Deborah O'Neill (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to add my contribution to the debate on the Public Governance, Performance and Accountability Amendment (Waiver of Debt and Act of Grace Payments) Bill 2019. This bill does indeed amend the Public Governance, Performance and Accountability Act of 2013 and, in doing so, it requires the Department of Finance, in its annual report, to report on the number and dollar amount of waivers of debt granted and act-of-grace payments provided.

At present, waivers of debt and act-of-grace payments are not publicly reported, and there is no requirement for there to be any publication of this information. The bill will require the Department of Finance, in its annual report, to provide information on the number of debt waivers granted in the financial year and to cover the total amount of debt waived as well. Very importantly, by putting that information in the annual reports, it then becomes available to us as senators to review at the relevant estimates period, generally towards the end of the year.

The bill will also require the Department of Finance to provide information in its annual report on the number of act-of-grace payments made in the financial year that the annual report covers, as well as the total amount provided through these payments. It does not—and it will not—require the publication of any personal or sensitive information about any individual or organisation who received a debt waiver or act-of-grace payment. But, in the interests of government accountability and transparency, this amendment is important, as it goes to rectifying this lack of publication. It's a small but nonetheless important step.

The bill for debate that is before us today is a sensible bill, and it strikes a good balance between transparency of government operations and protection of the privacy of individuals and organisations. This is something that we have found very much wanting in the modus operandi of this L-NP government. They've been found wanting on far too many occasions when it comes to any notion of transparency or the implementation of necessary transparency in the laws that they have brought into being in this country.

Take, for example, the issue of foreign investment. Just one case—the Alinta Energy privacy scandal, which involved the data of 1.1 million Australians being stored offshore, put the identities of a million people at risk. That was not revealed and not known to the Australian public, because of failures of governance by this government—a lack of transparency and a lack of commitment to it. This put a spotlight on the Morrison government's lacklustre record when it comes to scrutiny. The Alinta Energy privacy scandal exposed the darker side of foreign investment and the slow and ineffective compliance regime that is managed by the Treasurer and his department. It highlighted a regime unfit for purpose and the critical need for urgent and sustained scrutiny in the national interest. My jaw hit the ground when I received evidence in a recent Senate hearing that, in 2019, there were only two brave souls in the whole of the country overseeing international investment compliance with conditions that were set by the Foreign Investment Review Board and approved by the Treasurer. I do want to put on the record my concern for the sullying of the name of those on the Foreign Investment Review Board, because it should constantly be made clear to Australians that the board is simply a place in which recommendations are delivered. The person who makes the decision and who is responsible for implementing those recommendations is none other than the Treasurer. All responsibility must be sheeted home to the Treasurer at the time. We're talking about tens of billions of dollars, a huge footprint right across the country, swathes of agricultural land, essential services like gas and electricity and two—yes, just two—Australians in Treasury on watch for the nation. Are you serious? But this is the level of the gap between the public perception that this government tries to create—a sense of confidence that it is looking after people right across this country—and the reality that it is allergic to transparency, in fact.

To give you a sense of the scale of how big this is and how disingenuous this lackadaisical government has been on this matter, those opposite told us, as a nation, that they'd fixed the problems within the Foreign Investment Review Board, and then they described earlier this month that they had introduced their Foreign Investment Review Board changes in response to a problem they said they'd already solved. This goes back to 2018, when they introduced a bill into parliament, which was passed, called the critical infrastructure act 2018. At that point in time, the government told Australians that they'd fixed this problem about making sure infrastructure security was in order. The Treasurer at the time was our now Prime Minister, Mr Scott Morrison. He was not truthful or transparent then and continues to be loose with the truth. We just have to look right now, at the moment—people are voting in the seat of Eden-Monaro, devastated by bushfires, and they were promised by this Prime Minister that they would have an immediate response to the bushfire challenges that they face. Here we are, half a year later, and we know that only four per cent have received help. This is the problem with this government: the gap between what it says it's doing, the frequency of its announcements, and its constant failure to deliver on the things that it makes a song and dance about and gets a headline on. The transparency gap is widening by the day. This is a critical failure that I am recounting today because it's a matter of failure on national sovereignty and security.

In that same year of 2017-18, those opposite harped on that they'd fixed the Foreign Investment Review Board and Treasurer oversight problems.