Kristina Keneally (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

Under standing order 74(5)(b), I move:

That the Senate take note of the explanation.

Well, what will happen first in Australian politics? Will the Prime Minister hop into his Comcar and head down to the Governor-General's to call an election, or will he and his ministers finally answer the questions put to them here in the 46th Parliament? It's disturbing how easily those opposite ignore their duties as public servants in this place. 'Accountability', 'transparency' and 'responsibility' are all nouns without a home in the Morrison-Joyce vernacular. 'I don't hold a hose, mate,' said the Prime Minister. Well, apparently he doesn't hold any answers either. He doesn't appear to do much of anything. We know that the Prime Minister failed on the two jobs he had this year: roll out the vaccine and set up fit-for-purpose quarantine.

Today I have picked five questions that have been ignored by this Morrison-Joyce government, but there are hundreds. There are over 500 questions unanswered, dating back to March 2020. There are pre-pandemic questions for which no answers are yet provided. Those unanswered questions from March 2020 were asked of the Prime Minister of Australia, Mr Morrison. The Prime Minister won't answer them. If that's the example he's setting, no wonder the Morrison-Joyce government acts the way that it does. A fish does rot from the head down, after all, and this rotten behaviour undermines the community's faith in our democratic institutions.

There are some in our community who might think this is all business as usual, but an increasing number of Australians are growing disillusioned with the way Mr Morrison plays politics in this country. They see the bad behaviour of the Morrison-Joyce government go unpunished and think that it represents the parliament at large. My message to those people is this: This is not normal. This is not the status quo. This is how bad government operates. The Morrison-Joyce government have plumbed new depths in every aspect of accountability and transparency.

Compare this government to its most recent predecessors. I personally never thought we would pine for the days of Prime Minister Turnbull, but a comparison between then and now just shows how quickly the standards have deteriorated under Mr Morrison. Dr Parkinson, the former Secretary of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, put the real value on accountability and transparency. That standard was set from the very top, and it flowed down accordingly. There was an expectation that you would do your job as a minister. They got it wrong—a lot—under the Turnbull government, but at least people were disciplined on occasion. They were disciplined for misconduct; they were disciplined for their lack of accountability. The current Prime Minister, Mr Morrison, does not punish bad behaviour; he rewards it.

Look no further than the current Minister for Emergency Management and National Recovery and Resilience. This is an unlimited debate, but I still wouldn't have enough time to go through the intricacies of the sports rorts scandal. The sports rorts scandal saw Minister McKenzie forced to resign, but she was quickly brought back by Mr Morrison, and now she is deciding Australia's climate change policy. She is one of the gang of four that's going to decide how many millions, or perhaps billions, of dollars of pork are going to flow through to allow Mr Morrison to secure a deal on climate change. Maybe he will; maybe he won't. Today we saw the minister openly threatening her cabinet colleagues—quite an extraordinary performance in question time.

But Minister McKenzie is only one of the many scandal-prone ministers who've made startling comebacks under Mr Morrison: Ministers Taylor, Joyce, Colbeck, Cash, Ley, Dutton, Fletcher, Robert, Tudge, Hunt, Ruston, Reynolds and Porter. If you want to work out what they did, go to our website notonyourside.org.au. If you're a backbencher in the Morrison government, if you are stuck looking at the back of someone's head in question time, you have got to be asking yourself, 'What have I done right to be stuck up the back here?' It's truly staggering what gets rewarded on Mr Morrison's watch. Ministerial standards are dead under Mr Morrison. We will see that again, I predict, when, after the cabinet adopts net zero by 2050, Minister McKenzie and Minister Pitt don't have to abide by the ministerial guidelines. Let's see if they get a free pass. Comparing the days of old with the current standard is truly an exercise in despair, a stark contrast between a bygone era when ministerial standards and government accountability existed and the utter mess that we are in today.

This Prime Minister doesn't like answering questions, because he knows the Australian people won't like the answers. This Prime Minister governs by focus group. How do we know that? Because one of his own colleagues told the media, 'At the heart of the Morrison government is a focus group.' His own colleagues, including Senator Fierravanti-Wells, call the Prime Minister's office the 'prime marketing office'. So the hundreds of unanswered questions on notice are a massive red flag to the Australian people. Let's be clear: if the answers were good news for the government, they'd be shouting them from the rooftop. The Prime Minister can't build a chicken coop without a ribbon-cutting ceremony and a social media post. That is because he is all photo-op and no follow-up.

There's very little substance to what goes on in the Morrison government. There's no big, grand plan. There's no ambition for the Australian people. The Morrison government—Mr Morrison and his ministers—are not interested in Australians' jobs; they're only interested in their own jobs. Mr Morrison doesn't care about anything except his own political agenda, and he is certainly not on the side of the Australian people. If Mr Morrison were, he would be upfront with the Australian people. He would answer the questions put to him in this parliament. He would hold ministers to account for their actions and behaviours. He'd be proud of his work, rather than hiding the answers in the shadows.

