Rex Patrick (SA, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you very much. I'll continue. The situation is that the Auditor-General tabled a report in the parliament, but that that report was censored by way of a very rarely used power by the Attorney-General of Australia under section 37 of the Auditor-General Act. That's the first time that section has been used in respect of censoring the Senate since the Auditor-General Act came into effect. Indeed, the previous Auditor-General Act—I'm pretty sure somewhere in the nineties was the previous time when the power was exercised. The power was exercised on the basis that the parliament should not see information in the Auditor-General's report, on the basis that it was national security sensitive and commercially sensitive.

I just wish to inform the chamber that I challenged that decision, and the decision has been handed down today. The Administrative Appeals Tribunal has found that the Attorney-General basically committed both a political error and a legal error in his decision. It's another example of the government being secretive and stopping this parliament from having access to information which it rightly should have access to. We are talking about an Auditor-General's report. The Auditor-General is an officer of the parliament by way of statute. Without the Auditor-General, this parliament would be denied the ability to properly examine the actions of government.

The Auditor-General is a really important player. He has the discretion to remove information from his reports and generally has not had any issues in the period in which he, the current Auditor-General, has been in office—five years. He appeared before the JCPAA and made it very clear that he was of the view that what was in the report, what had been redacted by the Attorney-General, was in fact not sensitive. The AAT has backed that up.

So I just want to point this out. This is an error of legal judgement by the Attorney-General in much the same manner as he's made legal errors in respect of the prosecution of Witness K, the prosecution of Bernard Collaery, the prosecution of Richard Boyle and the prosecution of David McBride. This decision by the AAT today demonstrates that the Attorney-General does not have the capacity to actually make a correct decision around matters of national security and commercial interest. That's important, because, in some of the trials that are currently being played out before the courts, the NSI has been enacted on the basis of the Attorney-General intervening and requesting that information not be produced in open court because of national security sensitivities. This decision of the AAT shows that the Attorney-General is not capable of making such decisions, and he should now reconsider what he's done in respect of the—