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

I move:

That the Senate take note of the explanation.

I thank Minister Farrell for that explanation. This is isn't even about the documents any more. The government won't even provide a list of the documents that they are withholding. The list of the documents is apparently subject to a public interest immunity claim. So it's no surprise that this is the government that is the second-most secretive in the last 30 years. You would have thought that the numbers would be crunched and they'd see that and go, 'That's probably not where we as a government want to be.' But, no—they are continuing this trend. I don't know what number attendance this is in the first few weeks of the new parliament.

If the minister is claiming PII on the list, she needs to outline the harm to the public that would be caused by simply telling Australians what documents they are withholding. We're not even asking to see the documents at this stage. We want the list of documents. Look at these fully redacted pages. What on earth is this? What are these documents? How can the Senate make a decision whether or not to accept a public interest immunity claim if we don't even know what the documents are?

I will also remind the minister that to make a claim around commercial sensitivity, and I'll quote Odgers':

A resolution of 30 October 2003 declared that the Senate and its committees would not entertain claims of commercial confidentiality unless made by a minister and accompanied by a ministerial statement of the basis of the claim, including a statement of the commercial harm which might result from the disclosure of the information.

The Senate has received no such statement. So I say to Minister Wells: you can't just send this sort of thing back to the Senate, with no explanation and no details of what documents you are withholding. It does not cut it.

I wasn't here when the now Labor government were in opposition. If you do a bit of a search, they were scathing about this sort of behaviour then. I will quote Senator McAllister on transparency. She said:

This is a government that is allergic to transparency. It's a government that won't respond properly to questions in this chamber. It's a government that won't respond properly to freedom-of-information requests. It's a government that drags its heels on providing documents when they are ordered to be produced in this chamber.

Again, I'll remind the Senate that, when you actually crunch the numbers on the last parliament, the Albanese government was more secretive than the Morrison government. The Albanese government claimed PII more than the Morrison government did.

How about this one from Senator Chisholm in relation to an independent assessment from Sport Australia that the former government wouldn't provide? He said:

They're completely disregarding the will of the Senate over multiple orders for the production of documents and other things that would assist us in getting to the bottom of this. The government are treating that with contempt by providing redacted copies and not enabling us to identify who those community groups and who those people were who put in so much effort to be rejected by this government. We will continue to put the blowtorch on them, because the Australian people deserve better.

I tell you what the Australian people also deserve to know: what the minister's talking points were for a public event. How can you claim that that should be redacted? You're the minister representing Australians at a public event and somehow your talking points are redacted. This secrecy has to end.

More and more Australians are starting to realise what's happening, how we have seen such a turnaround in the tune of the Albanese government from opposition to government. We know what they did in the last term, and they're continuing that in this term of government, and I think more and more people are going to be very disappointed. Yes, you have a whopping majority in the House, but you do not have a majority in the Senate. I urge senators—and I thank them—to continue to push the government on transparency, to push the government to actually comply with orders of the Senate so that we can continue to do our work as senators representing our respective states and territories.