Rex Patrick (SA, Centre Alliance) Share this | Hansard source

In speaking in support of this motion, I really just want to read some statements from my first speech. In my first speech I said:

In this I refer to the Senate's role of probing and checking the administration of laws, of keeping itself and the public informed and its requirement to insist on ministerial accountability for the government's administration. With words so relevant to us, that they are quoted in Odgers, US President Woodrow Wilson described the informing role of the congress, stating: "It is the proper duty of a representative body to look diligently into every affair of government and to talk much about what it sees. It is meant to be the eyes and the voice, and to embody the wisdom and will of its constituents. Unless Congress have and use every means of acquainting itself with the acts and disposition of the administrative agents of government, the country must be helpless to learn how it is being served." The philosopher John Stuart Mill, quoted with approval in the High Court case of Egan and Willis, summarised the task as: "… to watch and control the government: to throw the light of publicity on its acts".

Most relevantly, I also said:

All too often orders for production of documents have been met with contempt. An order for production gets made, the government advances an argument for public interest immunity, however tenuous that argument might be. Invariably the Senate does not accept the public interest immunity claim and the government insists on its refusal to provide the document and the Senate does nothing except weaken itself.

Now, of the sanctions that are being talked about by Senator Cormann—the illegality or the inappropriateness of having a minister not able to do certain tasks within the chamber, or, indeed, to be expelled from the chamber—let me dispel any doubt: Mr Egan, the Treasurer of New South Wales, was expelled from the New South Wales parliament. It went to the High Court. The High Court affirmed that the House had the right to do so in managing its own affairs. There is no question, and Senator Cormann, who is a lawyer, knows that. It also happened in the Victorian parliament within the last couple of years. So I refer senators to Egan and Willis and what the High Court said in that case.

The government has been pulling down the steel shutters on transparency and accountability. In this case, there's been a sports rorts affair and the government has gone running to a bunker, and on the front door of that bunker is a label that says 'cabinet'. It is hiding behind cabinet for a matter which most Australians really do want exposed. Most Australians want to look into what actually happened, and there should be no fear in the government releasing a report that exonerates the actions of its ministers—indeed, the Prime Minister, if he was involved. So it is my strong view that the Senate must push back in circumstances where that cabinet bunker is being employed. We should not exercise our power irresponsibly, but there are times where you don't exercise power that results in an irresponsible action.