Bridget McKenzie (Victoria, National Party, Shadow Minister for Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Development) Share this | Hansard source

Senator Cash, you have called out Minister Wong's embarrassing and shameful defence of what is an absolute quicksand approach from this government to transparency and accountability by this chamber. It happens time and time again, whether it is the vague non-answers at the estimates table by their assistant ministers and ministers, the refusal to answer very sensible and necessary questions on notice, or the refusal to comply with OPDs or any measure of transparency and accountability that this chamber was designed to bring to our political system. It turns out that, when they get to government, they don't want to have the sunlight shine in on their decision-making.

Senator Wong proudly stands up and says 82 per cent of questions have been answered. That may be the case, but the vast majority of them were late. In my own portfolio area of infrastructure, transport, and regional development, they came in very late—only last week. They've been sitting in Minister King's office. I know this isn't annoying just us in the opposition. It is annoying the public who want to see the answers to these questions and it is annoying the crossbench. It is also incredibly frustrating for the hard-working parliamentary staff and public servants who have done the hard work and who take very seriously the closing date for answers to questions on notice to be handed back.

It was in estimates last time when I had the department in front of us in the RRAT committee, the secretary frustratedly answered that briefs had been sent up. They weren't in the department waiting to be sent up. So I assume the same thing has happened with the questions on notice. The department has done the right thing and sent them up to the minister's office, and they're just piling up on the desk of someone who is refusing to send them off. They are doing it for either political reasons or incompetence. It must be very embarrassing for senators who are also ministers to have to repeatedly come into this chamber and apologise for the behaviour of ministers from the other place who clearly do not take the Senate's role seriously.

Senator Wong made out that the questions that hadn't been answered were somehow hypercomplex and were really going to take the Public Service away from the hard work of delivering on the government's policy agenda. My question SQ 23-003381 was: 'How is the $7 million being spent?' It was a pretty simple question on a white paper into aviation. There is no answer. I'm sure the minister signed off on a brief on what the white paper looks like. Tell us about it. On the issue of consultation around community infrastructure and roads program, the government said they consulted and changed the program around a bit. Fair enough. You won the election; knock yourselves out. I simply asked, 'Could you provide details of what consultation was undertaken?'