Arch Bevis (Brisbane, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Homeland Security) Share this | Hansard source

I am pleased that the Attorney has placed on the record the government’s commitment to provide these details in the annual report. However, it makes it even more bewildering. If the government has no objection to the disclosure of this information, why leave it to the good grace of the minister for the time being? Those of us who have been in this parliament for some time and involved in any particular policy area over a period of time tend to have a close look at annual reports for data when they come out. I have to tell you that the quality and consistency of detail provided in annual reports changes dramatically. I take no comfort, frankly, out of a commitment from the Attorney-General that the annual report is going to include this. I take him at his word that it will be in the annual report due out later this year. But whether or not that is going to be in the annual report after that will very much depend upon who the Attorney-General of the day is.

After we win the election, I suspect your successor as Attorney-General would be glad to give the commitment. But you might find that we would be equally glad to provide the commitment in black and white. There is no reason why, if the government wants this material to be made available as the Attorney said, he should oppose this amendment. It is not good enough to leave it to the whim of whoever happens to be authorising next year’s annual report.

If there was a government-wide code for how annual reports were to be constructed and that was public, that might provide some basis for us to think that there was substance in it. But you only need to go through the Defence annual reports over the last 10 years that this government has been in office to quickly grasp how differently matters are reported. The budget papers that the Treasurer provides on budget night are now hugely different and in many ways far less informative. Annual reports are in the same vein. If there is no objection to this information being provided then I say to the government and the Attorney-General: do the right thing. Pick up the recommendation of the committee and put it in the legislation.

If you think reporting twice a year is too onerous—I do not; I think there is a safeguard in that—then change it and make it once a year. But do not leave it to the good grace or whim of whoever happens to be the Attorney-General. An annual report is far too imprecise a document, with no particular parameters.

I have not done the research, but now that you have raised it I will go back and look at the last few annual reports from the Attorney-General. I wonder how detailed and consistent they have been. I have not looked at them, so maybe the Attorney-General will be able to smile and say his are the ones that have been consistently good and detailed. I doubt it, but I can say without equivocation that annual reports of departments that I do regularly go through are not consistent. They change from time to time. To have the Attorney-General expect this parliament to accept that as in any way a satisfactory response to the Senate committee recommendations is wrong. It may have been something that placated his backbench, but it does not placate the parliament.

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