Nick Sherry (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Superannuation and Corporate Law) Share this | Hansard source

If they believe that a Labor minister or Labor government is going to sit back and not respond in a considered way to a whole raft of allegations, some of them false and some of them hypocritical, they have another think coming. I will respond in a considered way. I am just about to conclude my remarks.

We then saw passed this afternoon a whole raft of alleged accountability amendments, which ranged between every individual minister reporting to parliament on the projects, a new joint parliamentary committee, and oversight and examination by the Productivity Commission. I was not jesting when I remarked that this process that was proposed by amendment—the bureaucracy and red tape assessment that was being proposed by the Liberal-National coalition and, to some extent, the Greens—was somewhat comparable to Soviet Russia. I stand by the comment that this Labor government will not accept that host of amendments, because we believe they are inappropriate and that the independent, transparent assessment process that we have set up is one of rigour. It is certainly superior to that which we had under the previous government with respect to any of their projects.

For the reasons I have outlined, I reject a whole range of the accusations, many of them false and many of them hypocritical. We got a lecture from Senator McGauran about trust on this issue, yet he jumped political parties. He did not resign from a political party when he decided to change. In switching to the Liberal Party he breached the fundamental trust he gave to the National Party. That is what I call a breach of trust. If you want to change parties, resign and put yourself before the Australian people. I will not accept a lecture from Senator McGauran about breach of trust on this issue. Unfortunately he is not here, but I still would have said it if he were. For those reasons, we do not support the amendments.