Andrew Murray (WA, Australian Democrats) Share this | Hansard source

I often call him Gough. I am giving away my contacts. Mr Whitlam, Mr Fraser, Mr Hawke, Mr Keating and now Mr Howard are all remarkable men in their own ways. However, the motion before us requires us to address the negatives. That is where I would move away from an assessment of political skill and ability to an assessment of policy and outcomes, of process and practice. In evaluating that, you cannot throw out a political judgment. One of the strong issues that is emerging is that, if the slogan once used to be ‘It is the economy, stupid’, it is now increasingly becoming ‘It is the society, stupid’.

Throughout the Western world, there is a divorce—a separation—between economic trust and political trust. It was notable that, when the last election was underway, the Prime Minister came out and said, ‘Who do you trust?’ He played to his strengths. When I looked at an interesting assessment today, I saw that there was a clear division: much higher marks for economic trust as opposed to what I would describe as political trust. If you are going to leave a good assessment behind you, you need to have the ability to have people say, ‘You deserved my political trust as well as my economic trust.’

Before moving on, I indicate that today is my own anniversary. Ten years ago, I was elected for the first time. Being a senator, I only discovered that after a few weeks of the churning of machines and the counting of papers. Nevertheless, I was elected 10 years ago but, being a senator, you take your position from 1 July. I think that, in a number of respects, I have carried the same portfolio for 10 years, which is quite a record in itself. In this Senate, I can think of only one office holder who has continually held the same office for 10 years—that is, Senator Grant Chapman, who has been a very able chairman of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Corporations and Financial Services. It is not easy to stay holding onto something and holding your own either. I move away from my own anniversary of election and back to the topic at hand.

The assessment I saw today which caught my eye was by crikey.com.au. In case they are listening, I do not need another subscription; I am already paying for one. They had about 18 members of the commentariat in a table of opinions. By the way, I do love the word ‘commentariat’. It has those overtones of fear and monolithic politburo sort of attributes. They had 18 distinguished members of the commentariat assessing the government and Mr Howard for things like economic competence, social cohesion, honesty and fairness. The large gap between those was very notable. The economic management was nearly at seven, averaged across the 18, whereas the honesty measure was just above four. One should take note of that.

The government emphasises money so much that, in their relationship with the Australian people, they sometimes remind me of a couple that stays married because he has money and therefore she stays with him. If there were economic hard times, one wonders whether the Australian people would still vote for the coalition government. I once said, some years ago, that I thought that if the conservatives—and I refer to conservatives, not liberals—had a heart, they could govern forever.

That is probably why, one of these days, you will lose government: because of the areas in which you have lost trust; because of your assault on civil liberties; because of the lying and mendacity that are attached to things like children overboard; because of a kind of wilful, blind ignoring of social atrocities, such as have occurred in our mental health system and detention centres and such as the detention of people without trial; because you are snooping on phones, increasing the powers of the police and increasing the authoritarian aspects of our state; and because you are doing things to our society that lessen our rights and our freedoms, such as refusing to conduct a royal commission into child abuse and allowing sex trafficking to be openly conducted in this country for many years until pressure caused you to react. I am glad you have done something about it. But there is too much concentration on the economy. Too little concentration on society and rights counts against you in the end.

One of the things I like about this government is that it reflects, overall, a good aspect of Australian society—that is, a low level of corruption. Given that governments—and even parliamentarians—and people in public office have the ability to make decisions that can profit others, there is an extremely low level of corruption of people in our system. I am glad of that and I admire that in our system. Of course, at certain local government levels you find some sleazy practices—and, please God, one of these days they will be wiped out. But we do not have a corrupt system when it comes to people. What has developed instead over the last 10 years worries the pants off me—that is, the corruption of process. I think that is a real problem for us.

One of the areas where the government can rightly claim great advances, I think, is in the expression of financial statements and in the accumulation and availability of financial data, although I must admit that some of the budgetary processes and portfolio budget statements are extremely opaque. But I think that is a result of a culture and an ideology that have been supported by all sides, including my own, as we have moved to accrual accounting and a devolution of financial matters and responsibility. By and large, I have seen a significant improvement in the Department of Finance and Administration over the time I have been in this place.

I acknowledge that the Charter of Budget Honesty was a significant step forward. I had hoped that it would have been done better, but it certainly was a significant step forward. So, too, might I say, was the Intergenerational reporta great initiative of the Treasurer. I think he should be given credit for having the determination to take a long-term view. Generally speaking, short-termism—whether it is in your business, your family, your home or anything else—is short-sighted. I think a longer-sighted approach to government is desirable and it is one of the reasons, incidentally, that I support four-year fixed terms for the House of Representatives: it might make them slightly less short-term in approach.

