Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Finance) Share this | Hansard source

I feel for the parliamentary secretary in having to deliver that speech, because the Treasurer certainly was not willing to come in and explain the fact that due diligence from the ministers in this government was not done. What we have right now is the fact that, in bringing budget legislation into the House, the government lost just short of $1 billion—$972 million that was meant to be there was not. What line did we hear from the Leader of the House when they had a special resolution on this last week and from the parliamentary secretary now? Blame the public servants. The argument is: 'It wasn't the minister's fault; it wasn't the Treasurer's fault; it wasn't the fault of whoever actually introduced the bill to the parliament; it is the public servants' fault.

I have to tell the members of this government: first and foremost, when you are elected to this place, you are legislators. If you introduce legislation which is missing fundamental operable parts, you have the courage to actually own the mistake yourself. Implicit in the speech that has just been given, saying, 'It's the public servants' fault,' is an argument that whoever introduced the bill did not even read the bill. If you read the substantive parts of this bill, section 3 refers, under 'Other departmental items', to schedule 2. Under 'State, ACT, NT and local government items', it refers to schedule 2. In section 6 of the bill, it refers to schedule 2. In section 9 of the bill, it refers to schedule 2 in subsection (a), and again in (c) and again in (e). Then, in section 11 of the bill, it again refers to schedule 2.

You would think, if you are a member of parliament and a minister introducing a bill, with that many references to schedule 2 you might at some point flick through and say, 'I'd better check what schedule 2 says,' only to discover it is not there. In not being there, nearly $1 billion of the budget got lost. Nearly $1 billion of the budget was never actually introduced to the parliament.

I would have some respect if the government were willing to say that they did not do the due diligence and that a member of parliament who introduced a bill, a Treasurer who takes responsibility for the budget, did not actually go through it in the level of detail that they ought. That would be an honest argument, it would be a fair cop on the chin and it would be a reasonable thing to do. But on two occasions now their approach has been to blame the public servants. Their approach has been to blame the printing process and say, 'We need to get administrative arrangements in better order.' I am sorry, Parliamentary Secretary, and I am sorry, members of the government; if you introduce legislation to this parliament, you are responsible for it. The people in charge of the printing presses do not get to introduce the bill. They do not get to be members of parliament. The people in administrative roles do not carry the responsibility of legislation. But those opposite now want us to believe that $1 billion can just get lost and, if that happens, 'Well, we'll blame the public servants.'

The parliamentary secretary should find out whoever wrote the speech for him—and that is not pejorative; in these sorts of measures it is common practice for there to be an executive decision about the words that will be used because they have legal effect. But whoever was responsible at an executive level for ticking that off should be well and truly ashamed of the fact that what we have in front of us is a situation where due diligence was not done by the executive—not on some technical, legal, hard-to-pick issue but on the fact that, after all the references to Schedule 2, it was not even there! Someone on that side of the House should have the courage to just say: they made a mistake; they did not do due diligence. Instead, we see what is standard form for those opposite: nothing is ever their fault; it is always the fault of someone else. And on this occasion, some poor public servant or printer is actually being told that it is their fault. Well, it is not. This is the fault of an executive that had a budget in disarray, that is engaging itself in administrative chaos and that refused to engage in basic due diligence in introducing budget bills.

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