Senate debates

Friday, 24 March 2023

Adjournment

Labor Government

3:41 pm

Photo of Slade BrockmanSlade Brockman (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | | Hansard source

I rise in the adjournment debate after what has been a very odd day in this place. It has been a rather peculiar week in this place, and there has been an extraordinary circumstance in this place in question time, where we have seen repeatedly through the course of this week an inability of government ministers to answer the simplest of questions. There was someone who sat over this side in around this spot for a long period of time who would have said, 'They'rre a rrabble,' and they are. They're a rabble. They cannot answer even the most basic and serious questions.

The questions to Senator Farrell in this place on TikTok were serious questions. This is a matter of national security. It has arisen relatively recently, and the government wants to turn it into a political joke. It's not just the government who wants to turn it into a political joke; it's not just those opposite. It's also their state Labor colleagues. In my home state of Western Australia, Premier McGowan was asked yesterday—it could have changed today; he might have seen sense—if he was going to take TikTok off his phone after clear advice that people in senior parliamentary positions should do so—that all parliamentarians should do so but certainly that people in senior parliamentary positions should do so—and he basically laughed at it and made it a joke.

Then we've seen today in this place the government being asked questions about this important matter that has been prosecuted by my colleague Senator Paterson for many, many months now, on the presence of TikTok on Australian government devices, and the government can't answer simple, basic questions. The government can't face up to the fact that they're now in government. They actually need to take responsibility. They need to act on these matters to protect the Australian government and the Australian people. They can't look around the world and see what our Five Eyes allies have done in this space—the fact that they have acted quickly and decisively to not allow TikTok to be on government devices. What do we get in this place today, in answer to some very direct, very straightforward questions on what the government is doing, and when the government is going to do it, to safeguard the Australian government and the Australian people and, like four of the Five Eyes, to ban TikTok on government devices? They cannot answer the question.

But it wasn't just on that. We've seen it across so many policy areas today, from one minister—a complete inability to answer the most basic questions about cost of living and what the government is doing to address cost-of-living issues such as gas prices.

Those opposite just say, 'Oh, you didn't support our legislation!' We didn't support your legislation, and we didn't support it for a very simple reason: it has failed and we knew it was going to fail when you brought it to this place in an emergency session late last year. So, yes, we voted against your legislation very proudly because it was failed legislation before it got anywhere near this place. It wasn't going to put downward pressure on gas prices. In fact, it was quite the opposite: by drying up the market for gas investment in Australia it actually put an extraordinary amount of volatility and uncertainty into that market. Not only that, it frightened our major trading partners overseas—the buyers of our gas. Western Australia is the gas-exporting state; our entire gas industry was built on the back of international investment in that industry. That wasn't in the last decade and not in the last 20 years; it started in the 1970s. It was the WA Liberal Court government's decision to enter into a take-or-pay agreement with the North-West Shelf Project which meant that those overseas investments flowed, that the gas price was underpinned and that we now have a large reserve available for domestic use while also being the largest gas exporters in the nation.

We voted against your gas legislation because it was bad legislation that didn't achieve anything. In fact, it made the situation worse.