Don Farrell (SA, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Trade and Tourism) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

FARRELL (—) (): The government continues to reiterate its view that it cannot agree with the assertions made in this motion. We do, however, acknowledge the interest in the chamber in continuing to address the harms caused by gambling.

The Albanese government has undertaken the most significant gambling harm reduction measures in the past decade. Already we have banned the use of credit cards for online wagering, launched BetStop, which is the national self-exclusion register, forced online wagering companies to send their customers monthly activity statements outlining wins and losses, provided direct funding for specialist financial counselling to support people affected by problem gambling, introduced new minimum classifications for video games with gambling-like content, introduced new evidence based taglines in waging advertising, introduced nationally consistent staff training and established mandatory customer ID verification for online wagering.

In relation to the order being discussed, the government has previously outlined that we have claimed public interest immunity over the requested documents. Disclosure would contain commercially sensitive information and prejudice the government's ongoing ability to obtain relevant commercial information from stakeholders to inform the government's consideration of policy.

David Pocock (ACT, Independent) Share this | Link to 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.

Paul Scarr (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Immigration) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise in support of Senator Pocock. I wonder how they get printers that don't run out of toner when they print those pages that are covered with black ink, because that's what happens—

Katy Gallagher (ACT, Australian Labor Party, Minister for the Public Service) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Ho, ho, ho!

Paul Scarr (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Immigration) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It's some of my best material, Senator Gallagher. You get these documents back from the government, and they're just covered in black ink—redacted.

I'll take that interjection. What happened under the previous government—and I want to quote to you. This isn't pollie speak. This isn't from a politician. This is from the Centre for Public Integrity. This is what they say in relation to the performance of the existing Albanese government in relation to transparency. This is an NGO established by public interest experts, experts interested in transparency, advocates for transparency in government. This is from their media release of 24 July 2025:

The Albanese government is less transparent than its predecessor, according to analysis by the Centre for Public Integrity—

That's what they say. It continues:

Catherine Williams, Research Director at the Centre, stated Labor's actions suggest a "deliberate effort—

Sorry, Senator Gallagher; Catherine Williams, the researcher at the centre, didn't say, 'Look at the volumes.' She said it suggests a 'deliberate effort to avoid scrutiny'.

You may well disagree with it, Senator Gallagher. But the fact of the matter is that the Centre for Public Integrity is an outstanding NGO, one of whose purposes is public integrity in office, including transparency—and that's what they're saying.

The second point I want to make quickly, because I know colleagues wish to speak to this—I listened carefully to the minister's statement, and Senator Pocock is right. There was no validation, no justification with respect to the commercial-in-confidence claim. In fact, we heard a previous statement that was provided by Senator Ayres that at least provided some sort of justification for the commercial-in-confidence nature. So, at the very least, the minister should come back with an addendum or a further statement to explain why the information is commercial in confidence.

Sarah Hanson-Young (SA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Well, another day, another attempt by this government to keep the public in the dark and keep their policies, their policy deliberations and their thoughts secret. This is just an appalling abuse of the cabinet-in-confidence process. Let's remember that this is a government who promised to implement reforms to gambling advertising, because we know, and the government have accepted themselves and the parliament across the board understands, that the advertising of a harmful product like gambling is dangerous and needs proper regulation. The government promised to move on this. They promised to move on this years ago. They promised to do something about this in the last term. Then, of course, someone—I don't know if it came from the Prime Minister or some of the government's sports mates or Peter V'landys or the former communications minister—made the decision that, rather than delivering on the promise to save Australian lives, to stop this harm that is being done to Australian families, they would bury any evidence that they were even thinking about it.

Senator Pocock's request is a reasonable one, asking for a list of documents, asking for some speaking notes, asking for the government to be upfront with the Australian people and this parliament about what is going on in relation to gambling advertising reform. We have every right to ask these questions. The government made a promise that they have broken, and now we have no idea what is going to happen. This could all be dealt with if the government just did what they said they would do. This chamber stands ready to pass gambling reform to ban advertising that is destroying families and making our kids addicted. We could do this tomorrow if we wanted to—if the government wanted to. But the government seem to have a pattern of behaviour: every time there is a topic or an issue that has become uncomfortable for them, that they don't really want to be upfront about, that donors aren't happy about or lobbyists aren't happy about—someone has gotten in the Prime Minister's ear—every time there is an issue that has become awkward for the government, they shut the doors, turn the lights off and hide all the documents under the couch. It's not good enough.

Remember when the Albanese government came to power and poked fun at the secret ministries of the Morrison days? They promised to be better when it came to transparency and government accountability, and yet it seems every single day the government are finding more and more excuses, weak excuses, to keep information out of public view and out of the hands of the Australian parliament.

We have a Westminster system in this country, and it serves us pretty well, but one of the main roles of this chamber is to hold government to account so that we don't have a prime minister drunk with power, so we don't have corruption, so we don't have communities promised one thing and delivered something else—or not delivered anything at all.

Gambling is destroying the lives of Australian families. We need to stop allowing the gambling companies to advertise this insidious, dangerous product. We need to ban it now. The government could do it. They could work with us to get it done.

Question agreed to.