Michael Ronaldson (Victoria, Liberal Party, Shadow Special Minister of State) Share this | Hansard source

There is no point at all standing up here and rattling off figures about what happened between 1996 and 2007—whatever it is. That is not relevant. What is relevant is that you came in here at the start of your government and said that everything was going to be different under you. Indeed, maybe I should have left it until we had figures that were way beyond the figures you are just about to quote. Maybe I should have left it to 150 or 170 days. But I have not done that because the questions on notice are absolutely relevant to the way this government is behaving—absolutely relevant. I want to know what this government has been hiding. Why hasn’t it provided these answers before? Why does it need this quite peculiar process of the Senate for these questions to be answered?

There are a number of questions and I could go through them in relation to a whole range of issues—overspends, underspends, media monitoring, media contacts, media staff, credit cards, overseas travel. There are a whole range of things in relation to media monitoring—for instance, a one-year progress report and a whole lot of other things. The only reason that they have not been answered is that they are too difficult. Now they have got to come in here and explain themselves. I do not mind, they can have a go at what might have happened in the past—