Deborah O'Neill (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

There has been a change of government, and this is the government that is letting the light in. And the hypocrisy of those who've come in here with this faux outrage about having one week less to review an event that's not occurring is simply a complete misrepresentation of what's going on. To be clear, MYEFO, the Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook that is provided to the Australian people—we would be familiar with that—normally happens around Christmas time. And when we return after the Christmas break, the MYEFO document, with all that financial information, is then generally subject to review by the process of estimates. That is how it works.

But we've had an election this year, people. The former government seems to have missed that: there was an election. And because their figures were so lacking in transparency, because they were so dodgy and so unclear—like their own leader, who has been censured on this very day in the other chamber, censured in this very parliament today—they tried to construct a false narrative here about what is going on. The reality is that we are all for transparency, unlike the government-that-was under Mr Morrison.

I think Senator Birmingham should be a bit careful with these sorts of questions. He should know something about this lack of accountability, about the government that he helped to lead. He was the minister representing that Prime Minister, Prime Minister Scott Morrison. Did he stand up to him? Did he stand up then? But as recently as a few months ago, Senator Birmingham was part of the cover-up that we're now seeing revealed since the change of government. There's the transparency where we can finally see a Prime Minister who was so hellbent on keeping everything secret that he didn't even tell his own cabinet ministers that he had taken over five of their jobs! Five of their jobs he had taken over!

They want to ask questions about a document that does not exist, because we just had a budget in October. How many questions did they actually leave unanswered before they left us? It wasn't just parliamentary questions on notice that were left unanswered; as he left, the Prime Minister had a total of 128 unanswered parliamentary questions on notice. There were 128 that he hadn't answered! And parliamentary questions on notice were just one part of this. The Prime Minister's own department had a total of 391 unanswered questions from Senate estimates—391! So when this group of members of the now opposition come in here and say: 'We need transparency! We need accountability!' we agree. And so do the Australian people. It's why they turfed you lot out and brought us in. They were sick of the deception, they were sick of the lies and they were sick of the cover-ups. Those cover-ups have become clear since we've come into government, had a look at the books and put out a proper budget in October to let the Australian people know what's really going on with the finances of this country.

But that's not the only thing they covered up. We tried so hard in this place, in this Senate, to hold that government to account. I have notes from a matter of public importance speech that I gave last year. The topic of that debate was the Prime Minister's inability to accept responsibility for any of the failures and policy stuff-ups that had littered his three years in office. The Prime Minister's answer to the car park rorts was, 'The minister made no decision.' His answer to the sports rorts was that it was misleading parliament. His answer about an alleged rape in the ministerial wing was that he had no idea about it. His answer to the bushfires which burnt homes in my home state was, 'I don't hold a hose.'

His own members were asking him about what was going on with the government and he hid from them that he had taken over five of their jobs. This is an opposition that has not a leg to stand on when coming in and asking questions of this transparent government, which is telling the truth to the Australian people and isn't hiding behind a Prime Minister who is such a deceiver that he can't even tell his own people what he's doing. The truth has to be told; Senate estimates should follow a traditional procedure and should be available to shadow ministers on the other side to ask questions—no doubt. But this is a stunt, because MYEFO doesn't exist and there is really no need for the review of a document that will not exist— (Time expired)