Matt O'Sullivan (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answers given by ministers to questions without notice asked today.

The first one went to transparency, and then we had some questions about the cost of living, and I seek to cover off on all of those in taking note this afternoon. The first question was on transparency. What we've seen with this government is a pattern of a lack of transparency, yet we heard time and time again throughout the election campaign and in the lead-up to it that the hallmark of this government would be transparency, it would be open to scrutiny and it would have integrity. But we're seeing anything but that so far.

You only need to take a look at the inquiry that went into this fair work bill that the government is currently debating. There's a lack of transparency—a lack of scrutiny. They only allowed 22 days for stakeholders to present their concerns and their issues about the bill that is before this parliament—22 days to consider such a significant change to the Fair Work Act. This is absolutely outrageous. The government are not prepared to open themselves up to scrutiny—because if you did then you would find there were all sorts of holes, and that's what we're finding in the committee stage of that bill.

But here we have a situation where we have requested that details of diaries be revealed, be tabled, so that members of parliament can scrutinise whereabouts and with who various ministers are engaging. The Prime Minister has not provided his diary, so that the Australian people can have a look and so that this parliament can have a look at what is going on. This is very disappointing, and it's a very concerning precedent that's being set here. Even the leader of the government in this place is not making her diary available. I look forward to it being available. I've got no doubt that Senator Wong is engaging in some very important issues in her portfolio. Why not open it up? Why not fulfil the obligation that they have to be transparent and honest with the Australian people?

We asked some questions about the cost of living, and we had some—would you call them answers, colleagues? I'm not sure that they were really answers, because they were just ducking and weaving around the reality. We heard time and time again—over 90 times throughout the election campaign alone—that this government was going to tackle energy prices. They were going to in fact reduce the cost of energy by $275 for the Australian people. It was promised to the Australian people that that would happen, but it hasn't. What we're seeing is that Australians are going to be worse off under this government—in fact, $2,000 worse off by the time we get to Christmas.

In my question to the Minister representing the Prime Minister, I asked what the impact was going to be. Australians are buying their ham, their turkey and their bonbons and getting themselves ready for hosting a Christmas lunch with their family, which I'm sure they've been looking forward to for so long, because we know that last Christmas many families were apart and weren't able to get together. They're looking forward to getting together this Christmas. But what they're seeing when they go to the grocery store is that the cost of delivering Christmas this year has gone up, the cost of buying presents for the kids has gone up, because this government is not doing anything to tackle the cost-of-living crisis that is before us right now. Inflation is going up. Interest rates are going up. The cost of delivering Christmas is going up. I look forward to the responses of those opposite, who might be able to rebut what I'm saying—but there's not. There's nothing that they can say, there's nothing that they can point to that would demonstrate that they're actually doing something to address this cost-of-living crisis.

I want to wish everyone a very merry Christmas. I hope that you do get to celebrate and have a great time with your family, and I hope you do get to enjoy a lovely Christmas lunch with them, because I know many Australians last year didn't get to enjoy that. I hope they get that chance, even though it's costing them more.