Stephen Conroy (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

I will take that interjection. I want to make sure that both Senator Joyce and Senator Fierravanti-Wells get credit for that. It is how banana republics run their financial controls. Throw out the Cabinet Handbook; forget financial checks and balances; the Howard government can do just what it pleases.

And what was the minister for finance’s justification for this abandonment of good financial practice? What did the minister who is charged with ensuring taxpayers’ money is properly spent have to say about this kind of shoddy behaviour? I know he tried to justify himself in question time today, but let’s go back to what he said on the record. He told Senate estimates it was no big deal because it was ‘$1 billion a year, which is less than half a per cent of Commonwealth government expenditure’. It is just a billion dollars, he said; it does not have to go through those processes. According to the minister, unless a government program is worth more than $1 billion a year, it does not need financial scrutiny. What sort of banana republic is this government delivering to this country?

Of course, the Howard government’s decision to spend $350,000 on a gold- and jewel-encrusted stagecoach for the Queen was important enough to warrant cabinet consideration. I bet they were sitting there with their diagrams and little pretty pictures and models and having a big debate about the sort of jewel-encrusted carriage we were going to send the Queen—but a $10 billion package to save the river system in this country? No, that just gets the flick. That just gets pushed through without so much as a cabinet consideration. I suppose it was a special case! Talk about a government that has lost touch with reality. We have cabinet debates about royal coaches, and $10 billion expenditure programs do not even go to cabinet. And here comes the chief government apologist: Senator Ronaldson, I welcome you to the chamber. John Howard and Nick Minchin—