Mathias Cormann (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

That is what your advertising said during the campaign—the government was investing $43 billion in the NBN program. However much it is—whether it is $26 billion or $43 billion—it ought to be properly scrutinised. That is the job of this parliament: to properly scrutinise the proposals that are being put forward by the government.

Minister Conroy was bragging very arrogantly about the fact that the House of Representatives defeated the referral of this particular proposal for scrutiny and review to the Productivity Commission. He was bragging about the fact that the Senate did not enforce the requirement to get access to certain information by delaying consideration of certain legislation. I just remind the minister that he has lost vote after vote—seven of them in total—with this Senate insisting on information about the details around the NBN proposal. If the minister wants to start playing this game it is 7-2 against him.

Of course this is not an isolated incident. We have had the secrecy around the Building the Education Revolution fiasco—the $16.3 billion in waste and mismanagement—and we have had the secrecy around the mining tax, with revenue estimates bouncing around on the basis of changes in secret assumptions—detail the government is not prepared to release. At some point the Senate will have to make a decision. We will have to make a decision as a Senate about whether we will continue to allow this government to treat us like a doormat. This government is treating us with contempt. We are seeking information repeatedly through a well-established procedure: the order for the production of documents. The government repeatedly ignores these requests for information without properly providing explanations as to why it is not in the public interest to provide that information.

I appreciate the initiative that was taken by crossbench members in the House of Representatives and the Greens, including a procedure of referring these sorts of disputes to the Information Commissioner for his arbitration. I regret that the Information Commissioner, erroneously I believe, expressed the view that he did not have the power to deal with this. I hope that he will reconsider that view in light of advice from the Clerk of the Senate and also in light of a motion that is proposed to be passed by the Senate sometime next week.

Ultimately, the Senate will have to decide whether we are serious about enforcing our will. Even if the Information Commissioner makes a particular decision one way or the other, if we want to insist on information then we have to make a decision on whether as a Senate we want to enforce our will, and that may well have to include forcing the government to delay dealing with legislation until such time as the Senate has obtained the information that it is after.