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

I move:

That the Senate take note of the document.

The minister has just tabled a document titled Approaches to Senate Estimates Questions on Notice Asked of All Agenciesthat's from the government. This should be a pretty simple document. It should be: 'Give honest, direct answers.' That would be the case if the government were living up to their rhetoric. The minister has tabled this document saying that it's no secret. I want to be clear at the outset that the government has only tabled this document because the Senate was about to order it to table this document. I acknowledge the Greens as well as the entire Senate crossbench for the fact that there was unanimous support from nongovernment senators in this place to call upon the government to table this document and to require the government to explain its contents.

In the face of knowing that unanimous support from all nongovernment senators was coming—something you don't often see in this place—the government has decided at the last minute to table the document that the Senate was about to force it to table. Of course, we haven't had the chance to review it yet, because the document was a secret, Minister, until you just tabled it. But we came to ask for it because the coalition, the Greens and the Senate crossbench rightly shared in the outrage at revelations about the contents of this document. We shared in the outrage because this is not a document about how to transparently and honestly answer Senate questions. It's a document prepared—we don't know for sure—either in the Prime Minister's Office or the Prime Minister's department but certainly with the Prime Minister's stamp on it. It has been circulated to minister's officers and/or government departments, giving them advice on how to obfuscate, avoid, cover up and ensure that Senate questions go unanswered rather than answered.

The hypocrisy we see from the Labor Party in this regard is quite astounding. The Albanese government was going to be a beacon of transparency, but instead they've come up with their own codified manual on how to cover up their misdeeds and mistakes. I want to give credit to journalists Anthony Galloway and Jennifer Duke from Capital Brief, who broke this story in the last couple of weeks. They were the ones who got extracts of this manual and were able to publish it. In publishing it, they brought to the attention of nongovernment senators the tactics of the government, about which I think we'd all been somewhat curious as we saw more and more consistent responses coming to questions—responses that didn't go remotely close to answering them.

Although we've only just had the document tabled by the government, let's take a close look at some of the examples that the journalists have published to date of what is in this document. For example, a question may say, 'Has the department or agency held any organised external retreats or external speakers?' You might think the suggested response would be 'yes' or 'no' with provided details, but no; the suggested draft response is, 'The data requested is not captured centrally and obtaining it would be an unreasonable diversion of resources.' Too bad! If the person drafting the response was sitting at an external retreat last weekend, they should full well know that that external retreat happened and be able to report upon it. But no. The recommendation is to say, 'Oh, that would be too hard to answer; therefore, we cannot answer it.'

What if a question were asked about the number of meetings the secretary or agency head has had with ministers in their portfolio over a defined period of time? The suggested draft response from the Albanese government about interactions between their ministers and their agency heads is this: 'The secretary regularly meets with portfolio ministers and, at times, ministers outside the portfolio'—no answer at all. This is the best of Yes Minister! This document must have been drafted by somebody sitting down in the Prime Minister's office, getting out the old VCR, putting in their old highlights from Yes Minister and going, 'This is what Sir Humphrey would have said,' because that seems to be the approach the government's taking.

How many meetings might there have been? 'The secretary regularly meets with the portfolio ministers.' What is the minimum processing time for consideration of briefs by the minister? 'The department prepares briefs within agreed time frames on a case-by-case basis'—avoiding detail at every possible opportunity.