Jacinta Collins (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Cabinet Secretary) Share this | Hansard source

Labor, too, has concerns with the government's claim of public interest immunity on this occasion. As the minister has outlined, Labor as a party of government does regard seriously issues around cabinet confidentiality and cabinet deliberations. But there are a few issues on this occasion that I think I should highlight as to why our concerns remain on this particular matter. Firstly, in claiming public interest immunity, in response to the Senate's call of yesterday, the government hasn't outlined what harm it suggests may occur. That's a critical element of any claim of public interest immunity—to outline what harm is envisaged by this report being released. I would highlight to Minister Cormann that there are many occasions on which a government releases a report of a review before it concludes its response to that review. So we have yet to hear why, on this occasion, in relation to this review, the release of the review itself, as opposed to the cabinet's deliberation of the review, cannot be made available.

I would like to remind the Senate that there's some history to this matter. Some senators may recall that, in addressing the legislation around same-sex marriage and amendments that were put before the Senate by some senators on that occasion, I made the point that it would have been helpful to have been able to give more serious consideration to these religious freedom matters, but that the Prime Minister at the time, Prime Minister Turnbull, had, in a sense, kicked these matters down the road by establishing the Ruddock review. When that review was established, a number of senators who might've been inclined to support further work to occur in relation to introducing protections around religious freedom essentially folded into supporting the Ruddock review process as the appropriate forum under which these matters should be addressed. Remember, though, this is quite some time. The Greens have highlighted some of the concerns in relation to how we, as a nation, might proceed in the future to protect religious freedom, but there are, of course, a myriad of other concerns that the Ruddock review has considered.

Let me highlight for the Senate, for instance, that, at the commencement of the Ruddock review process, there were concerns from a number of parties that submissions were not being made public, that people weren't able to follow the proceedings, that some of the proceedings were unnecessarily secret and that the process itself had been somewhat clouded. I join with those who hold the view that the findings of that review have remained closed for too long now.

You might have some sympathy for concerns that say, 'Well, we've got a new Prime Minister and a new cabinet, and it needs to consider these things,' but it has been some time. I don't think this issue should be beholden to the uncertainties within the Liberal coalition government and its changes of leadership. I think these issues are more important than that, and we should have a broader, measured consideration of what was considered within the Ruddock review.

Unfortunately, I need to reflect on issues that have been raised in a sense anecdotally around the review, because we still can't see it. One element of those reflections has been that Mr Ruddock went into that review process with an approach that was essentially: 'Where's the nuisance? I don't see the nuisance here. So, not being able to see the nuisance, I don't really see that we need to do much more than the status quo.' I was subsequently told, 'Well, no, actually the review board did identify that there was some level of nuisance, not only the issues that have been highlighted by the Greens but also issues highlighted by members of various religious communities.'

On that note, I would like to say that I'm disappointed that this process appears to be becoming politicised. Prime Minister Morrison said he wasn't going to become the Christian warrior, but, by taking as long as he has and by shrouding this review still in secrecy, these issues are now becoming politicised in a quite unnecessary way. I would like to see an opportunity for all of those who have a multitude of different views to air those views, and the best way to do that is for the review report to now be made public so we can have what I would hope would be an open, measured discussion around what those recommendations are. For that reason, Labor will be supporting the motion.