Ross Cadell (NSW, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of answers from ministers to all coalition questions today.

It's an interesting thing when we're down here and looking at our responsibilities. The role of the Australian government is primarily to look after the interests and safety of Australians. Questions today went to the heart of that duty of disclosure and clarity that was promised but not delivered. We stand here on a day when people in uniform, who put their lives on the line and put themselves at risk to defend this country, have not been looked after, and where their interests, their being injured in the line of duty, are secondary to international relations, to a conversation. We do not get the time that this was disclosed to the Prime Minister. We do not get the time line at which any action was taken. We do not get clarity around this issue being raised. These are the Australians who go out there every day to defend the rest of Australia and to look after the people who are here. They deserve nothing less than to be represented at the highest levels and to have their interests put first because we know that, if trouble ever comes, these people will be put in harm's way first. So it's quite disappointing today to hear the answers: 'We haven't got the information at hand as to when the Prime Minister was informed. We won't confirm who raised these issues with the Chinese Premier.'

All of these issues come to this question of disclosure, which is so core to clear government. It comes back to the issue around some of the other questions today. In regard to the boat landing, we heard the line: 'We won't comment on border matters. We don't know if it's 10 boats since this government has been in. We don't know where these people that have allegedly landed on Western Australian shores have gone. We don't know how many of them there are. We don't know if they have been caught.' Of the 131 people—I think that's the number we're up to—who have been released subject to the High Court decision, we don't know how many are missing or if they don't know their way. We don't know how many have refused to wear ankle bracelets or to be tracked.

The object of our being here is to give surety to our people—the people of Australia—but it seems that, so much more often, we're putting interests over people. We're putting power over people. The doers of this world and of our country—the builders, the growers, the makers and the carers—don't deserve to know. They don't deserve to make decisions based on actual facts. In reference to the last question from the coalition about cost of living and the inflation numbers, they won't even confirm that the RBA is right when they're saying that it's now a home-grown issue—that it's not the war in Ukraine that's driving up the price of fuel and that it's not the trouble in the Middle East. When the Reserve Bank governor says that it is a home-grown issue, we don't know if that's what the government thinks, but we're heading into Christmas, and I can tell you that many Christmas trees will have fewer gifts under them this year. Some will be empty because of the cost of living in this country now.

So many times we come in here and ask the questions on behalf of the Australian people: 'What are we doing to fight inflation?' On this side we know what the answers will be: 'There's $26 billion here, and there's $26 billion there. You voted against this. You voted against that.' We voted against it because we knew it wouldn't work. We voted against it because it wasn't going to make the difference. Ask mums and dads out on the streets: has it worked? It hasn't. That's the basic point: people need to be heard. They are hurting, and we are not doing enough. If we're going to go and put out a fire and someone says, 'We're going to go and pour some petrol on it,' and we vote against that, does that make us wrong when the fire goes up? No. We saw what was going to happen. This side cares. This side listens. In travelling around, I see that what government—this whole place—has got away from is the real on-the-ground issues facing mums and dads. We are working for causes. We're working for international cooperation. We're working for all these things that have the problem of hurting the Australian people. We're not giving them information to make decisions. We're compartmentalising this.

In my office today, I was given a freedom of information request that contained more information than requests for papers here. This is the sort of thing that we're getting to in this place. So, when we're asking questions about national security and about where these murderers, rapists and child sex offenders are, there are no answers. When we're asking people about who is standing up for the defence contractors of Australia, there are no answers. When we're asking about what you're going to do to make the cost of living better for Australians, there are no answers, and that's because this is a government that is about posturing and not a government about people. That has to change. The scoreboard is reflecting it.