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

I will be brief. I note that this is a very secretive Labor government that we have in Canberra now. We were promised by the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, in August last year that this would be a new era of openness and transparency, and how she was going to let the sun shine in. Well, this government is more secretive than anything that we have seen before. Of course, it is not only having to wait up to 250 days and still not receiving an answer; it is also the refusal to comply with orders of the Senate ordering the government to provide information and documents and not going through the proper process of claiming public interest immunity. Given that Senator Ludlum raised this, I might quickly focus on the deal that was done about 12 months ago where the Greens and the Labor Party agreed that any refusals by the government to provide information in response to an order of the Senate would be sent to the Information Commissioner to arbitrate. Twelve months down the track and there is still no such process. The Infor­mation Commissioner refuses to comply and I can only assume that nothing has been done by the government and the Greens to make it happen because there are lots of orders of the Senate sitting there being completely ignored by the govern­ment.

Yesterday, I rose on a question that had been on the Notice Paper for more than 150 days. The Minister for Finance and Deregu­lation, Senator Wong, misled the chamber by saying that the answer had been tabled that day, but it was only tabled in the Senate after I finished my contribution on that particular matter. There was no correction from the minister and she did not even have the court­esy to apologise for misleading the Senate and for putting me in the position of having to talk about it without the infor­mation in front of me. Once I saw the answer that was provided, I found there was no answer to the question; it was a referral to an answer that had been provided to a question in estimates and did not cover the same ground.

This government treat the Senate with a cavalier attitude—and I am not sure what their treatment is of the House of Represent­atives. With three orders of the Senate all on different matters concerning the Treasury, they merged them all into one and clumsily put all the answers together. There were questions 1(a), (b), (c), (d), (e) and (f), and they refused to provide answers to the specific parts. Today, belatedly, they come into the chamber and say: 'Oops, we forgot a bit. We've got to add something.' And I have another one here which just takes the cake. To Minister Wong, in her capacity as Minister representing the Special Minister of State, I asked:

(1) How many act of grace payments have been approved by the Minister since 24 November 2007 where the department recommended against approval.

(2) What was the reason for, the date of approval of and value of each of the above act of grace payments.

Do you know what the answer was? It was a formal refusal to provide an answer which means that the clerks and the administration can now tick it off as having been answered, supposedly. The answer we got is that it is not normal practice to disclose the depart­ment's advice to the minister.

This issue arose in Senate estimates in the context of investigations into allegations of irregularities against the then finance minis­ter in France, Christine Lagarde—who now happens to be the head of the IMF. The allegations concerned irregularities around decisions about act of grace payments. In the discussion at Senate estimates there was a lack of clarity as to the process if the minis­ter decided to approve an act of grace payment even though the department might have recommended against it. As it turns out, we are not allowed to know that information. During estimates the government was not prepared to go into it. The question was put on notice. Having taken it on notice, the government now says that it is not normal practice to disclose the department's advice to the minister.

Whenever the government refuse to provide information to the Senate—and we can legitimately seek it—they have to prop­erly claim a public interest immunity. They have to point to the actual ground on which they propose to refuse to provide that infor­mation and they have to provide a statement of reasons. Yet again that has not been done. This government treat the Senate with absolute contempt. That is not in the interests of good government. Secretive government makes for bad government and we have seen a lot of bad government over the last four years. Open and transparent government makes for better government. If only the Prime Minister had taken her own advice back in August and fulfilled her promise for open and transparent government, maybe we would not have had all the stuff ups, all the waste and mismanagement, all the reckless spending, all the incompetence and all the things that now require multibillion-dollar ad hoc taxes one after the other that have to be pushed through this parliament. It is high time for a bit of openness and transparency in this place.

Hopefully the Greens will be true to their word and assist the coalition in forcing this government to be more open and transparent. Quite frankly, if the government do not comply with our wishes around access to information, we should refuse to even con­sider relevant legislation until the advice and the information is provided. We have to show that we are serious when we want to get access to information. If the Greens want to support us in forcing the government to provide information that the Senate wants access to then hopefully they will stick right with us when it comes to the crunch on things like the carbon tax and mining tax.

Question agreed to.