Barbara Pocock (SA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I'm extremely concerned by this government's failure to comply with the Senate's order for the production of these documents. As Senator Bragg has pointed out, according to the Centre for Public Integrity, the last parliament only complied with these orders 33 per cent of the time. I'll say that again—just 33 per cent of the time. The 1993-96 parliament complied 92 per cent of the time. This is an incredible decline. It's really an extraordinary failure. These motions aren't optional; they're orders. Access to government information is crucial to democratic practice, and one of the most powerful tools for accessing this information is this chamber's ability to order the production of documents.

Research of the Centre for Public Integrity shows this government is making approximately one bogus unilateral public interest immunity claim per week. Compare this to the one every three weeks under the Morrison government—a government hardly known for its transparency. Out of the 336 motions to produce documents that this chamber agreed to in the 47th Parliament, 142 were not complied with on public interest immunity grounds. Ministers are making incontestable claims of public interest immunity, and there is little recourse to hold them to account. The system of Senate orders for the production of documents is broken. These claims serve to prevent the Senate from performing its core function as a house of review and scrutiny.

I note that, regarding this particular order, No. 28, the minister is yet to comply. In the minister's previous interim response, reaffirmed today, she said she expected 'to be able to respond to the order as soon as practicable'. Well, it's now been a month since the Senate voted on this motion. When does the minister intend to provide the documents? We've had no illumination about that this morning. No clear date has been provided. She is required to table any documents that detail the aggregate expenditure made from the Housing Australia Future Fund from 1 April to 30 June this year. It's a relatively short period of time, and I'm not sure why it's taken a month.

Scrutiny of government expenditure is a key responsibility of this chamber. It's necessary that the Senate scrutinise the spending of Commonwealth funds in the interests of transparency and accountability. That's our responsibility to the Australian people. This chamber is a house of review. It's a chamber of scrutiny, where we've been sent to do exactly that—look at all of these expenditure proposals and hold the government to account. How can we perform that role without sufficient information on key government priorities? There's barely any detailed public information about the Housing Australia Future Fund and its expenditure.

In response, Senator Bragg and I have both put motions to this chamber to demand more detail from the government. I want to know where the $3 billion that the Greens secured in negotiations to pass the Housing Australia Future Fund has gone. How has it been spent? The Greens secured some huge wins in those negotiations. As a direct result of Greens pressure in the previous parliament, we got the government to close the no-minimum-spend HAFF loophole. We forced Labor to guarantee a $500 million annual spend, starting in 2024-25. Previously, the government could spend anything from $0 annually to the $500 million cap.

We also got the government to spend a further $1 billion in immediate and direct spending on public and community housing. We know that we have a drastic shortage of public and community housing in this country. While over 170,000 Australian households languish on public housing waitlists, this government has this week prioritised building houses for US troops and weapons contractors. The government's priorities are all wrong.

While the Greens have some problems with the Housing Australia Future Fund, especially as it does nothing for the third of Australians who are renting, we want to know where this money is going and how it's being spent. I strongly encourage the minister to provide this chamber with these documents and to do so immediately, and to allow this house of scrutiny to do the job that Australians voted to put us here to do.