Kerry O'Brien (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Transport) Share this | Hansard source

The minister’s latter comments about the provision to require the tabling of reports is in the next block of amendments—and I will come to that. In relation to the analogy that the minister makes of this position being somewhat akin to the role of the Australian Transport Safety Bureau—if I heard her correctly—my understanding is that the bureau does not make reports subject to a determination by the minister as to whether they are published. Whilst they do go through a process, and there is a consultation process, the reports are made public without a decision by the minister as to whether they are public or not. In other words, the decision about what is in the report is finally in the hands of ATSB, and the reports are, in fact, all published. That is my understanding. We do not take that position.

What we say about reports being published I will deal with in the next amendment, but we do say that there ought to be consultation about the reports in full. We acknowledge that there may well be sensitive matters in reports which may not be appropriate to be published—for example, matters which disclose gaps in Australia’s transport security regime. The government, I presume, would be equally of the view that they should not be published so that those who would seek to make use of them to the detriment of the public do not have that information. Those matters are self-evident to the opposition; nevertheless, we do believe that those aspects of any reports by the Inspector of Transport Security, for example, ought to be conveyed to the Leader of the Opposition with the caveat that they not be publicly revealed. That is the position we take.

I hear what the minister says about the analogy we drew earlier, but I would say equally—or perhaps on an even greater basis—that the analogy that the minister draws with ATSB is not one which justifies resistance to the position we take. We would not equate this position to the Australian Transport Safety Bureau, because we know of no reasons why that bureau should not publish its findings. In fact, we think it is very important that ATSB do publish its findings so that the travelling public can be aware of how their interests are being looked after and any issues which they should expect the government or its agencies to act upon to improve the safety of the travelling public. We do not have exactly the same expectation of the Inspector of Transport Security. We think that, as far as possible, these matters should be drawn to the public’s attention, but we do concede that some matters would not be appropriate to be drawn to the public’s attention.

We do believe that, for full confidence in this position to be held by the parliament, there should be full disclosure to at least the Leader of the Opposition, and that is why we press our amendment. I reject the analogy that the minister made. I urge the government to embrace what would be a requirement rather than a practice, and I do remind the government that one does not know who will be in government in this country in the future. It would be better, in our view, if this were a requirement rather than the fiat of a particular executive as to what they would or would not do in relation to a security circumstance. We think it would be much better if these matters were prescribed in the legislation. A Labor government would be quite happy to be constrained by such provisions. We put them forward on the basis that we would be happy to live by them and be bound by them, and we suggest to the government that they do no harm in the legislation, particularly if the government feels that, in a sense, they would do that anyway.