Rex Patrick (SA, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to also take note of the minister's answer to Senator Keneally. There's a great difficulty taking place in the chamber. We are asking questions, as we do as part of our oversight role. It's an important role of the Senate—to ask questions, to inform itself as to the conduct of government such that we can do our job properly, we can discharge our responsibilities properly, in the oversight of government. Yes, questions are asked, and there's a time requirement placed in the standing orders—or, in the case of estimates, time requirements placed by the committees themselves—for the return of those answers, and it is disrespectful for ministers not to supply those answers within the recognised time frames. It's disrespectful not just to the senators who ask those questions but to the people whom those senators represent.

I ask many questions on the basis of an email I receive in my electoral office from a constituent that just wants to know something. I'll happily put a question on notice if a South Australian asks me a question and I don't know the answer. It's an important process.

Of course, we could stop questions on notice if indeed the government found some other source of money to pay for the things that it does, but, you know what? It gets its money from taxpayers. It gets its money from the citizens of Australia, from the businesses of Australia. And, until such time as you find some alternative source, I'm sure senators will continue to ask questions.

Minister Birmingham stated on Monday and again today that the number of questions that are being asked and answered in this parliament are significantly more than in the last two parliaments. In fact, I think he said that the number of questions answered this parliament equals the same as the last two parliaments combined. Let me just talk about that. There is a fundamental difference between a response to a question and an answer to a question. I can give one example in relation to the cost of some proceedings that concluded over a year ago, and I've had to ask three times—three times for an answer! So, maybe, that explains the reason why there are more questions to this government, because they simply don't answer the question; they respond to it. That means I have to go back and now ask a second question, and sometimes I have to ask it again. So please, Minister, do not stand up in this chamber and suggest that there's something untoward going on here, on this side, in terms of how many questions we're answering, because, on your side, you're simply not answering the questions properly. You're responding, but you are not answering. When you start lifting your game, maybe these problems will disappear for you. Maybe, Minister, you can go back to the party room, to the cabinet, and suggest to them that they take the obligation of properly answering questions seriously.

I was at a Senate inquiry last Friday in relation to submarines, and I asked Admiral Mead, the head of the task force that informed the government before it made its announcement on 16 September to go down a different pathway to where they were going before, a simple question about the advice that had been given to government about simple things like cost and schedule. One would think, if you're cancelling one program and moving to another program, that, in actual fact, you would only do so if you had at least some fundamental advice as to the cost and as to the schedule. I would ask the question about advice that was given to government, and the answer I got was an answer to a different question. I had to ask it several times. Not only did I have to ask it several times, I then had to remind the Admiral that he wears a naval uniform and he serves the Australian public and not political masters.

The culture that we're seeing when we carry out estimates is getting worse. We're getting officials turning up refusing to answer questions, pretending they're answering when they're only responding. We have to go again and again and again to get the answer. I know that the select committee on COVID has sought answers in relation to national cabinet information, and, despite a ruling by Justice White that national cabinet is not a committee of the federal cabinet, the committee is still not getting answers back. That's disgraceful. That's a judicial officer that's made a ruling that's being ignored by the government. The Senate needs to observe what's happening here: answers coming back that aren't answers—they're responses—and going to estimates and not getting proper answers from officials. All of that is led from a culture at the top which is about secrecy. We can see that in the COAG amendment legislation where the Prime Minister, having lost the battle between me and him in the AAT, is now seeking to introduce a new secrecy law—obsessed with secrecy. Just answer the questions. Just be open and honest. In actual fact, I pressed the admiral. I actually had to say to him, 'You are running very close to being in contempt of the Senate,' before he finally answered. The answer he gave me was quite reasonable, but why do we have this culture in there of, 'Let's not answer questions'?

