Katy Gallagher (ACT, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Finance) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the statement.

I'm not actually sure that the minister addressed the issues that have been raised in the third interim report of the Select Committee on COVID-19. It seemed to be a whole lot of excuses about the fact that scrutiny was occurring and continuing to occur. But the real issue here, if we cut to the chase—because it's the final sitting day of the year and I know there's a lot of other business to get through—is that the select committee was established with the support of the government and other senators in this place. It was unanimously agreed to. The terms of reference were agreed to. They were broad. It was clear that this committee was going to travel through the pandemic. The specific terms of reference are to monitor the Australian government's response to the COVID-19 pandemic, so I'm not entirely sure why the Commonwealth's concern, now, over the lack of scrutiny of the states' role is being raised as an issue. It was a very clear term of reference.

Yes, we've had a lot of hearings. Yes, we've put questions on notice. The minister actually made the argument for me pretty well when he said, 'Yes, and we've answered at least half of them.' That's part of the point. While the scrutiny process from the committee side is working, the problem we are having is with the government either refusing to answer the questions or being very lazy in how they answer them. There's another subset where they answer without actually relating it to the question, so it's an answer about another matter that wasn't asked.

Then there's the blanket refusal to answer things that they have decided are cabinet-in-confidence. I'm sure it goes around the ministerial liaison units of every department because they use the same language—the government has decided that this information is cabinet-in-confidence, in line with longstanding conventions, blah, blah, blah, blah. Often, departments don't even bother referring it to the minister for a formal claim of public interest immunity; the committee has had to do that. So we, the committee, get the answer back and then have to chase them and go back to the department and say: 'No, that's not how the process works. If you are not going to answer this then you have to refer it to the minister, and they need to go through the process of making a formal public interest immunity claim and then you might get it done.' We chase and push the government, only to have the government reply, 'Well, we've considered it again, and the arguments we made last time'—which were not in accordance with the Cormann motion of 2009—'remain.'

When we bring it to the Senate and we force it through here, as we did with the second interim report, it's exactly the same thing. So we report to the Senate that the committee has not accepted public interest immunity claims, for whatever reason, and call for an order for the production of documents. The government has ignored the request of the committee.

The Senate passes it, and then requires the documents to be provided or the minister to come and make a statement. The documents are not provided. And then the minister comes and makes a statement, which is basically to say what they said originally to the question on notice! It is simply not acceptable. It's not how this place should work. It's not how this chamber was set up to work. And the longer this tired old government—eight years in—goes on, the worse it's going to get, because there is seemingly no consequence to this.

The job that the Senate asked us to do—asked me, as chair of the committee, and my colleagues, including Senator Patrick, who has attended most of those hearings—was to scrutinise the response. That job is impacted because of this government's unwillingness to provide information. The information is things like the Doherty modelling and the presentation that was provided to first ministers. Why on earth should the Australian public not have access to that information? It's AHPPC minutes from when the first lockdowns happened and the advice that was given. Again, why are the Australian public not entitled to that information? These are important decisions that were taken and information that has been withheld. This is a ridiculous one: the presentation by the Productivity Commission to national cabinet on the economic recovery—I presume, because we haven't seen it—was not allowed. Then, when we've again asked for that, following Senator Patrick's successful case through the AAT, and we've again put it back on notice, saying: 'Justice White has found that national cabinet is not a committee of cabinet, and therefore your blanket cabinet-in-confidence argument is tossed out, so please provide this document,' the answer has come back: 'No, we're not providing it.'

When you do an FOI on any correspondence that was engaged in, about, 'How did you come to that decision?' you see it's all coming from the Prime Minister's department. All these departments are going: 'Oh, the committee's after those documents again. What do we say?' and it's a coordinated refusal to provide that information—'Oh, we can't'—that comes back from PM&C. They've got all their hands on it. Health admitted as much—that they had consulted PM&C about their response before refusing, again, to provide the information to the Senate that was called for by the Senate.

The thing is: when you are in opposition and you are trying to do this, we will remind you of this—of the fact that you are trashing convention and practice of the Senate. So we have to stand up for it. We have to argue for transparency and accountability—and not just what you choose, because it seems to me that the approach the government has taken is: 'We will choose what access Senate committees have to information.' And that's not how the system was set up to work. It was that the Senate had the power to call for documents, to require documents, to order documents if they weren't provided. It was not executive government deciding: 'You know what? You can have half of this and a quarter of that and none of that.' That is what's happened and that is why the Senate committee has reported, for a third time, rejecting public interest immunity claims by this government—excepting one. We have excepted one, because the argument was made and we accepted that. But on the other ones—access to important information—we haven't accepted it, and the Senate yesterday voted to require the government to provide it. And we got this—a speech about how great the government's been, how great it's going to be and how great it's always been, 'But, by the way, you're not getting access to anything.' It's just not good enough.

I'll leave some time for Senator Patrick to make some other comments. But this is impacting on the work that we are able to do on the job that we have been given by the Senate. It is an arrogant, out-of-touch, conceited government that treats the Senate with such disrespect.