Anthony Chisholm (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Education) Share this | Hansard source

Senator Birmingham is not immune to this sort of activity either. Senator Birmingham asked what temperature the department's buildings are currently set at. Senator Hume alone has asked 13,000 questions on notice in this term. That includes 331 questions concerning paper use by departments, 125 questions on working on the King's birthday and other public holidays and 31 questions concerning who might be the longest-serving agency member. The government wants the Public Service focused on answering questions that are in the public interest, not spurious questions seemingly written to waste the resources of the public sector. We are working across government to support efficient, timely responses to questions on notice. That is our record, and that is what we are doing.

Despite receiving nearly half the number of questions per estimates round as the Albanese government did, the Liberals had failed to answer 360 questions on notice when they left office, some dating back as far as October 2019. The Liberals had failed to answer nearly 780 questions on notice by the time they left office in May 2022. Some of these were many years overdue, despite receiving far fewer questions on average: 86 a month versus 138 a month. Over the life of the previous government, this equalled an average unanswered question rate of 8.2 per cent, significantly higher than the Albanese government's rate of 1.4 per cent.

As I pointed out, I think the Australian people remember, or I'm confident that they remember, but it's always worth reminding them of the record of those opposite during their decade in power and of the work we had to do to overcome so much damage they had done to accountability and transparency in this country. The former Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, secretly appointed himself to five ministerial positions without the knowledge of the public, his own government or the ministers whose positions he'd appointed himself to.

Then home affairs minister Peter Dutton refused to appear before an inquiry into allegations he misused his ministerial powers to intervene in two separate cases to allow a French au pair and an Italian au pair into the country. According to the committee's final report in September 2018:

It should be noted that on 29 August 2018, the committee extended an invitation to the Hon Peter Dutton MP, Minister for Home Affairs, to appear at the hearing. The committee received no response.

After repeatedly denying that she or her office had tipped off media ahead of a 2017 police raid on the AWU offices on behalf of the registered organisations committee, then employment minister Senator Cash was forced to admit that one of her staffers had, in fact, done so. Senator Cash then refused to provide a witness statement to the AFP in their subsequent investigation.

Senator McKenzie only gave evidence to an inquiry into sports rorts after the Senate forced her to do so.