David Shoebridge (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

If there's a public hearing, the report must be made public. At least to that extent, the minister's correct. But if there are private hearings, there is absolutely no obligation for the report to be made public. The minister is either unintentionally or deliberately misleading the Senate and misleading the public. Far from taking comfort from what the minister said, people should be deeply troubled.

If that's what the government has been telling its less engaged ministers and backbenchers—'Don't worry, it will all become public after a private hearing'—that's totally wrong. The commissioner may make a hearing or a report public; it's totally discretionary. The only person we know will get a copy of a report if there's been a private hearing, the one person that is absolutely going to get a copy of the report, is the Attorney-General. That's the only person who can be guaranteed to get a copy of a report if there's a private hearing. The rest of the public may be kept in the dark for as long as we know. We may get some tiny clue, a crumb, in the annual report published by the commission where they have to, in a generic way, perhaps no more than one line long, describe the general nature of the investigations they've done.

Far from being comforted by what the minister has said, we should be deeply troubled that either the minister doesn't understand how the bill works or he's been badly briefed. These private hearings may never get the light of any public review, and the reports may never be seen by anyone other than the Attorney-General of the government of the day.