Adam Bandt (Melbourne, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

by leave—I move Greens amendments (1) and (2) together:

(1) Clause 2, page 2 (table item 3), omit "2,".

(2) Schedule 2, page 17 (lines 1 to 10), omit the Schedule.

These amendments remove schedule 2 of the bill.

What does schedule 2 do? Schedule 2 provides an exemption for the Future Fund from FOI laws 'in relation to documents in respect of the investment activities'. So it seeks to keep secret how the Future Fund is spending public money. The explanatory memorandum goes on to say that this is to reduce the risk of the Future Fund 'disclosing highly sensitive commercial and proprietary material' given to it by private investment managers. It says that the current application of FOI laws:

… presents the risk of negative impacts on investment outcomes, reduced access to investment opportunities and it could also prejudice investment managers in their dealing with other market participants.

Apparently, the current application of Australia's FOI laws to the Future Fund is the weak link in global capital markets that might lead to sensitive information being released and everyone losing money. What nonsense!

This introduces new protections that are completely unnecessary, and I'll come in a moment to why the government is actually moving to introduce this cover-up about how the Future Fund invests its money. But we can dispense with the so-called reason for the amendments right now, because section 47 of the FOI Act already provides government bodies, including the Future Fund, with an exemption for releasing information that would have the effect of 'disclosing trade secrets or commercially valuable information'. That's why, in its 15 years of existence, the Future Fund has never released any commercially sensitive information in response to an FOI claim. So what schedule 2 does is provide a wholesale exemption to say, 'You don't have to release any information,' when they've already got an exemption from releasing commercially sensitive information. So this is about giving them protection in saying, 'We don't have to tell you about all sorts of other information. Forget what you might hear from the government—if they bother to defend the existing bill—about how this is about so-called commercially sensitive information. What rot! They've already got that exemption. They're introducing a whole new layer of secrecy over the Future Fund with this schedule 2.

Why? Do they want to cover up where the Future Fund is investing $250 billion in public money? What is the bill really about, given that it can't be about commercially sensitive information, because they've already got that protection? It's about stopping the Future Fund—and the government, by extension—from being embarrassed about investments they have made in dodgy corporations. Schedule 2 is about hiding from the public things such as the Future Fund's investments in Adani Ports.

Last year, the Australian Centre for International Justice obtained, through FOI, documents showing that the Future Fund had invested $3.2 million of the public's money in Adani Ports. This is the same Adani Ports that struck a $290 million deal with generals in the Myanmar military to build and operate a commercial port in Yangon. Late last month, the day before the ASEAN summit—and in response to a public campaign against them, including by the likes of the Australian Centre for International Justice and their highlighting of the Future Fund's activities—Adani announced that they were walking away from this deal with the Myanmar military.

So we have a situation where public money is being invested through the Future Fund in a company that is doing deals, or wanting to do deals, with repressive authoritarian regimes like the Myanmar military. We only found out about that because of the freedom of information laws that this government now wants to remove the right for scrutiny over. In other words, we would never know that public money had been invested in a company that wants to do deals with one of the most repressive regimes in the world if it weren't for the freedom of information legislation, but now this government wants to cover it up and say you can't make freedom of information requests through the Future Fund. This is clearly about a government embarrassed because the Future Fund is making investments in dodgy corporations. (Time expired)

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