Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

My question is to the Leader of the Government in the Senate, Senator Wong. I refer to the proposed parliamentary sitting schedule for 2023 that has been widely distributed by the government and which shows that the government wants to scrap additional budget estimates for early next year, a departure from practice in place since the 1990s. Minister, when Labor was elected, the Prime Minister said:

The Australian people deserve accountability and transparency …

Why, then, is this government scrapping additional estimates and reducing Senate estimates scrutiny from the conventional four weeks in a normal year to just three weeks?