Katy Gallagher (ACT, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Finance) Share this | Hansard source

I also rise to take note of the minister's response to the Senate order for the production of documents relating to the report on ministerial standards and sports grants by the Secretary of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, Mr Gaetjens. I support very much a lot of what Senator Lambie said today and I think it's no wonder Senator Cormann left the chamber very quickly after giving that extraordinarily weak explanation of why the Senate will not be afforded the right to access the report that this government is doing everything it can to keep secret. Minister Cormann's answer was shamefully inadequate and didn't convincingly outline any reason why this report should be kept secret.

This arrogant government has decided to claim that the release of this report into the sports rorts saga would not be in the public interest, but then it fails to explain why. After selectively quoting from the document to cover his political needs, the Prime Minister now seeks to hide behind cabinet-in-confidence to protect the government from further scrutiny. Finally, the claim of cabinet-in-confidence is at odds with past practice even of this government, which publicly released other reports prepared by former secretaries of PM&C, namely into the Pyne, Bishop and Billson matters.

This government with this response today treats senators in this place and, through us, the Australian people as mugs. It's a patronising, arrogant response which says to the Australian people: 'We know better than you. Trust us. Everything will be okay. Let's just ride out this latest integrity failure of this government and move on.' The Prime Minister is keeping this report secret as a shield from proper accountability to the Australian people, but, by keeping this report secret, it also sends another, more sinister message. It represents a view that this Prime Minister thinks he is untouchable from the forms of this place—no accountability, no transparency, no problem. And, of course, if the rules or guidelines get in the way, change them, ignore them or rip up the rulebook and then blame others.

Let's have a look at why the government is saying it won't release this report. Just because a document was used by cabinet does not mean it is cabinet-in-confidence. According to Odgers, it has to be established that disclosure of the document would actually reveal cabinet deliberations. Senator Lambie's order for production of documents did not seek any information relating to the deliberations of cabinet. It merely sought access to a report that was commissioned outside of cabinet, which Minister Cormann was unable to establish in his brief comments today. Minister Cormann failed to address this in the limited words he did say, but he weakened his own argument by outlining that some of the Gaetjens report's key findings were already in the public domain—the bits that the government want us to see and believe. The reality is that the Prime Minister chose to quote selectively from the report in his press conference, telling Australia simply to believe him and to take his word for it.

We in this place all know that the Gaetjens report got the Prime Minister out of a tricky political situation. He knew he had to get rid of Senator McKenzie, but he couldn't do that without implicating himself and countless other members of this government if she departed over the actual rorting of the scheme. Enter the Secretary of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet and former chief of staff to the Prime Minister with a quick and dirty investigation to provide the PM with the McKenzie exit strategy he needed. What a surprise to learn that the secret Gaetjens report has in fact cleared his government of any wrongdoing in relation to the allocation of sports grants! Case closed. Us mugs here and the Australian people are meant to believe that in just 16 days the secretary was able to reach the ultimate public finding that it 'did not find evidence that this process was unduly influenced by reference to marginal or targeted electorates'. He was able to investigate this matter fully over 16 days, presumably interview a number of people and reach conclusions with, I hope, a similar rigour to that which would have applied to the ANAO's inquiry and report. The Auditor-General, on the other hand, presented unequivocal evidence of bias towards seats targeted by the coalition in the 2019 federal election. Indeed, the report found:

There was … bias in the award of grant funding—

which—

was not consistent with the assessed merit of applications.

So the not releasing of this report leaves us with two possible conclusions. The first is that Mr Gaetjens's report reflects poorly on the Prime Minister and his government—otherwise, why wouldn't he release it? The second is that the report was simply a ruse to get rid of Senator McKenzie, without acknowledging any wrongdoing with the blatant pork-barrelling that occurred within the sports grants, and that the investigation, if there actually was any, was nothing other than to write a script to get a dodgy government with a weakened Prime Minister off the hook. If that is so, the Secretary of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet is not acting with the appropriate level of impartiality that his office requires. Without the release of the full report, it is impossible to understand just how our nation's most senior public servant could form a view that is the complete opposite of that of the independent Auditor-General.

We are not the only ones to think that the Gaetjens report looks like a political stitch-up. On Thursday, Mike Keating, a former Secretary of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, said:

… having been involved in a similar situation, I find the fact that Gaetjens' report apparently ignored these fundamental considerations of good government and ministerial conduct inconceivable. In my view the Gaetjens' report reflects poorly on its author.

It would seem on the evidence that Gaetjens has produced a report whose only purpose was to get the Government off a political hook.

Instead of owning up to the sports rorts saga, the Prime Minister is trashing the Public Service. In his recent speech at the National Press Club, the Prime Minister doubled down on the legitimacy of his government's pork barrelling. Instead of owning up to the government's failings on the grants program and taking any responsibility at all, he attacked the role of the APS to conduct merit based assessments of grant applications. This makes a mockery of the fact that the minister had tasked Sport Australia with assessing the applications against the published criteria, as they were asked to do by this government.

The sports rorts saga has crystallised what we know and what Australians are increasingly starting to realise about this Prime Minister, that we have a Prime Minister who thinks he doesn't need to answer openly, honestly and respectfully to the Australian people. Against a backdrop of persistent claims of maladministration and industrial-scale pork barrelling from Australia's chief auditor, he simply commissioned another report which conveniently finds 'nothing to see here'. We see also a Prime Minister who, when under pressure, seeks to lay blame with anyone but himself, even if that has to be public servants from Sport Australia or those pesky journalists who keep asking probing questions.

The government might like to think they're untouchable right now. Their failure to comply with the Senate order for the production of documents shows again the level of arrogance they govern with and the worrying level of secrecy this government enforces. My message to this government is that arrogance, secrecy and failures of government are not looked upon favourably by the Australian people. Australians do not like to be treated as mugs.

Labor will not let this go, as some in the government want. We will continue to investigate these rorts. We will continue to defend the APS from the blame-shifting of this government. We will continue to stand up for an independent impartial public service as one of the key institutions of our democratic system, something this government has total disregard for. Australians know that everything about this sports rorts saga stinks because they can cut through all the faff, the words, the explanation and the bluster and see it for what it was—an out-of-control government on the eve of an election abusing taxpayers' money by using it to help them sandbag seats and win others. Today the government has confirmed what we've all come to expect—no accountability, no transparency, no respect for the conventions of this place, no care at all. It's up to the Senate to take a stand against this and work together to make sure we hold this government to account, because Australians deserve much better than this.