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

I move:

That the Senate take note of the explanation.

I really do feel a little sorry for Senator Ayres this morning. He clearly drew the short straw within the government frontbench. In Senator Farrell's absence, Senator Ayres was the one who had to front up and defend the indefensible. Senator Ayres was the one who had to turn up and provide the humiliating response to this Senate, defending the types of responses that should never be given in relation to questions on notice that have been taken.

There's a time and a place for us to engage in political sledging and in comparisons of track records of your government versus our government and the types of things that do frame part of the political debate in the conduct of our national politics. But that time and place is not in written answers to serious Senate questions on notice. Across the chamber, that time and place is in the ABC studios, in the Sky News studios or on the airwaves of radio and television stations. That time and place is sometimes here when we are debating live the contest of ideas and the battle, indeed, of track records. But it's not when a senator has asked a serious question and is seeking serious information about serious topics.

This debate has come on because we believe as the coalition and the opposition in this place that it is a question of respect versus contempt—respect for the Senate and parliamentary institutions versus contempt for the Senate and parliamentary institutions. Mr Shorten and, through agreeing to table Mr Shorten's response, Senator Farrell and the government as a whole have shown contempt for the Senate and its institutions rather than respect for them.

Senator Ayres talked about a yawning gulf as part of his rhetoric. Let's consider the yawning gulf in the government's rhetoric and in what this Labor Party promised to be in government. The Prime Minister, even as recently as April of this year, said:

… I'm focused on … running a good Government. A Government that's run by adults. A Government that has good processes in place. A Government that has ministers that are undertaking their tasks and are working hard.

There's nothing mature, nothing adult like, about Mr Shorten's response to a question asked by Senator Hume in relation to comments about efficiency dividends and how they apply, particularly in relation to the National Disability Insurance Scheme.

I cannot imagine a single Australian who cares about either good budget management or good budget processes or a single Australian who cares about the operation of the National Disability Insurance Scheme thinking that Mr Shorten's response, which constitutes an entire paragraph of diatribe against the former Liberal government and has no mention at all in his response of the NDIS or of disability policy, is anything that goes remotely close to answering the question. If he tried to give this response in the House of Representatives, even the Labor Speaker would call it out of order, even the Labor Speaker would sit him down. Yet he dares to try to give this response in writing in the Senate. It is contemptuous. It is a case of this government speaking with one mind, saying they'll be adults, saying they're going to undertake their tasks properly, saying that ministers will be held to account, but in reality they're not. They've said this again and again. Senator Gallagher assured this Senate:

… that we are an orderly, adult, responsible government. We take matters of integrity and honesty very seriously.

Well, if you take matters of integrity and honesty very seriously, why, again, when Senator Paterson asked a very straightforward question about lobbyists that Mr Shorten may have met with, would Mr Shorten provide an answer that goes nowhere close to actually addressing the question?

This is a message to the government. Lift your standards. Show respect to this institution and to this chamber when it comes to responding to these questions.