Kate Lundy (ACT, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

At 12 noon today the government defied a Senate order to table the first report of the Commission of Audit. They did so because this is a secret report. We know that the last time a coalition government prepared a commission of audit, in 1996, it laid out a blueprint of cuts to the public sector in such a way that it permanently changed the nature of public service in Australia. We are at risk of them wreaking such damage again. And, whilst this report remains secret, the Australian people are uninformed of its contents. The threat of cuts has hung over the Australian people since the election.

I would just like to go through a chronology of events leading up to this day. On 6 September last year, Mr Abbott suggested that there would in fact be no cuts to education, no cuts to health, no change to pensions, no change to the GST and no cuts to the ABC or SBS. Then, on 22 October, the National Commission of Audit was announced by the Treasurer, Mr Joe Hockey, and the Minister for Finance, Senator Cormann. At the time, the government said this:

The Commission has been established by the Australian Government as an independent body to review and report on the performance, functions and roles of the Commonwealth government.

Then, at the end of January, the commission reported on the first phase of the review to the Prime Minister, the Treasurer and the Minister for Finance. Yet, on 14 February, we know that phase 1 of this report was provided to senior ministers, according to the letter tabled by Senator Cormann. Then, on 5 March, an order for the production of documents was put forward by Senator Di Natale. On 11 March, Mr Abbott changed his tune, asserting that the only areas quarantined from savings pre the election were defence, health and medical research.

We are now heading towards the end of March, when we know that the Commission of Audit is to provide the second phase of its review. The government have so far refused to put a date on when the Commission of Audit's report will be released publicly, although Mr Hockey has said that they hope to release it before the budget. But today we find that not only have they defied a Senate order but they have claimed public interest immunity for doing so, and we are still left in the dark. We do not know where the government plans to make cuts. We asked questions about this today in question time and we got back words that I believe show that this government is keeping some room to move. I asked a question specifically about cuts to the ABC and SBS. I did not get a definitive response of 'No cuts'—reflecting on its previous commitment—'We have no plans to do that.'

But what we know about the behaviour of coalition governments from previous reports is that they had no plans to do a whole heap of stuff that was subsequently outlined and recommended in their commission of audit report—and I think they are going to do it again. Labor has been meticulous in expressing its concern about what this Commission of Audit will mean, not only for the Australian Public Service but for so many of the essential services that it provides the people of Australia.

One of the big issues that has emerged since we have been debating this issue is the timing of the report. We know that the government have said that they are using this information in the lead-up to the budget and we know that the commissioners themselves have been told no area is off limits. We know that Mr Hockey, the Treasurer, has said that they are looking forward to adopting—and I am paraphrasing—pretty much all or most of the Commission of Audit's recommendations. This government cannot have it both ways. They are going either to use the Commission of Audit report as a basis to progress cuts or ask these commissioners to do a whole heap of work that will mean absolutely nothing.

What I defer to is what I know about the coalition's previous behaviour. What we know about the pattern of behaviour of coalition governments is that they go into elections, as they did in 1996, saying: 'We're not going to do anything much. We're not going to cut much. We're going to do a few things here and a few things there; but don't worry, it is business as usual.' Nothing could be further from the truth. The Australian people endured a similar response this time from the coalition as they did from them when they went into the last election: 'Don't worry. We're not going to make cuts.' The Prime Minister said then, 'No, there are not going to be any changes to health, no changes to pensions, no change to the GST, no cuts to the ABC or SBS, no cuts to education.' We have already seen a very different story emerge.

The secrecy surrounding the Commission of Audit means that, in going into this budget, we are fearful of the sort of havoc that the coalition government will wreak. We have established a Senate select committee, which has already tabled an interim report. In its very first chapter is a recommendation for a series of measures of accountability and scrutiny to be applied to the commission of audit process. Several recommendations were prepared and expressed in such a way that even things like the schedule of meetings should be laid out, the evidence collected should be expressed and, of course, the report—its outcomes and recommendations, which we know are sitting on ministers' desks right now—should be open to the public. This report should be open to scrutiny. If it is an input to budget, it should be scrutinised.

I would like to use my final couple of minutes to talk about some of the important evidence we have gathered. I am a senator for the ACT, as my colleagues are aware, and I remember the experience of the last time a coalition government came to power and had a national commission of audit. Its report back to the government was that the cuts to the public sector were both arbitrary and harsh—so much so that many people did lose their jobs in the ACT and our economy took a dive for a substantial period of time. This time the coalition government has relied on similar rhetoric, saying things like 'The Public Service has expanded significantly over the last 20 years'. That is not true. Over the last 20 years the Public Service has gone from 160,000 to 167,000, whereas the population has increased from 17.8 million to 23 million. So the population has grown by nearly 30 per cent but the public sector workforce has grown by just four per cent. There is no explosion in the Public Service. Further, Commonwealth Public Service expenditure is a mere 0.2 per cent more as a share of GDP than the last commission of audit back in 1996.

Evidence was taken from a number of people who appeared before the committee, and here I refer in particular to the evidence provided by Ms Nadine Flood, the National Secretary of the Community and Public Sector Union. She very clearly laid out the credentials of the Australian Public Service: it was rated by the World Bank in 2012 as being in the top six in the world as far as government effectiveness was concerned and in the top three per cent for regulatory quality. At the same time, Australia was the lowest-taxing country. Some of the most compelling evidence that we have received during this inquiry is starting to unpick some of the assumptions and assertions that have been made in the terms of reference of the Commission of Audit and the work that it is doing. If you analyse closely how the terms of reference are expressed in the brief that has been given, they are misleading in the very first instance. We do not have an exploding Public Service. We do not have an inefficient Public Service. We do not have a high-taxing government that somehow needs to find those savings, and we do not have a commission of audit process that is even addressing the revenue issues, which can start to look at some of the structural challenges of the budget going forward. As all of this piles up, it looks like a very political exercise put in place by a government committed to cutting government, not committed to good public policy or good governance.

This is a great shame for the Australian people. If we see anything like the contrivance that has been conducted in the past, if we see this coalition government using their Commission of Audit report to justify a series of cuts, then that will be the evidence we need to say to the people of Australia: you cannot trust a government that keeps secrets, you cannot trust a government that is unprepared to share its processes and allow the light of day to be shone upon them as it considers its budget contributions. I certainly commend my colleagues to support this matter of public importance and to watch this space as the mystery of the secret of the Commission of Audit continues to unfold.