Larissa Waters (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I seek leave to make a statement of no more than five minutes.

Leave granted.

The government could have avoided this whole situation by simply voluntarily releasing the Gaetjens report. Reports of this nature have been voluntarily released before. Reports by secretaries of departments, including PM&C, have been put in the public domain voluntarily by governments before, even when they've been politically inconvenient. When did it become okay for that convention to not apply anymore? We are here because this government has completely pulled down the shutters and is in fact now the most secretive government that this nation has ever experienced.

We are in this predicament because the government are refusing to put into the public domain a report which you claim exonerates a minister who was then turfed out anyway. We get that this is politically inconvenient and very damaging for the government, but what is more damaging is for the Prime Minister to continue to insist that every single matter that he is questioned on is simply the Canberra bubble. This absolute lack of transparency and accountability is fundamentally behind the erosion of public trust in this government in particular and in our parliamentary system more broadly. Release the report. Do the right thing; don't make the Senate force you to do it.

On this claim of cabinet in confidence, the ministerial standards are very clear that they are the Prime Minister's ministerial standards. So the issue of why the governance committee of the cabinet was even discussing this, frankly, is also very fishy. It sounds to me like a politicisation of the Prime Minister's ministerial standards—discussing whose head is going to roll to protect the Prime Minister, who was clearly implicated in this whole sports rorts saga.

The other point is Odgers makes it perfectly clear that in fact you can assert a claim for either public interest immunity or cabinet in confidence but that the Senate can insist that the document nonetheless be produced. That is what we are doing and it is still within your purview to simply release the document and avoid the need for these sanctions to then apply to your ability to sit in that chair.

I think the public now knows that support for this motion has now been withdrawn by one of the signatories to the motion. One Nation have now said they won't be co-signing this motion anymore. I'm very interested in what changed their minds, very interested in what was provided to them by the government to make sure this motion doesn't pass today. It is yet another matter that no doubt we will never know about because you won't disclose it, because, once again, it's not in your interest to have any sense of accountability or transparency.

This whole saga just once again demonstrates that we need independent enforcement of these ministerial standards and we need an independent, properly enforced, strong, broad federal corruption watchdog—a body which your government got in the way of yesterday in the House by blocking a Greens bill coming on that would set up such a body. We are fed up with the constant lack of transparency and accountability. This government has reached new lows in that regard. It is damaging the institution of democracy, it is undermining the public's confidence in this very system and it won't end well for you, but nor will it end well for our polity. Please release the documents and avoid the need for the Senate to force you to do so.