Tim Ayres (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise too, like the previous speakers, with a sense of disappointment about the government's failure to respond properly to the order for the production of documents that Senator Lambie moved in the Senate last week. It really leaves the Senate in a position where the Australian people are being asked who they believe. Do they believe the Australian National Audit Office, or do they believe what the Prime Minister said his friend Phil Gaetjens wrote up in his report? Do they believe the Auditor-General, or do they believe the Prime Minister's former chief of staff, the most political of appointments to that important, supposedly impartial position? Do they believe in common sense, or do they believe in the evasions, the dissembling and the cover-ups that have come to characterise the way that this government behaves, the way that this government purports to govern itself?

The only purpose that's served by this cover-up, by this failure to disclose, is to diminish Mr Gaetjens himself and to diminish this tawdry excuse for a government. One of the Senate's jobs is provide accountability of the government. Instead, here you have got members of the government, particularly what remains of the National Party members of this government, out there in regional electorates pretending that what this government did was somehow in the interests of country people, was somehow in the interests of rural and regional people. They rorted the scheme, they say, because it was in the interests of country communities—as if country communities couldn't do well being evaluated properly in a $100 million sports scheme.

Well, the evidence will show quite a different thing happened to country communities when Senator McKenzie and the Liberal Party headquarters got their hands on $100 million of public money. They knew what to do in the context of the election: they sent the money to privileged, inner-city and city electorates in the political interests of the Liberal Party. And the other thing that the National Party, or what remains of them, are trawling around in the bush—I had to listen to it a little bit over the course of last week—is: 'This this all just Canberra bubble nonsense. You don't need to worry about this.' Well, public accountability actually matters. The way that $100 million of taxpayers' money is spent really matters. If you take—deliberately take—$100 million of public money for your own narrow political purposes then there's is a word for that. It's corruption. Do you think any ordinary Australian could take $100 million of public money absolutely for the purpose, as the Auditor-General spelt out pretty clearly, of buying votes in the context of an election that they believed that they would lose; commission an investigation into themselves conducted by their political friend, who owes his job to their patronage; sack a fall guy, Senator McKenzie, for an apparent conflict of interest which, while a serious matter in itself, is in fact the smallest matter that's occurred over this sordid saga; refuse to release the inquiry; and hope that everybody moves on?

This is a government that's incapable of shame. I saw the Leader of the Government in the Senate leave as soon as he'd made his statement. I'd like to think that was because he felt some sense of shame, but it's probably because he had another appointment. The basis upon which this order for production of documents was refused—that somehow it's cabinet-in-confidence—is wrong and, in fact, is the coward's castle of excuses for refusing to provide documents. Previous governments have provided documents that were much more embarrassing and that have done much more damage without complaint, but this government will do everything to avoid public scrutiny.

I think it's wrong in fact too. I have been provided with an excerpt from Odgers that says:

It is accepted that deliberations of the Executive Council and of the cabinet should be able to be conducted in secrecy so as to preserve the freedom of deliberation of those bodies. This ground, however, relates only to disclosure of deliberations. There has been a tendency for governments to claim that anything with a connection to cabinet is confidential. A claim that a document is a cabinet document should not be accepted; as has been made clear in relation to such claims in court proceedings, it has to be established that disclosure of the document would reveal cabinet deliberations. The claim cannot be made simply because a document has the word "cabinet" in or on it.

It's pretty straightforward. The claim that this document is cabinet-in-confidence is misleading. It is a claim, made on behalf of the government, that is dishonest. It is a claim that is designed to provide a shield and to mean that this government somehow evades public scrutiny. Well, I'm here to tell you that we on this side will fight tooth and nail over the coming months to make sure that all the facts about this sordid affair come out and that Australians understand completely who did what, who said what to who, how this sordid plot was put together, who executed it, and who in the Prime Minister's office and the Liberal Party and National Party campaign offices were responsible.

As I said before, the communities that were hurt the most in the sports rorts scandal were country communities. I've heard the National Party MPs out there trying to imply, 'Yes, we rorted it, but we rorted it in your interests.' Well, what I'm told is that, of the 52 grant applications that were knocked back, 47 were in country and regional communities, and all the money flowed back into the city, into the seats that the Liberal Party cared about the most. There was the Mosman Rowing Club. Who knows what other funding arrangements were made to try and prop up the return of the poor old former member for Warringah?

The minister took the decision-making out of the hands of the independent process. The minister chose who got the novelty cheques and who didn't. Let's look at a few of these applications. The Tamworth Regional Council applied for a grant to install more lights at the Riverside Sports Complex. The lighting would have allowed more clubs to train on those fields in winter. The council applied for $432,304 and got an assessment score of 84, a score which should have guaranteed funding, but it didn't. Senator McKenzie knocked them off too. The Morrison government chose to send that money to a less worthy but more politically expedient place. You'd think that the member for New England—the member who, when he bothers to turn up, claims to represent the people of Tamworth—would be out fighting for their interests. But, no, that's not what he said. He said: 'We didn't vote for the bureaucrats, they were employed. We want the members of parliament to represent us. And if there is a blue between the bureaucrats and the minister then I think that is a good sign that the minister has actually got the gumption and the fortitude to stand up and fight.' Well, if I was in Tamworth, I'd want the bureaucrats standing up for me because I know that the member for New England won't fight. He couldn't fight his way out of a paper bag. When it really comes down to it, whose side is he on? Is he on the side of his constituency or is he on the side of the narrow, politically based self-interest of the Liberal Party and the National Party? He talks big about representing country communities. But what the show over there is all about is avoiding scrutiny; it's about doing the wrong thing; it's about being shonky; it's about being crook. They will stoop to any level to protect their own shallow, narrow, venal, opportunistic self-interest.