Joe Ludwig (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Senator Cash can smile and joke about this but this is a very serious matter and I encourage the minister to take this more seriously than she is now taking it. If you look at the claims that can be made under public interest immunity, it is not about ensuring that the government of the day can hide behind a claim of public interest immunity but about their having to put up the claim and not undermine the Senate's accountability mechanisms. The accountability provision, public interest immunity, specifically says that a statement that information or a document is not published or is confidential or consists of advice to or internal deliberations of government, in the absence of specification of the harm to the public interest that could result from disclosure of the information or document is not—I underline not—a statement that meets the requirements of paragraphs 1 to 4 of section 8 under the standing orders. What we have is a document which claims public interest immunity but does not specify in any way, shape or form the harm that might come from the release. It is like the sails that Senator Cash waves about while saying, 'Look at this; this the harm.' You have to actually specify the harm with some degree of specificity to say why that information should not and cannot be provided. There are certainly grounds where that can be made out. There are also alternative grounds where committees can take in camera evidence and the like.

Ultimately, it is about ensuring that the ultimate place for accountability rests in this chamber and not in the bowels of government or in ensuring that you can drive a political argument by hiding behind a public interest immunity claim. In the claim, you have to specify the nature of the harm. In your reasons you have talked more broadly and, in part, fulsomely about great harms but not the special harm or specific harm that could result from the release of certain information that the government has in its possession.

It is a shame on you, Senator Cash, that you will not comply with the order and that you feel that you have to go that far from government to provide a document that claims public interest immunity, which is in fact not a document that actually substantiates a claim for public interest immunity. What it does is to continue the broad argument that you are a government of secrecy and that you are going to use the political weapon of secrecy to ensure that information cannot get out. It is the same as what the previous Howard government did with oil for food when it ordered public servants not to talk about matters. Again, when you go back to the period of kids overboard, we had to spend a considerable amount of time on this side finding out the true details of what went on. To date, you are putting yourself in the same shoes as that government. You are continuing the secrecy— (Time expired)