We've got two matters before the Privileges Committee now, the first being the government's refusal to provide documents to the economics committee, which relates to naval shipbuilding—to one of the biggest government expenditures ever. The documents that were requested were not confidential. They're not secret. They're not top secret. They were simply documents provided to the government in order to help make a decision about which shipbuilder was going to get the job. These are documents that go to what these shipbuilders promised Australian industry. The government has refused to provide those documents to the committee. It's gone off to privileges, and there is some progress being made in relation to that. But how did we get to this point? How did we get to this point where—even with documents being given to a committee, who are willing to accept them in camera, such that they are protected by criminal sanction in the event of a leak—the executive says, 'We're not going to provide those documents to the Senate'?

Then we have a statutory official who receives a lawful order from the Senate. The Senate makes an order for production. The Senate's always very reasonable in the way it conducts its business, much like a court who might issue a subpoena. The person subject to the subpoena or the order is given the opportunity to step forward and say, 'I don't think I should respond to the subpoena or the order for production for these reasons.' What happens, in the case of an OPD, is that the Senate considers that response and makes its final decision. That's exactly what happened in relation to the tax commissioner: the Senate made a decision that the balance of the public interest lied in disclosure. It disagreed with where the balance lied in terms of public interest, and made a lawful order.

To anyone who thinks that I'm making this stuff up, go and read the 1998 High Court case of Egan v Willis. I know Senator Keneally knows that, because it relates to Mr Egan in the New South Wales parliament. The High Court affirmed what was always known through section 49 of the Constitution: that houses of parliament have the ability to acquire or require the production of documents from the executive in order for it to be able to discharge its functions.

So we're now in a situation where we have a couple of matters on foot with the Privileges Committee. I'm hopeful that this is a Senate mojo moment. I look at how the US Senate conducts its inquiries, and I see officials that turn up to the US Senate. They dare not not answer a question. They dare not not provide a document which the US Senate orders, because they know that the US Senate will act. In some senses, there's a test running in the background right now for the Australian Senate. We can push ourselves back into a position where we are treated with the absolute respect that the US Senate is treated with in the US, or we can fail to deal with what I say—as a question of fact—is a contempt: the delay of the naval shipbuilding committee's proceedings for well over a year. That can't go unaddressed. I hope the Privileges Committee finds that to be a contempt and issues a fine or applies a sanction. We have to change the culture. Whilst I assert that there is a culture of secrecy in the Morrison government, driven from the very, very top, in some senses the Senate, when it seeks answers and doesn't get them, basically lets the executive get away with it and becomes part of the problem. I’m hopeful that we will see a change and see some Senate mojo.

I refer back to a situation with Facebook a couple of years ago when the UK House of Commons wanted access to documents from Mr Zuckerberg. He refused. Of course, he's outside their jurisdiction. Someone turned up to the UK and the House of Commons said, 'We've got someone who's got the documents,' and they sent out the Serjeant at Arms, met up with the gentleman, invited him to come back in a very insistent way to the House of Commons and offered him two choices: 'Hand over the documents or you can sit in the jail for a while.' The UK House of Commons got those documents because it stood up. It exercised its powers. You don't have to do it many times. It is a little bit like freedom-of-navigation exercises. Every once in a while you have to sail a ship through international waters despite a country saying that they think it's their waters in order to be able to assert a right and to remind people of your rights. I hope the Senate stands up in these two instances, with these two privileges matters, to send a very strong message to the executive that they must respect our need to be well informed in what it is that we do and our need to be able to get access to documents when we ask for them.

What we're seeing today on the issue raised by Senator Keneally is in fact part of a much broader problem. I'd ask the minister to consider all of the things that I've said in relation to that today and understand the responsibilities of answering questions on time. It is really important and, again, it's disrespectful when you don't do that. I'll foreshadow to the minister that tomorrow I will also use the same standing orders in relation to the four answers to estimates questions I asked that haven't been returned. So consider that notice under the guidelines in respect of the standing order. Hopefully by tomorrow I will have all those answers; otherwise we will be back here having another conversation about the responsibilities of the government and the need for them to be able to respond to the Senate in a timely fashion.

Question agreed to.