Teresa Gambaro (Brisbane, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Citizenship and Settlement) Share this | Hansard source

It is hypocrisy. Nevertheless, these statements will support the view that the whole UN Security Council campaign was not planned—it was not strategic in its development, it was done at the last minute, it was done on the hop, it was done on the run—and that is no way to run such an important strategy. We heard from the member for Eden-Monaro what a fantastic opportunity it was to take a seat at this very important council, but that is no way to run a strategy. This may well be due to the fact that it was largely predicated on buying votes. This was demonstrated very clearly to us all by the skewing of the foreign aid budget—I will speak more on that issue shortly—but what is really concerning about the information revealed in the briefing note is that even at this late stage, and at the time of the briefing of Mr Carr as the incoming foreign minister, DFAT still did not know what the government's strategy was for how it would use its membership. Not so great planning on how we could use this once-in-a-generation opportunity.

It is also clear from the briefing notes that the Australian taxpayer would be up for more money in footing the bill to resource our United Nations Security Council membership. In terms of what a fist Australia will make of this once-in-a-generation opportunity, rather than hit the ground running, Labor's ineptitude and failure to develop a plan or strategy means that we are in danger of just hitting the ground. Much has been said about the secret costs of the bid beyond the $25 million that the government very loosely admits to. What is very clear is that an analysis of the budget ministerial statements and the portfolio budget statements going back to 2007-08 shows that there has been an incredible level of changed expenditure on foreign aid since this time. In fact we are looking at $2.9 billion, and all since the United Nations Security Council bid was announced.

As with any kind of expenditure, Australian taxpayers have a right to know are they getting value for money or not?

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