David Pocock (ACT, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the explanation.

I thank Minister Ayres and Minister Gallagher for that explanation and her time on this issue. I'm still disappointed that the government continues to resist the Senate's orders on this one. It has been two years since the government delivered this report, and it feels like we're supposed to accept that it has been under active consideration by the cabinet for two years. I don't accept that.

But I really want to spend my time now talking about the claim of cabinet confidentiality in detail and the worrying trend of increasing secrecy that I believe is stopping the Senate from undertaking its role as the house of review, the house of scrutiny. During the Morrison government, Senator Gallagher chaired the Select Committee on COVID-19. I've had a read of the second interim report recently and saw that the committee, during its time, was continually stonewalled by claims from the former government of cabinet confidentiality, so much so that the committee dedicated a whole chapter of their report to this issue, and I think it would be useful to actually quote from that report. To quote, regarding claims of cabinet confidentiality:

… claims must be accompanied by sufficient detail to enable the committee to determine the specific merits of each claim on a case-by-case basis. Each claim must establish that disclosing the particular information requested would reveal Cabinet deliberations and cause harm to the public interest. It is not adequate to refuse to provide information merely on the basis that the information has a connection to Cabinet.

It then goes on to say:

Minister Cash's claims make broad, general statements that it is 'longstanding practice' not to provide information relating to Cabinet and that Cabinet's deliberations should be 'conducted in secrecy'. Minister Cash's claims also rely on a general statement that disclosure is not in the public interest as it may impair the government's ability to obtain confidential information and make related decisions.

To cut a long story short, the committee chaired by the now Minister for Finance and Minister for the Public Service urged the Senate to reject claims of cabinet confidentiality being advanced by the then government on the basis that (1) they were vague in nature, (2) they did not provide enough detail to determine whether cabinet deliberations would be revealed and (3) they did not provide information to determine the harm that would be caused if the documents were released. And we're confronted with the exact same circumstances today. The minister's letter to me says: 'The tabling of the document would reveal cabinet deliberations. In other cases, previous documents that had been classified as cabinet-in-confidence were subsequently tabled as they were either public or decisions had been made by cabinet. In this case the report is central to the consideration by cabinet and it remains under consideration.'

That seems pretty vague to me and doesn't actually address the three things that the now government demanded of the former government when Labor were in opposition, and I find this really concerning in the Senate. This report could not possibly contain the deliberations of cabinet. It was a report independently done and provided to cabinet, presumably with the intention that it would be made public. In fact, on the APSC website it says it would be made public, and there's no caveat. It doesn't say 'after cabinet processes'. It just says that this will be made public by this date.

I think that as a Senate we really have to call this out because, if you look at the last parliament, once you crunch all the numbers the Albanese Labor government was the second most secretive in the past 30 years. If you compare their compliance with OPDs and with FOIs, they were sitting at 32½ per cent. For the Keating government it was 92½ per cent. And we're seeing this really worrying trend of the claim of PII, when I think it simply isn't warranted, and I urge the Senate to stand up against this.