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

I rise to make a contribution that echoes much of the sentiment that's been put on the record today by Senator Patrick. I want to make a couple of opening remarks about Senator Birmingham's response. Let me say that, having watched Senator Birmingham in action for some years here in this chamber, I've come to know that the more slowly and deliberately he speaks, the more it looks like he's actually trying to cover up, and that's what comes out afterwards. We saw a slow, deliberate and careful response to this order for production of documents debate that we're having because, I believe, the minister and his government are chronically addicted to covering up—covering up everything that they possibly can. That's why they don't produce the documents that the Senate needs to do our job on behalf of the Australian people: to critique, to observe and to ask questions based on fact about what's going on in this country. But the cover-up is on day in and day out from those opposite.

Senator Birmingham was claiming that this is just an attempt to besmirch the minister. You don't have to have an event like this in the Senate to know that the government has very much besmirched ministers in their ranks. You only have to look at Minister Angus Taylor, who attacked the people of New South Wales, defending his family business against environmental concerns. He attacked the truth of councillors on the Sydney council, and his government stood up for him and helped him and covered over. Then there's Minister Stuart Robert and robodebt. This is a handful of papers that has come through my office today, claiming the minister has made a public interest immunity claim with respect to any legal advice obtained in relation to the income compliance program and to the circumstances surrounding any legal advice obtained in relation to the income compliance program. That's the cover-up for robodebt. This government is so void of integrity that it doesn't see that covering up information about what they did to the Australian people in raising illegal debts is against the public interest. They say that telling us anything here in the Senate about that is against the public interest. What a crock. What a load of rubbish. This government has made an art form of acting against the public interest and an art form of then attempting to cover it up at every single turn.

I would particularly like to focus on the Minister representing the Minister for Resources, Water and Northern Australia, Minister Birmingham, because of his incompetent and overzealous use of public interest immunity claims to shut down government transparency. The Murray-Darling Basin is a wonderful and critical feature of Australia's agricultural and environmental legacy. Its rivers provide homes and breeding areas to countless animals and plants, and its waters help irrigate fields of citrus, grapes, rice and cotton as well one-fifth of all Australian dairy farms. It matters to this nation. It matters to me as a senator for New South Wales. It is a place of pride in our psyche as Australians.

The Murray-Darling Basin Plan is teetering. Its solid pillars of environmental science, respect for Indigenous communities and sustainable irrigation are being swept away by a tsunami of corruption, opaque regulations and market lack of faith in this bureaucracy. Too many scandals, years of drought without water for most licences and the lack of transparency in the water market have left many irrigation communities teetering on the brink. Their anger is evident in protests like the one held last year at Parliament House or the one on the river at Tocumwal show. Australians will not accept cover-ups or insider deals anymore. They are sick of the cover-ups. They are sick of this government trying to pull the wool over their eyes. People from the country parts of Australia are too hardworking and too decent to be treated in this disdainful way by this Liberal-National government.

I ask the minister: please, as the tide of social licence ebbs, end these cover-ups. End the bogus public interest immunity claims. End your government's war on truth and accountability. Allow the river communities to actually hear what's really going on. Nearly three long years ago, the Senate ordered the production of all documents relating to water purchases across the Murray-Darling Basin from 1 January 2017. The community has a right to know. These documents were provided to the Senate but they were heavily redacted. For people following the debate at home who don't pay much attention to what goes on, basically a big redacted document is one that has most of the toner from the printer all over it. It's just a black blanked-out document. What they blanked out included the valuations of the Clyde and Kia Ora purchases in Queensland. Despite denying full disclosure to the Senate, the department since released these valuations to a private citizen under freedom of information laws.

So what we're talking about here today is a government that refuses—arrogantly, intransigently—to come before the Senate and put documents before the senate and the senators of this great nation so they can interrogate the truth. The truth doesn't matter to this government. Hiding the truth is what matters to this government. How can it possibly be that the government is so afraid of this Senate, so allergic to accountability, that it will redact duly ordered documents to the Senate yet can release them to members of the public? That is the ultimate insult to senators duly elected to this place. And, through them, it is an insult to the nation of Australia and its great citizenry. I don't for one moment begrudge the disclosure of the valuations to any citizen of this country. But it is this government's contempt of the Senate, through these bogus public interest immunity claims, that really has to be explained today. How can a public interest immunity claim be valid to the upper chamber of the Australian parliament but not valid for information to be delivered to an ordinary Australian citizen? How on earth does the government expect people to swallow that?

It just doesn't pass the pub test, and it's because this minister and all ministers of this Liberal Party and National Party government are at war with transparency. In being at war with transparency, they are at war with the best interests of Australia.

The government have no shame in trying to cover up their failings—in this case, the questionable spend of tens of millions of dollars of taxpayers' money for water licences from a company that was co-founded by a fellow member of their cabinet. It's the old boys' club. There are a few more women around the chamber—thank God for that—but the old boys' club seems to linger longer. It's past its use-by date. Australians are sick of it. We're over this insider trading that is the hallmark of the government's practices.

I applaud Senator Patrick for his tireless work on government accountability in this matter and other matters, and I note several examples that he's mentioned and provided to me of claims that the government have put forward to avoid disclosure of documents or decisions only to be later forced to provide them by the Information Commissioner due to their initial reasoning being fundamentally flawed. This is how they roll. They hope that people don't understand all of the plays, all of the language and all of the practices of this Senate, and they hide in that space between what ordinary Australian people know and what journalists who churn through this place know. The government rely on a lack of deep knowledge of how the place operates, and in that space they seek to hide.

The government want to hide information about the Collins submarine macroeconomic report. They refused to offer that as an order for the production of documents because they said it was 'cabinet in confidence', but it was released to a private citizen under FOI, and—