Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

I seek leave to move a motion relating to the failure of the government to comply with the order for the production of documents No. 1,251.

Leave not granted.

Pursuant to contingent notice standing in my name, I move:

That so much of the standing orders be suspended as would prevent me moving a motion to provide for the consideration of a matter—namely, a motion to provide that a motion relating to the failure of the government to comply with the order for the production of documents No. 1,251—may be moved immediately and have precedence over all other business until determined and be determined without amendment or debate.

On this motion, the Senate may or may not recall that the Minister representing the Minister for Industry, Energy and Emissions Reduction was subject to an order for production of documents by motion of this chamber with which the government has not complied. The order for production was moved by Senator Canavan and Senator Patrick, and the requirement was that this be tabled by 10 am today. Unsurprisingly, for a government that avoids all accountability—as we saw in the House of Representatives yesterday, with the voting to protect Mr Christian Porter—this government has failed to comply with the provision of the modelling. It seems passing strange that a government that has spent so much of the last eight long years saying to people, 'You can't have a target without a plan; you can't have a target unless you know what it means,' is going to such lengths to hide the economic modelling it is doing, or has done, for its climate plan.

Senator Canavan has been rightly calling for the release of this modelling by his own government. We don't agree on very much, Senator Canavan and I, but we do agree on this. We do agree that the government should provide the modelling, and I remind the Senate of Senator Canavan's tweet on 19 October 2021: 'If this modelling is so good why does it have to remain a secret?' As everybody knows, Senator Canavan and I have different views on climate change, but what we do agree with is that this government shouldn't keep this a secret. The problem is that this government is addicted to secrecy, addicted to covering up and addicted to not providing information to this chamber. Time and again, the chamber calls for documents—calls for information—and we see the government refusing to provide them.

It is the same attitude that this Prime Minister demonstrated yesterday. Yesterday, Mr Morrison used the power of his office to instruct every coalition MP to vote against an inquiry into an anonymous million-dollar donation to Mr Christian Porter. It is extraordinary. You only need to outline the facts of yesterday to be struck by how extraordinary it is. And there's a higher point here that I think is worth making: what does the office of Prime Minister mean and what should it be used for?

Too often with Mr Morrison the power that is associated with the office of the Prime Minister is used to cover up, to protect people and to avoid transparency and accountability. We saw that yesterday when, for the first time in 120 years, in the House of Representatives the government voted against the Speaker on such an issue.

Coming back to the modelling, we have had a long discussion in the media between the National Party and the Liberal Party about net zero emissions by 2050. We had extraordinary scenes here in this chamber, with a cabinet minister threatening the government with things getting ugly and a cabinet minister refusing to back the Prime Minister in. I have never seen a cabinet minister campaign against a Prime Minister in question time before, but that is what this week has been like. We have a member of the government, Senator Canavan, and a member of the crossbench, Senator Patrick, rightly calling for the economic modelling associated with the government climate policy.

I say to the chamber and to all senators that the government are now saying that they have had a change of heart on climate. I don't believe them, and I think the Australian people don't believe them. We all remember what Mr Morrison was like, bringing in his lump of coal and saying that electric vehicles would end the weekend and that renewable storage was a big banana. We know all that. We know this is all fake. But what we do want to understand is the economic modelling that the government is predicating its policy on. If Mr Morrison is serious about net zero emissions by 2050, if he is serious about demonstrating that he actually wants to do something to get there, if he is serious about his belated assertions around jobs, he will get over his addiction to secrecy and he will disclose the modelling that he has been talking about. As Senator Canavan— (Time expired)