Kim Carr (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research) Share this | Hansard source

Six hundred grand—$600,000, as Senator Cameron makes the point here. We know what the real anxiety is here. It's not doing your job. It's actually trying to protect yourself against the criminal charges that are now in the offing.

This OPD was a very simple proposition: the production of documents in regard to the Great Barrier Reef, one of the great international symbols of the future of the environmental questions that face this country. We have the most extraordinary and unorthodox disbursement of the taxpayers' money in the granting of the $444 million to this private charity, with no regular process and nothing resembling due diligence. We know that within the scientific agencies—the people we rely upon in this country to provide that patient science, that public accountability and that expertise, and who can do so on the basis that they understand that the public is behind them and their expertise in being able to deliver the advice to this nation about how to protect one of our great national assets, and indeed one of the great international assets—people have been talking to one another about the consequences of this government's actions. We also know that this grant—which was announced on 29 April and included in the May budget—was made under the most extraordinary of circumstances. We know what is happening in the CSIRO. We know that the officers there said that this was an amazing level of duplication, of waste and of extraordinary capacity to actually frustrate the work of our scientists. We know that this was an outrageous abuse of proper processes, and I think we're entitled to see what AIMS, the other great public research agency in this country, says.

The Australian Institute of Marine Science, along with James Cook University and various other research agencies in that part of Queensland, have had an amazing reputation for the quality of their work.

To think that funding a private organisation—a private organisation that has beach parties as, essentially, its key function, and an annual beach party as its main level of activity, for which you pay a subscription to network around a helipad—is the basis on which we should now conduct fundamentally important environmental research about such a massively important public asset strikes me as an extraordinary proposition. The lack of transparency involved with this measure highlights the fact that this government essentially panicked. The Prime Minister's mates at the big end of town thought, 'We can get away with this and no-one will really notice'.

We also know what is a pretty simple proposition: this is a government, whether it be under Tony Abbott, Malcolm Turnbull or perhaps someone else now—we don't really know but it's probably Dutton—that has had an appalling attitude towards science, and this minister demonstrates that in spades. We started with the position under Tony Abbott where there was no science minister at all—none whatsoever. Then there was an outcry and Minister Macfarlane came onto the scene. Then there was Minister Pyne. Then there was Minister Hunt. Then there was Minister Sinodinos. Then, of course, the parliamentary secretary, Senator Seselja. We don't know whether he's in or out of the government. We don't know if he's actually sworn a new declaration of allegiance to the Prime Minister or not. But, given he's the numbers man for Mr Dutton, it's unlikely that any commitment he has given at the moment to be thoroughly loyal to the Prime Minister could mean anything, so we don't really know whether he's in or out. He's certainly not a minister for science: he's a parliamentary secretary and assistant minister. We've gone back to the old position of no minister for science. Every nine months or so, we've got a new person in charge of science in this government. We went from Tony Abbott, where the concept of climate change was not to be discussed at all. The word was a bit like 'innovation', it was to be banned. We went to Mr Turnbull who then said, of course: 'The word innovation has to be used in every sentence, irrespective of the context'. We can only imagine what it would be like with Mr Dutton.

What we do know is this is not the way to deal with the big issues with regard to the Great Barrier Reef—handing out half a billion dollars to some rich mates, so they can have a beach party once a year. We have to deal with these questions in a substantive way. When this Senate asks for basic documents, we're entitled to see them. Or, the minister should come in here and give a proper explanation, not hand a letter to the President and say, 'I need more time', and think that that will be enough. That's essentially what we've got at the moment. This is a minister that, frankly, is not interested in her job. She's not interested in actually fulfilling the functions of a minister, and ought to resign, along with the rest of this government. We ought to be able to go to the Australian people and let them decide. Let them decide about the future of this country, because, clearly, this government is not capable of it.