Michaelia Cash (WA, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

What a win for democracy, what a win for transparency but, more than that, what a win for the Australian people. The government is today admitting the bill they brought before the Senate was going to silence Australians. What an absolute disgrace. To everybody in the crossbench, to those of us on the non-government side of the chamber—the Liberal Party, the National Party, all of the crossbenchers. We worked together to ensure that the Australian people knew that—guess what—we would never allow the Albanese government to bring in a bill that was going to silence you and that was going to ensure that you did not have the basic democratic right that you deserve, and that is to access information held by the government. Colleagues, you do have to find it ironic, though, because, prior to May 2022, I do recall Mr Albanese, the now prime minister, saying that, when he was elected, this government would be the most transparent government that Australia had ever seen. And yet every single day in this parliament, whether it's this place or the other place, what we see is the erosion of democracy.

Forget transparency; they are closing the door every single chance that they can get. And then they have the audacity to bring in into the chamber—or attempt to bring into the chamber, because we were never going to allow it to get to debate—a bill that sounded so simple when Senator Gallagher described it. 'Oh, there's nothing to see here.' Well, guess what. That's not what the bill says.

The bill does almost the exact opposite of what Senator Gallagher just put on the table. This is a bill that was all about making it harder for the Australian people to access information. Yet, contrary to what the now Prime Minister said prior to the election, that his government would never be afraid of transparency, would never be afraid of actually being held responsible for their decisions—well, guess what Australia—they are not only closing the door on democracy and closing the door on transparency but, worse than that, they tried to close the door on the basic democratic right of any Australian to access information held by the government. That is an absolute disgrace.

Let's talk about freedom of information. What is it actually meant to do? It is there because in Australia we have a great system of government, a system of government that says government information belongs to the people. Why? Because we fundamentally believe in the principles of democracy. I hate to tell the Albanese government: if you believe in democracy, you actually believe that people have access to information; you don't shut the door on them. Let me tell you what this bill did. Under this bill, Labor were basically going to turn government information into a private asset that ministers were able to sit on. They were going to ensure that the public were going to actually have to pay for the right to access this information. They were actually going to have to ensure that they put in place every form of road block to you exercising your basic democratic right to ensure transparency of this government.

Do we think on this side of the chamber that the FOI system does need to be reformed? Yes, it clearly does need to be modernised. We all agree with that, and we have said we are more than happy to look at measures that will actually ensure that the public do get better access to information. The real problems are delays, backlogs and bad-faith behaviour and, yes, they are clogging the system. Yes, the system needs to be modernised. Yes, the system needs to ensure the public have a right to easily access information.

Let me be very clear here to the Australian people. The Liberal Party and the National Party will never ever support the Albanese Labor government seeking, by legislation, to entrench secrecy and price you out of being able to access information. We fundamentally believe FOI is a democratic right. You have the right to access government information. We will support modernisation of the system to make it easier, but the coalition will never support the Albanese government silencing Australians. (Time expired)