Wilson Tuckey (O'Connor, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Well, I am sorry. Obviously the member who interjected does not read Hansard. If that person did so, I would invite him to extract from it any simple yes-or-no answer, any answer that provides actual detailed information relevant to the question that was asked. This is the government of deception. This is the government that thinks any question from the opposition is an invitation to blackguard someone in the opposition and, as I drew to the attention of the House the other day, a poor old school principal—the inference from the minister was that that person was a liar. These are the sorts of situations that are not needed in the management of government. But the process by which, by law, we start to delegate to public servants the powers that the public expects to reside in the minister is a very bad deal.

When one talks about question time and the responsibilities of ministers in that regard, I am reminded that the previous Labor government got so arrogant that the Prime Minister only turned up two days a week and ministers were rostered. That was because they were so busy—they were back in their officers hiding from this place. At least in those days ministers did feel they had some obligation to provide the parliament, and of course through the parliament the people, the information requested of them. I have been up on my feet speaking in this place a couple of times regarding this responsibility of ministers. I draw it to their attention that a longstanding convention of this place was that ministers, when asked questions to which they could quite rightly say, ‘I’m sorry, that information is not immediately available to me,’ would give an immediate undertaking to the parliament that they would return as soon as possible with the detail requested. Of course that added to the reputation of those ministers. Last night remarks were made about the member for Bradfield and his capacity to remember vast quantities of detail relevant to his portfolio. He was probably the person most equipped for that and he—

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