Andrew Bragg (NSW, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I welcome the opportunity to speak on this matter of public importance in relation to transparency and the lack of transparency of this government. I think it's comical that this government thinks that it's being transparent. I think it's acting like most governments act. Former Senator Patrick said that all governments engage in a level of secrecy, perhaps too much secrecy. What we see on a daily basis is the frustration of freedom-of-information requests, the frustration of orders for the production of documents and the frustration of proper answers to questions on notice. That is the basic situation. It is very hard to get information out of this government.

Of course the government has engaged in spending that has required it to raise new taxes. The consequence of the new taxes is that there is a process that departments have to go through. Oppositions conduct the business of trying to get to the bottom of how the new taxes have been constructed and consulted on. I've often called this government the government for vested interests, because its main focus is on the vested interests of its fellow travellers—the class-action law firms, the big super funds and the unions. You see ministers working through the laundry list of the things that are important to the unions and the super funds. We saw it yesterday with Minister Jones announcing a policy on financial advice. Minister Jones has prioritised the interests of super funds over the interests of people.

The government works through the consultation processes, usually in secret, with its favourite vested interests, which are usually the unions. It might be on pattern bargaining or on stripping transparency from super funds. They work through these processes in the dark. Our job is to try to work out how they drafted the bill, who was in the room, who provided advice and whose business model it suits. When you are a government for vested interests everything is about grifting for your favourite vested interest you work for.

In the case of the super issues, we all know that Minister Jones's first act as the minister was to strip transparency from the super funds so that people couldn't see how much of their money was being sent off to the unions. The Senate, in its infinite wisdom, decided to roll back that regulation, but more broadly the government has had to fill its fiscal holes with new taxes. One of its new taxes is the franking policy. Of course the Prime Minister promised before the election that there would be no changes to franking and then in their very first budget in October announced that there would be two changes to franking—one on off-market buybacks and another one in relation to capital raising.

The capital raising one is very interesting. We asked a number of questions on notice and we pursued the Treasury department to work out how this policy had been costed and modelled. After an extensive process of obfuscation we found out that the modelling was in 2016 when there was some activity that the tax office was concerned about in relation to capital raising and the issuance of franked dividends. Today, according to the Treasury department, in 2023, there are no nefarious activities happening in relation to capital raisings and the payment of franked dividends. But the modelling is from 2016, and it is alleged to have raised $10 million. So how could the modelling today be the same? Obviously, the modelling can't be right, but we only know this because we had to go through an extensive process of questions on notice, FOIs and orders for the production of documents, and I acknowledge the Greens' role in ensuring the orders for production of documents were approved and information was provided. But it is hard to get information about how policies have been developed, who has been involved in developing them—which vested interest—and how it has been modelled. These are central questions that face all oppositions, and I would say that, in this first year of opposition, it has been a very difficult effort, but we remain committed to holding this government to account. And I believe it is now time to report that my time has expired, and I shall sit down.