David Johnston (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Defence) Share this | Hansard source

I want to deal with some of these amendments that Senator Ludlam has put forward. I note that they are all very constricting on the powers of the minister and quite prescriptive in what they want the minister to do in dealing with this legislation. I say to Senator Ludlam—and indeed to you, Chair—that I share his concerns, and I take the time to compliment him on quite a considerable amount of work in just this one amendment. It is very clear to me that he has some grave concerns as to how this will play out, both from the perspective of accountability and from the perspective of providing a reliable and proper service to people.

The government, in answer to the very large number of amendments, lies like a dog in the manger with respect to providing transparency and openness on this particular project and this particular legislative framework. The question is: what is the problem? I have a number of questions for the minister which I hope that he will answer in this debate as to these amendments. Why is he so secretive? If this is such a robust plan, as he suggests Australians should believe it is, why has he been dragged kicking and screaming to this point in time to release any real information about the project?

The other point I should make is that the government are quite concerned that the opposition is not going with them. I want to say that, quite rightly, the opposition has an enormous number of grave reservations about the administrative and governance capacity of the individual ministers of the government. They impart absolutely no confidence whatsoever in any of the undertakings that they have carried out whilst in their present ministerial positions. The minerals resource rent tax has from its inception been an absolute laughing stock and fiasco. Climate change has been simply a running sore of a disaster. The most deficient department and the most defective minister in the government have of course been the former climate change minister and the department with no legislation, something straight out of Yes Minister. There is the current health debacle across Australia—seeking 30 per cent of, in particular, Western Australia’s GST. Asylum seekers and their positioning around Australia, and the protection of Australian coastal borders, has been an absolute fiasco. There is the issue of water in the Murray-Darling and, of course, pink batts. On the pink batts issue, this parliament—and, indeed, probably Australia since Federation—has never seen such a tragic outcome as the four dead people and the hundreds of house fires that that purely ministerial maladministration has delivered. Of course, lastly there is the issue of school halls. The question is: why would the opposition, in the face of all that, be so reluctant to go down the path of a $50 billion expenditure by these ministers? Why would we be reluctant? The simple answer is: because—

Progress reported.