Anne Ruston (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Health and Aged Care) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the minister's inability to provide an explanation as to why all of these questions have not been responded to within the statutory time frame.

It's interesting to note that the minister in response to this particular question came in and listed the number of questions that have been put on notice to the department. It is quite extraordinary, when you consider that a greater number of questions were put on notice by those opposite when they were in opposition. I would also put on the record that the reason these questions are put on notice is that time after time of asking for answers to questions there is a failure by the department in estimates, and often in this place, to provide answers to those particular questions.

It's also interesting that I did give notice to the department, the agencies and minister at estimates that I was seeking answers to these remaining questions, because they relate to a particular group or set of questions that I think the public has every right to have answers to. They're not particularly onerous questions to answer. As an example, one was simply about overseas travel up until November 2022—not a particularly long period of time during this government's term—by the five ministers within the Health and Aged Care portfolio. As to why the department would still have that question and it has not been answered, the Minister representing the Minister for Health and Aged Care has said that none of the questions that have been unanswered are in the minister's office. I cannot understand why the department wouldn't be able to answer a question around travel arrangements. One would have thought the minister's office might have been able to do that.

One of the more concerning questions that remain is about an outstanding amount of $312.6 million that has been allocated within the agency for ICT changes. That's $312.6 million, of a budget line item, with no detail. We sought additional detail on the expenditure of that money. Now, some five months later, we still don't have any information about this, which was contained in the October budget. We're talking about transparency around the expenditure of quite a significant amount of money. The purpose of the estimates process is to get information around the expenditure of money. But $312.6 million, apparently, is not sufficient to warrant responding to.

We had a simple question about how many conferences the minister has sent departmental officials to, to attend on their behalf. It asked how many times the minister has been invited to attend conferences where departmental officials have been sent to represent the minister. It does not strike me as something terribly difficult for the department to answer—or, for that matter, the minister's office, because if the minister had been invited instead of the department they would have had copies of those invitations.

Just a minute ago, we saw Senator Liddle ask a very serious question about cuts to mental health that have occurred under this current government, the Medicare funded subsidised rebates to people with serious mental health conditions. We didn't get one word about mental health, but in these questions that we have not had answered one of the issues was about the consultations undertaken prior to the decision to cut mental health.

Another really serious question that was asked—we often hear those opposite talk about the great things they've done, since coming into government, in health. One of them was a copycat policy of ours, around providing continuous glucose monitoring devices to people with type 1 diabetes. It was received with great acclamation, and we have seen the minister and assistant ministers running around heralding the great achievements of this. We asked questions about the apparent severe shortage of the provision of these devices to Australians with diabetes. This question was put on notice and we still don't have an answer.

We do not know what the shortages are, we do not know how many Australians are waiting for this life-changing device to be made available to them. Yet we have this government running around telling Australia how fabulous they are because, apparently, they've fulfilled this promise—but they can't answer the question as to whether they have or not.

There were a number of questions on notice around a piece of legislation that was pushed through the parliament yesterday. I asked a number of questions of two representing ministers about details that sit behind changes to private hospitals and the use of implantable devices. I raised these questions in November and again, in more detail, in the February estimates. So for the government to arrive in here yesterday with the bills before the chamber and still not be able to answer questions—questions that have been on notice for some period of time—once again just points to the fact that we have a government that is absolutely prepared to push legislation through with no detail and refuse to answer the questions that are legitimately being asked by those on this side to make sure that we have transparency and that the sectors that need to know the answers to these questions have them.

They're just some examples of the kinds of questions that are on notice that haven't been answered. They are not questions that would have required an onerous amount of work by the department to provide the answers. They are reasonably simple question, and quite clearly, in the absence of answers to those questions, you'd have to suggest that the government either are hiding something or haven't done anything and are not prepared to admit to that. I would say that, for a government that had been elected on a platform of transparency, the opaqueness and refusal to provide details about things that are tremendously important would suggest that, once again, their guarantee of a transparent government was nothing more than every other promise that they made: a headline promise that they never had had any intention of ever delivering on.