Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Minister for Finance) Share this | Hansard source

I thank Senator Gallagher for her question. As I indicated in response to Senator Keneally and have already indicated this week and on previous occasions, the government has been dealing with quite unprecedented numbers of questions posed through the parliament and, in doing so, the government has been providing quite unprecedented numbers of answers to questions posed through the parliament. We're not talking about hundreds of questions. We're not talking about thousands of questions. We're actually talking about tens of thousands of questions in the life of this parliament. The government work to try to provide answers, when we can, to those questions.

I know there are some senators who seek to be quite diligent and earnest in the approach that they take most of the time. I acknowledge in Senator Patrick's remarks that he just made that he stuck broadly to the question before the chair around accountability and government responsiveness. He addressed issues in terms of the particular nature of particular answers that are given. So, although I don't accept the premise of all the statements that Senator Patrick made in that regard, I acknowledge he at least stuck to the broad thrust of the debate.

I think, if the chamber reflected upon the remarks made by Senator Keneally immediately preceding Senator Patrick, we'd find that it was a much more politicised contribution, reflecting the fact that many times, particularly from those opposite, the questions asked are more about cheap pointscoring, more about trying to advance political agendas, more about trying to seize a cheap headline or the like. It's the right of those senators to spend their time asking those questions, and, again, of the many thousands of such questions that come about, the government responds to them, even where there's a whole swathe of hypocrisy attached to them.

Senator Keneally, in her remarks, jumped across many issues beyond the questions that she was asking about. She spent some time talking about grant programs and recent comments in relation to grant programs. I note that among the grant programs that were the subject of such commentary by Senator Keneally and others were the Community Development Grants Program and the Stronger Communities Program. I can't help but notice that so many members of the opposition quite happily take advantage of such programs, promote such programs and advocate for grants under such programs, but then of course, if there's a cheap headline to be had, they're lining up, forming a conga line, to try to go after a cheap headline in the national political debate, while trying to seek out a good headline in their local media or their social media.

The Leader of the Opposition himself had the fabulous social media post 'Grants for Grayndler: could your community organisation use a grant?' And there were not one, not two, not three, not four, not five but half-a-dozen different photos of Mr Albanese posing happily with different grant recipients, just in the one post there. Much of the commentary from Senator Keneally and others in this debate has been about whether too many of these grants have been going to city electorates rather than regional electorates. If I'm correct, the electorate of Grayndler is—