Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Corporate Governance and Responsibility) Share this | Hansard source

Let’s be clear: you actually called it the ‘right thing’. It was a Liberal Party function being held at Kirribilli House, a taxpayer funded official residence, for which the Liberal Party paid the princely sum of $5,000 and not one cent for venue hire. So you want to go out there, Senator McGauran, and say to the Australian people that you think it is just fine for the Liberal Party to go ahead and use Kirribilli House for its own political purposes. You know what that shows? It shows your arrogance and it shows the arrogance of the Prime Minister, a Prime Minister who has been around for so long that he treats this place like his own. All you have done tonight, Senator McGauran, is kick another own goal and demonstrate yet again, to anybody who is listening, just how arrogant this government is. You do not want to be held accountable. You do not want to be accountable through this chamber, through question time, through the Senate estimates process. That is how this government operates after 11 years—with a complete lack of accountability and a complete lack of regard for taxpayers’ funds, just as you are spending millions of dollars of taxpayers’ money on government advertising in an attempt to try and improve your prospects of re-election. Everyone understands the lack of transparency and the lack of accountability in this government.