The Australian people have a right to know, in a democracy, what decisions are being made in their name and how their taxpayer dollars are being spent. The problem for Mr Morrison is that, on the rare occasions he and his ministers do answer questions, the Australian people don't seem to like their answers, so they know that being truthful to the Australian people will jeopardise their own job security. There's an election right around the corner. Do we seriously think these 500 questions on notice that haven't been answered are somehow 500 good-news stories kicking around the ministerial wing that they're going to roll out in the advent of an election? Of course not. That's absurd. These are questions they don't want to answer before an election because they don't want the truth to come out.

So the Australian people have a right to know how their government's being run. Scrutiny of the Morrison-Joyce government is essential. It's essential for our democracy. It's essential for restoring the public's faith in democratic institutions, because on this government's watch we have had sports rorts, robodebt, the Ruby Princess, safer seats rorts, the Leppington triangle, car park rorts, jobs for mates, Paladin, the Great Barrier Reef Foundation grant, Helloworld and the JobKeeper rorts, where they gave $13 billion of taxpayer money to companies that turned a profit during the pandemic and they're not lifting a finger to try to get any of that money back. Under robodebt we saw the pursuit of the penniless, in some cases to their deaths, but the government don't lift a finger against their corporate mates. They don't even suggest they might want to pay the money back—$13 billion, wasted. A trillion dollars of debt has been run up, with so little to show for it.

What did we see last week? The Building Better Regions Fund rorts. What a joke! The money overwhelmingly went—90 per cent, I think it was—to government-held or marginal seats.

Of course, let's not forget, as Senator Green points out, that some of it went to areas that could only in the wildest of imaginations be considered regions. I think my personal favourite in New South Wales was the regional funding that went to refurbish the North Sydney Olympic Pool. Right there under the Harbour Bridge, next door to Luna Park and directly opposite the Opera House, a regional fund was used to build a swimming pool. I don't know. Maybe they think people from the regions in New South Wales like to travel all the way into North Sydney to have a swim.

Anyway, we know about billions and billions and billions of dollars of rorting, scandal, waste and mismanagement under this government's watch. Every time they appear before Senate estimates, what do we get? Another colour coded spreadsheet. What did we hear last week? Anne Webster, the member for Mallee in the other place, basically belled the cat. She inadvertently let it out of the bag. There was a green spreadsheet and a pink spreadsheet, but only government members got told about the green and pink spreadsheets. If you wanted your project to move from the pink to the green, you had to lobby some government minister really hard. Well, no wonder about 90 per cent of the funding went to government or marginal seats—because they were run in a colour coded spreadsheet scheme!

This is why the Morrison government ministers and the Prime Minister himself are not answering questions put to them through the finance committee. I can't imagine how bad this is all going to look when the ANAO inevitably reports on all the dodgy pork-barrelling that's going to happen to get to a deal on net zero emissions by 2050. What was it one of the government members called it—a giant green rainbow that's going to spread across the regions with crocks of pork sprinkled about? We've got a minister here in the chamber, the Minister for Finance, who won't even tell us how much money they're prepared to spend for this political fix, who won't even tell us if it's in the budget. That trillion dollars of debt—nothing to show for it going up and up; just a political outcome. But this is an inevitable outcome when you have a prime minister who views every act of governance as a marketing opportunity. There's nothing that can't be solved with a catchy slogan, no storm that can't be weathered.

Look at what we saw in the chamber here today: the Morrison-Joyce government sought to politicise domestic violence victims. I strike a deal with the minister, Alex Hawke. After two years—two years I've been trying to get a meeting with the minister for immigration—finally, I get one. Finally we get a deal, an agreement. We're going to deliver this piece of legislation. We're going to fix some things for women and children who are suffering domestic violence. We're going to deal with the problem of low-level offending. We're going to try to address the concerns raised by New Zealand. We strike a deal. We're going to come to a conclusion in two weeks time. What happens? Mr Morrison pulls the rug out from underneath his own minister, because what would he rather have? A political outcome, not a practical solution—and what a low act. Women and children who are victims of domestic violence: is there anything this Prime Minister won't politicise?

The Morrison-Joyce government does not, as the Prime Minister once said, 'burn for' Australia; they simmer in self-interest. The Australian people are waking up to the Prime Minister's schtick, his adman approach and his prime-marketing office. And there's something to see here with these unanswered questions. There must be, because they wouldn't be so intent on hiding the answers if there wasn't.

Being the Prime Minister of Australia actually requires leadership. It means making the tough decisions and being held to account. It means bringing people with you and holding them to a standard. So the malaise that's swept through the cabinet is a choice made by this Prime Minister because it's the easy way out, and it's the Australian people who are worse off as a result. This Prime Minister won't hold himself or his ministers accountable. I hope the ministers and secretaries listening today do take notice and take time to prepare thoroughly for Senate estimates next week. We can't expect questions to be answered when they're taken on notice, so we're hoping for a lot more cooperation in the room next week.