have got to put that to departmental officials.

So when we decided to investigate some issues of expenditure and administration in the environment portfolio we had the great misfortune of having to deal with Senator Ian Campbell. Senator Campbell decided that not only was he a policy expert on almost everything—particularly denigrating other members of the committee—but he was also an expert on expenditure and administration, to the point where Senator Campbell seemed to think it was appropriate to take up 26 per cent of the time available in answering senators’ questions in the estimates committee. I can absolutely assure you that the policy questions did not take up 26 per cent of the time. This was Senator Campbell hijacking the debate, denigrating other members of this chamber, going off on some fantasy trip of his own about what he was going to save, when and how, rather than actually allowing the estimates process to be used the way it is meant to be used.

All members of this chamber at some point have got up and described the fact that the Australian estimates system is one of the most open and transparent processes of a democratically elected government anywhere in the world. If we have to put up with behaviour of the likes of Senator Santoro or Senator Ian Campbell, that transparency and accountability and the functioning of the democracy in this place is in grave danger.

Question agreed to.