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

I will say it again. The Prime Minister, Ms Gillard, of course, knows exactly what she did, two weeks after the election. In order to get the Independents to support her, and she committed to a new era of openness and transparency in government. She promised that all of the errors, and all of the losing of the way that happened under the Rudd government, were going to come to an end and that now there was going to be, truly, openness and transparency. Of course, we have experienced the exact opposite. We have experienced the exact opposite in relation to this bill. We have experienced the exact opposite in relation to the mining tax. We have experienced the exact opposite in relation to the Building the Education Revolution fiasco. And I am not confident that we are going to experience anything but secrecy from this government in relation to other matters. This government also wants to take $50 billion off the states in GST revenue. We have been asking it for information in relation to this and that has not been shared with the coalition either. The reality is that there is a pattern developing under this government. They want us to deal with legislation like this, which is directly related to the NBN, without having the benefit of information that was properly requested by the Senate.

The government knows that it is not just the coalition who are of this view. This is a view that is shared by crossbench senators and by crossbench members in the other place. They share our assessment that this government has been very secretive in relation to this and they share our assessment that the government should be much more forthcoming with information.

We take very seriously the need to be very careful in the way we spend taxpayers’ dollars. We think that there ought to be a proper process to ensure that taxpayers’ dollars are spent for maximum effect. This government cannot put its hand on its heart now and say that the $26 billion in government money, and the $43 billion proposed to be invested in the NBN, are going to be invested in the best possible way, because nobody has ever gone through the process. The only person in the government that is trying to ensure a semblance of scrutiny, a little bit late in the process, is Penny Wong, and I found it very amusing when—

Debate interrupted.