Anthony Chisholm (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I think that it is an opportune time to be having a debate on this issue, given the role parliament has played this year and the constraints within which we have been operating. Given the commentary that was provided last week by the Senate President, no less, around parliament and its ability to provide scrutiny of government, today is an opportune time to be discussing this bill. I acknowledge the words earlier of Senator Watt, who outlined Labor's position on this bill, and I also acknowledge the Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee report into this, which was done in the last term of parliament, before I became a member of that committee.

I also want to acknowledge the work of Senator Patrick in this regard. Whilst I often find things that I disagree with Senator Patrick on and very rarely would I ever say anything nice about him inside or outside this chamber, he is well intentioned, very determined, relentless and, indeed, principled on these matters. Having dealt with him around OPDs and so forth in the last parliament, I know Senator Patrick always made a principled decision on those. He would provide support to those on every occasion that I went to him on something like that. So he is very consistent.

I want to talk a little bit about the work that I've been doing as the chair of the inquiry into the granting of sports funding. I think what we've seen through the course of this year is that the government, basically, have looked for every opportunity to avoid scrutiny, to avoid transparency and to avoid accountability, and they have exploited that. Of the examples that I have been involved with this year, there has been no better example than the inquiry into the granting of sports funding, which saw the resignation of a minister, no less. But still the government are reluctant to release the documents they have on their decision making. We still do not have access to the infamous colour coded spreadsheet. What was provided to us was a redacted copy from which all the information that is relevant to us doing our job was basically blacked out.