Richard Di Natale (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I am reminded of the words that the Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, uttered during the election campaign. He made this promise to the Australian people. He said that he would lead an open, honest and transparent government. He made that promise to the Australian people and those are very noble sentiments. They are sentiments that, regardless of what side of politics you are on, ought to be acknowledged and agreed with—because transparency is the lubricant through which governments function properly.

That is why so many people have become alarmed at what has emerged from this government since the election. This concern does not come from just the usual suspects; it comes from right across the political spectrum. It comes from commentators and from people right across the media. They are concerned about the culture of secrecy that has emerged and that has infected everything this government does. We are now seeing information tightly controlled by the Prime Minister. We have seen leaked newspaper reports that state that all media coordination and requests need to go through the Prime Minister's office—centralised control.

During the election campaign, you could not shut the Prime Minister or Minister Morrison up on the issue of refugees and asylum seekers. You could not shut them up. They were photographed next to banners with tallies of boat arrivals, we heard them talk about towing back boats and we even heard them talking about buying boats from Indonesian fishermen. What has happened now? They were elected into government and Minister Morrison and the Prime Minister have gone missing in action on this issue. 'No comment—that is an operational matter.' 'No comment—that is an on-water matter.'

Remarkably, in response to a request for information from this Senate—an order for the production of documents relating to Operation Sovereign Borders—we got a public interest immunity claim: 'Sorry, we cannot provide you with that information. All we can do is provide you with private briefings on matters that have been discussed in press conferences.' We are not interested in that. We are not interested in a few short paragraphs that tell us that something is an operational matter or an on-water matter.

It goes further. Freedom of information requests have been made more difficult. The media is no longer able to access ministers on critical issues. We get told that things are cabinet-in-confidence, that they are protected by public interest immunity or that they are operational matters. These terms are thrown around like confetti. It is an old ploy. It is a ploy you use when you want to bury information. The promise of open, honest and transparent government has not been delivered.

I refer this government that is so intent on maximising freedom to a passage from a 1966 work, Freedom in Australia,by Campbell and Whitmore. It says:

The most pernicious of official attitudes is secrecy. Ministers and officials have developed a firm attitude that the general public are not entitled to know anything about what they are doing—even if their actions vitally affect the rights of citizens both individually and collectively.

Yet here we are—with the government that promised to maximise individual freedoms missing in action.

In 2010, Senator Cormann, now the Minister for Finance, who was then intent on getting information from the then government, made the following accusation about that government:

… this is an arrogant, secretive government which has repeatedly refused to answer questions and which has not taken seriously orders of the Senate.

This is hypocrisy writ large.

We have senators who have sought access to information in relation to a specific matter for months now and the government has declined to provide that information

We think the release of that information is critical. I do not understand why the government is treating this as if it is a national security related state secret, given the words from Mr Cormann, the very person who has made the public interest immunity claim that is the subject of today's debate.

The Commission of Audit is a critical piece of information. It is the most important piece of work done in many years. It will inform the federal budget, and we already know from the commissioners themselves that everything is on the table. The issue of Medicare co-payments has already been floated, so that now there will be a six-dollar fee when someone goes to see their GP. It will be the end of bulk-billing. We have seen huge cuts to the public sector being floated. We have seen cuts to the Disability Support Pension. We have heard that the privatisation of Australia Post is on the table, and so on, and so on. These are significant changes, and they are worthy of public debate.

We do not shy away from the idea of a debate on these matters, and a Commission of Audit may, indeed, be a good idea. An honest debate—one that Senator Mason wants to have—about spending and revenue is a good thing, because we have some major challenges and we need to start planning for the future. But, instead, the process we have is a black box. We have the commissioners being hand-picked. We have the terms of reference biased to get a particular outcome. Submissions are not being made public. That is why we have had to set up an inquiry into this process, so that we at least inject some transparency into what is going to be one of the most important documents considered by a federal government in decades.

What has emerged through that inquiry is that contrary to Senator Mason's assertions we have a very efficient public sector. Public spending is not out of control; it has been stable for two decades and, compared with most other countries, we do very well when it comes to the spend of public moneys. Of course we can do better. But we do much, much better than most other countries on that measure. When it comes to our health system, far from being unsustainable, we have one of the most efficient and one of the fairest health systems anywhere in the world. We get value for money because of the fact that we have a single public insurer that allows us to drive down costs through the delivery of health care services. Far from being unsustainable, our health system delivers value for money.

We know that this is a country that is a low-taxing country, and we are taxing at a much lower rate, as a proportion of GDP, then we taxed during the Howard era, for example. They are some facts that need to be ventilated through this debate. Our tax take, as a proportion of GDP, has decreased significantly since the Howard era and is much lower than that of most other OECD countries. We have a revenue problem, not a spending problem. We have heard a lot about corporate welfare through the inquiry that we have run, and we have heard Joe Hockey talk about the age of entitlement. Well, let's start talking about the huge corporate welfare that flows to the mining sector. Let's talk about the huge subsidies and tax concessions that are given to other sectors of the economy, like the private health insurance industry. And let's start talking about some sacred cows like negative gearing and the huge concessions that are given through superannuation.

You see, what we have at the moment is an ideological debate. We have a government that believes that we should tax at a lower rate. Well, if you are going to tax at a lower rate than the one at which we are currently taxing, then what are we going to cut? What sort of society do we want to live in? Do we want a health system like in the US, where there are 50 million people uninsured and where the biggest cause of personal bankruptcy is people not being able to pay their health insurance bills? That is the recipe from this government, and it is not one that the Australian people want. We are heading towards a dog-eat-dog world under this government—a less caring society where it is everyone for themselves. If we are going to have a debate, we should have it. We should do it publicly. The government should release the findings of the Commission of Audit, instead of providing this as political cover for a government that wants to implement their agenda.