Paul Scarr (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I'll take that interjection from Senator Reynolds: it may well harm their electoral interests. I'm sure it will, and it should because of its furphy about Commonwealth-state relations. How is it going to harm Commonwealth-state relations for the Commonwealth government to provide documents in relation to the financial sustainability of the NDIS? I represent the state of Queensland in this chamber. Those opposite can't provide us any explanation as to how providing us this information is going to harm state-Commonwealth relations. Why? Because there is no cogent response to that question. We here in this Senate are left with the situation where the Albanese Labor government say that they're going to cut $74 billion from the NDIS over the next 10 years. The Senate legitimately asks questions. The Senate is the house of review, the check and balance, in the system of Australian government. We asked for the documents which explain how that cut is going to occur, who is going to be impacted amongst participants, which future participants are potentially going to be denied access to scheme because of these cuts and how the Australian taxpayers are going to be impacted. These are legitimate questions being asked by the Senate, and the Labor government refuses to provide the key documents in response to those legitimate questions.

What are they hiding? Why won't they provide the documents? For those on the government benches to talk about transparency, Senator Reynolds was quite right to remind them that under her ministerial leadership there was oodles of information provided in relation to the NDIS, including monthly financial statements. We in government provided monthly financial statements, not just quarterly statements, and the Labor government are behind with the quarterly financial statements and abolished the monthly reporting. Judge them by their deeds, not their words, and in this context in relation to this legitimate call for the production of documents, the Labor Albanese government is falling short of the standard that should be expected.