Jamie Briggs (Mayo, Liberal Party, Chairman of the Scrutiny of Government Waste Committee) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker; I appreciate that. And I appreciate the interest member for Hunter now has in the bill. In fact, he might stand up and answer some of the questions on which we have now been waiting for two hours for an answer from the Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasurer. These are important amendments, about ensuring that the Parliamentary Budget Office has enough power to get from government departments details of their budgetary outlays so that decisions can be made by oppositions and by independent members.

The member for Hunter—who of course was a former defence minister—knows how difficult it can be at times to get information from the public service. In his time as defence minister he had some well reported incidents with the defence department about blowouts in certain projects. The member for Hunter was well known to be critical of some of the decisions made by the defence department in some of their purchases. And I think this highlights the issues that we are raising.

The member for North Sydney, in his high-quality amendment to this bill, is trying to ensure that the Parliamentary Budget Office is armed well enough to be able to get information from the departments—when it is difficult for ministers, and former ministers, as the member for Hunter knows, to get the relevant information that they require, to make the decent policy decisions that we want to make in this place.

And all we are asking the Parliamentary Secretary to do is to give us some assurances. We are asking Parliamentary Secretary Bradbury to stand up in his place at the dispatch box and give us some assurances that engagements with agencies like Customs will let us find out about how boats operate off the northern shore in the border patrol—the detail of how they operate. We can visit and we can find out from their budgetary expenditure how they operate. Parliamentary Secretary, answer the questions from the member for Goldstein. They were asked about two hours ago. You must have the notes by now. You must have some information through on your phone. That is all the parliament requires. We require some answers.

The Deputy Speaker outlined very well that this is a process that we are engaged in in this House where we are debating an amendment that has been moved, rightly, by the member for North Sydney, improving this bill—a practice of this place, where we are engaging with the government about why these improvements should be adopted. We ask the Parliamentary Secretary for reasons why they should not be adopted, if he does not think they should be. And if they should be, then he can stand and just tell us that the government now agrees with them. That is an option for the Parliamentary Secretary as well: if he does not know the answer and he thinks these are good amendments, well, we encourage him to support them.

These are good amendments because they would give the Parliamentary Budget Office that power to get into the departments and get relevant information—the same power as the Auditor-General has—rather than a memorandum of understanding where we will not know what is in it. We will not know what carve-outs the departments have written for themselves, or what time frames will be required.

As we have already talked about in this debate—and I am reluctant to go back over old debate; I am conscious of the point that the member for Hunter made earlier—answers from this government to freedom of information requests are slow in coming. Member for Lyons, they are not necessarily within the time frame allocated—the 28 days. In fact, some departments are quite outside their time frames.

We say we want some answers from the Parliamentary Secretary about why the amendments the member for North Sydney is moving are not improving the bill, or for the Parliamentary Secretary to give some assurances to the House that what we are seeking from these amendments can be done now through the memorandum of understanding. We do not believe that they can be. We believe that the departments will be able to write their own carve-outs. We will not know what the requirements are in these amendments. We do not think this is an appropriate way to go forward on what is meant to be a truly independent and non-partisan Parliamentary Budget Office which can add to the strength of our public policy debate in this place—if it is empowered properly with the required strength of tools so that it can do its job properly, get the information from departments and ensure that we know what comes from the departments is right. Then we can increase the strength of our policy development processes so that, when we seek to win government at the next election and we highlight a series of policies, we know that the information we are getting from the departments is reliable, timely and will add to our policy processes. I know all members of this side of the House want this amendment, and I want the Parliamentary Secretary to tell us why we should not. (Time expired)

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