Geoff Lyons (Bass, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I note with interest this motion moved by the member for Mayo noting that Treasury made a decision on a freedom-of-information request to refuse access to 12 documents and calling on the Treasury and the Department of Finance and Deregulation to release costings of policy proposals that the Australian Greens have formally submitted to the government since the 2010 federal election. I am surprised that he would call attention to this issue, given that it was his own party that went all the way to the High Court of Australia to avoid sharing tax office information about bracket creep and documents from Treasury regarding the first homebuyers grant. In fact, the Liberal Treasurer Peter Costello rendered the Freedom of Information Act virtually useless when the High Court ruled in his favour.

I am sure that the member for Mayo is aware that, under the Freedom of Information Act, decisions are made independently by department officials and that the minister does not decide what information gets released. This motion is just another example of Liberal Party hypocrisy—criticising the Labor government's handling of Treasury documents under freedom of information, when it was their former Treasurer that resorted to issuing 'conclusive certificates' to ensure that the media would have no chance in getting a fair hearing and that there would be no further debate on his deliberately hiding those documents.

I am extremely proud to be a member of the government that abolished these dodgy devices so that 'conclusive certificates' can no longer be used to defeat the Freedom of Information Act. Indeed, the Labor government has pursued some of the most significant reforms to the FOI Act since it was first enacted decades ago. Labor has refined the act so that, in more cases than not, documents are disclosed to those requesting them. We have established the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner to promote a pro-disclosure culture across the federal government. Significantly, under the Labor government FOI fees have been abolished to reduce the risk of fees discouraging the public from putting in freedom-of-information requests. This is in stark contrast to those opposite, who actively used fees as a disincentive, depriving applicants of their rights under the act.

The differing approaches to FOI only serve to highlight the key differences between Labor and those opposite. Labor stands for openness and transparency; the Liberals for secrecy and deceit. They continue to be destructively negative. They have put their own vested interests ahead of the needs of the community time after time—on the mining tax, on increasing superannuation for workers, on making big polluters pay for their carbon emissions—and they are doing it again.

Perhaps the member for Mayo is using this motion to try to draw attention away from the fact that his own party has never complied with the Charter of Budget Honesty, ironically implemented by its own former Treasurer Peter Costello. Or could he be attempting to distract the public from the opposition's still unaccounted budget black hole? Let's not forget that the last Liberal budget left some $70 billion worth of unfunded spending commitments unexplained.

We know that the Liberals and Nationals in government administered the biggest bribery kickback scandal in Australian history, the Australian Wheat Board scandal, and now those opposite would have us believe that they are the only ones who can govern. Since 2007, they have been undergoing the biggest dummy spit in Australia's history.

I thank the member for Mayo for moving this motion, which highlights the hypocrisy and double standards of the Liberal Party. Although I am sure it was unintentional, it only further reinforces the lengths to which the opposition will go to further their own interests and their willingness to deceive the public. After all, we know that the Liberal Party in government were the highest taxing government in Australian history. Their hypocrisy was revealed again in parliament today with the member for Wentworth's investment in the Spanish company Telefonica, alongside one in France Telecom, both of which are delivering fibre to the home, while his party insists on a second-rate broadband delivery system for Australia.

Further hypocrisy can be overcome if the member for Mayo can convince the member for North Sydney to have his budget figures fully costed by Treasury in the same way that he is demanding in his motion that the Greens have their policies examined. The Liberals preferenced the Greens and got the Greens member for Melbourne elected at the last election. The Greens are a secret society, and the Liberals are bathed in the warm glow of hypocrisy.

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