I also believe that overall the government has remained accountable to parliament and, in fact, has improved its accountability to parliament in the lower house. I am a bit disrespectful of the House of Representatives because I always regard it as the house of the executive. But, nevertheless, the Prime Minister and his ministers do front up and take on the opposition and vice versa, and it is a fairly vigorous interaction.

Having said all that, I think accountability to parliament could be much improved. I am one of those who argue that parliament should set its own budgets and all the executive should have is the right of veto, not the right of setting it. The parliament represents the people in a far broader sense than does the government. There is dishonesty in financial matters. There is the dishonesty of calling the GST a state tax. The Auditor-General, the opposition and we Democrats all believe it should be properly counted in the Commonwealth figures. A lack of accounting has been exposed. I note that the shadow minister who has responsibility in this area, Senator Sherry, is in the chamber. He and I have been trying to gee up the government in terms of the special accounts area and all that sort of thing.

There have been awful failures of the government, resulting from ideology. Ideology, like extreme faith or fundamentalism, is always profoundly flawed. The sale of the properties that belonged to the Commonwealth has just been a grotesque loss of public assets. What they have done is flog off properties cheaply and then lease them back at enormous profit to the new owners of those properties. It has been a great loss to the people of Australia.

I often note, in my interactions with government senators, that they have far higher standards than the government itself. If you are dealing with a government senator on a committee on accountability or honesty matters, pretty well all of them have good instincts and values. But their government does not necessarily reflect that. I would say that if you look carefully at the record of this government in terms of accountability you will find that most things it has done have been forced on it by the Senate, and then afterwards it says, ‘That wasn’t so hard; that actually worked out pretty well for us and it sort of soothed matters.’

I can think of no better instance than the row about parliamentarians’ entitlements that went on for the first half of the government’s term and culminated in a wonderful report—and I publicly thank Senator Faulkner for the strength of his support on that—by the Auditor-General, who did the first audit of parliamentarians’ entitlements in 100 years. The result of that is that we have a markedly improved system of reporting, exposure and commentary by the government in that regard. That was because the Senate made them do it; then they realised it was good kit and they have actually done a very good job in improving all that.

There are areas on which the government just has not responded to the Senate. For instance, government advertising is an appallingly corrupt process. It is a rort and a scandal at its extremes. At its normal levels, it is perfectly acceptable. Once again, the Senate Finance and Public Administration References Committee, ably chaired by Senator Forshaw, has produced some outstanding reports, one of them on government advertising and another on staff employed under the Members of Parliament (Staff) Act. They go right to the heart of what I was talking about earlier, and that is corruption of process.

One thing that worries me about Labor is that, if Labor are going to claim higher levels of integrity and virtue in this area, you have to show your ability to do that in the states. And, in the states, there is no better government than the Commonwealth; they have the same practices. If you are going to go for the higher ground, which I would like you to do and I know some members of Labor would like to happen, you have to start showing that you can do it in the states and territories as well. But the Labor senators’ contribution to these committee reports—because mostly these are non-government party reports, with minority reports from the government—have been absolutely terrific in terms of basic principles, which the government is not observing.

Appointments are often not on merit and they are subject to patronage. That is a scandal which needs to be resolved. Freedom of information has become just a skirt over the body of secrecy and hidden matters which are increasingly kept from parliamentarians. Whistleblowing is discouraged. The Senate order for contracts has been a great success, in my view. The areas of electoral matters and political donations remain, I think, problems, really corrupt processes, and they need to be resolved.

The question is of course: is it worse than it was under the 13 years of Labor that came before this government? Well, yes and no: yes, perhaps, in the sheer scale and effrontery of some of the abuses—far worse than Labor ever was on government advertising, for instance—but no in some other respects, where standards have been lifted because of pressure from the Senate.

If I were to summarise my attitude to this motion it would be this: I think government integrity and accountability is nowhere near the level it should be. I do not think it is so appalling that we should be ashamed, but it probably rates, at best, five out of 10 and it really could be massively improved. I think there are scandals which involve rorts, waste and incompetence, but I do not see any corruption of individuals; what I see is a corruption of process. My own prediction is that, eventually, the Howard government will come undone because of the honesty issue, because of a lack of trust in politics, and not because of economic issues, which is what they have hung their hats on so far.