George Brandis (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Attorney-General) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answers given by ministers to questions without notice asked today.

I particularly want to take note of two answers given by Senator Ludwig on behalf of the Attorney-General to questions by, respectively, Senator Kirk and me, concerning the Haneef inquiry. If you had to have a short essay on the cynicism of the Rudd government, you could not have done better than to compare the answer that Senator Ludwig gave to a dorothy dix question from Senator Kirk and the answer he gave to my question immediately thereafter, concerning the Haneef inquiry. Senator Ludwig said very grandly: ‘Australians are entitled to know what really happened in relation to the matter of Dr Haneef.’ He told us that the inquiry by Mr Clarke QC announced by the Attorney-General this morning would ‘enable all the information to be properly addressed’. That was the government’s spin. We know that in its early days the Rudd government is coming very closely to resemble the Blair government in its reliance upon spin, this shadowy world in which nothing has substance or firm meaning, in which it is—