Malcolm Roberts (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

[by video link] As a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia, I totally reject the concept the government mislabels as 'national cabinet'. It's a fallacy; it's an artificial fabrication. National cabinet is not recognised under the Constitution and has no particular authority or decision-making power. The name sounds grand, yet it's nothing more than a meeting of the Prime Minister and state and territory premiers and chief ministers. Nothing that's agreed upon is enforceable because it came out of the meeting. Recent decisions of premiers which run contrary to supposedly agreed positions made at national cabinet meetings about border reopenings clearly exemplify this. It's akin to the decisions that come out of COAG, under a different name.

This government has tried to assert that documents or information relating to national cabinet discussions should be considered immune to public interest claims for disclosure and transparency because they may reveal cabinet deliberations immune to claims under freedom-of-information legislation. This is fallacious. Cabinet deliberations are protected from freedom of information claims. National cabinet, though, is a pretend concept. It is not a body of cabinet, and therefore is not protected from freedom of information claims and subsequent scrutiny of its decisions and actions. This was considered in the recent Administrative Appeals Tribunal decision of Patrick v Secretary, Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet (Freedom of Information), where Justice White held that national cabinet is not a committee of the Commonwealth cabinet and its documents and records are not to be considered as an official record of a committee of the Commonwealth cabinet for the purposes of the Freedom of Information Act 1982. The government's discussions and data about the mismanagement of COVID-19 are glaringly absent from the public eye. One Nation will always support transparency in government and condemns the government for trying to hide considerations that clearly are in the public interest and should not be shamefully kept secret.