Andrew Bragg (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Housing and Homelessness) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the document.

In taking note of this particular document, I note that it refers to a longstanding request that this Senate has with the minister to disclose information about the payments from the government's housing programs to certain organisations that have been successful in tenders under the Housing Australia Future Fund program.

This original order for production goes back to February of this year. There was no compliance provided. The Clerk gave advice to the minister after the election and then the minister provided voluminous documentation, most of which is blacked out. The provided documentation does not provide the information that is required. I make the point that former senator Patrick would remind me that 'transparency' is a word that is only uttered from the opposition benches. Maybe that is the system that we have now—the executive government of the day now refuses in some form to comply with the orders of the Senate.

I think this is a significant issue for this chamber to give consideration to over the course of this term, because if we are prepared to give up on the orders of the Senate to produce information—financial and probity information—about the expenditure of public funds and the administration of public programs then we are giving up on one of the core functions of this chamber. We are supposed to be able to discover and interrogate the activities of the executive. I fear that unless people have the tenacity to see through to the end then we will actually be giving up on this chamber's authority which it is supposed to have over the executive. I make the point that this is one of many, many orders for production where the government has filed public interest immunity claims or sought other reasons that it should not comply. But, in the last parliament, the Treasurer, Dr Jim Chalmers, was found to have made incorrect public interest immunity claims when those claims were considered by the Information Commissioner. In fact, the Information Commissioner found that in one particular case it didn't have anything to do with being commercial in confidence; it was just the Treasurer seeking to cover up secret lobbying by an organisation that I suspect he knows well—the organisation known as the Cbus super fund.

The question for the crossbench and the opposition over the course of this term is: what are the steps that are going to be taken to ensure that we get the answers for the Australian people? If we give up on trying to get the information on public finances and the administration of public programs then I really question whether we are doing the right thing by the Australian people and whether it is worth flying down here and spending all these taxpayer funds on having these parliamentary sittings.

We need to think very carefully about the system, because right now effectively all we have is a referral to the privileges committee if all the other avenues are exhausted, which could be a very extreme outcome. Other parliaments have other ways of dealing with an executive that is unwilling to provide basic information. I think that is now a conversation we need to have based on the information provided to us by the Centre for Public Integrity, which has analysed all the information on governments between the Keating government and this government relating to their compliance rate on orders for production and also their willingness to provide documents under freedom of information laws. Malcolm Fraser was quite clear, when he introduced the FOI Act, that the people of Australia would have a better understanding of the activities of the government and the government would be better if there is transparency. So the degradation of the freedom of information laws under this government, and now its proposal to gut the laws, really shows the depths that this government has sunk to. We look forward to debating with other members of this chamber whether there is a better way to do this, because I have to say that so far we're not getting the information that the public would expect us to receive.

I seek leave to continue my remarks later.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.