Kerrynne Liddle (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Indigenous Australians) Share this | Hansard source

What we saw from the Albanese Labor government last week was nothing short of shameful. With the Greens at their side—yes, the Australian Greens—Labor slammed the door on accountability by scrapping the standalone cross-portfolio Indigenous estimates hearing. For the first time in 17 years, this Senate has been denied opportunity for the scrutiny in this area that we've known for 17 years. More recently, this meant that the minister responsible for the portfolio was also at the table, always. Now that's changed.

Despite what the Albanese government have claimed, this is not a question of scheduling; this is about silencing. Since coming into this parliament, my experience in asking questions in senate estimates is to get the runaround—being told, 'Not today; that's on Friday, cross-portfolio day,' and on Friday being told, 'No, not today; that was back on Tuesday,' or Wednesday. How many times did that happen? It was awful, and this is going to be worse. It was already the case that we had a truncated day, and Senator McCarthy, you know that; it was a truncated day. We were short on time, but this is about making the situation much worse. I'm going to look forward to you running around all week to try to get in front of every single committee to answer the questions about your portfolio.

The latest Closing the Gap data tells us exactly why Labor wanted this hearing gone: because, under this government—and in the territory in which you live, Senator McCarthy—youth detention is up by 11 per cent; suicide is up by 9.4 per cent. These are not small numbers. This has happened since 2022.