Scott Buchholz (Wright, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

No; but it is wonderful to hear from our parliamentary secretary friend. If you are going to have a chat, get on your feet and start answering the 15 questions that were asked of you by my colleagues earlier tonight and last night. I draw attention to the fact that the parliamentary secretary has all of a sudden found a voice against the wishes of the Manager of Government Business, who came in and instructed him last night not to say anything on this bill.

I feel like the solicitor in the movie The Castle when he says 'it's just the vibe'. But this amendment goes to more than 'the vibe'; it goes to the strength of the parliament and the right of the public to know. We want answers, and we want to have faith in a system that is able to provide the opposition and the government with answers that are given on the same footing. We cannot get them here—there is a degree of arrogance being shown by the government in not engaging in the debate, not answering questions and not providing the opposition with the opportunity to contribute to the debate.

I refer your attention to section 64F of the bill. It talks about 'arrangements for obtaining information from Commonwealth bodies.' Subsection (3) of section 64F says, 'The Parliamentary Budget Officer must ensure that an arrangement made under subsection (1) is made publicly available.'

That is another issue—confidentiality. Who knows what will happen when you put a costings model up? You might be out there having a shot, or you might be out there trying to work out what your costing forecast is going to be. But you put your costings model up to be tested and it comes back and does not happen to be consistent with where you thought it was going to be, and it is on a webpage—it is out there in the public—and you are basically handing the government a bat to bash you around the head with.

It was the coalition that introduced a charter of budget honesty. The party that is in opposition now saw fit to introduce transparency into the government and into this parliament in such a manner. The shadow treasurer mentioned the number of government bodies, agencies and departments that would go to creating an absolute bureaucratic nightmare in which there would be so many memorandums of understanding. The point was made by the member for Goldstein that it could take up to three years for those processes to happen if we were going to have a truly transparent government.

This amendment is truly about nothing but transparency. Why are we at this time of the night still debating this amendment? We are doing it because we do not trust the government. In other debates during the week we have heard about the 500 business houses that are going to be taxed under the carbon tax. But to date—

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