Hollie Hughes (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Mental Health and Suicide Prevention) Share this | Hansard source

We all know that this Prime Minister is all hat and no cattle. That was on display at beef week just recently. We know he's all talk and no action. He's all promise with no follow-through. I just want to share with you some quotes that the now Prime Minister was wont to say, almost on repetition. 'Transparency is always a good idea,' he told ABC Drive. On Sunrise in July 2022, he said:

Well, what we need is transparency.

…   …   …

And I want politics to be cleaned up. That's why my Government will establish an anti-corruption commission. And that's why we will have strict adherence to the code of conduct.

Code of conduct? I mean, we know that doesn't really apply, because when we last had estimates Minister Ayres was in so many breaches of it. It was so blatant, yet not even an eyebrow was raised by those opposite.

The Albanese Government is committed to integrity, honesty and accountability and Ministers in my Government (including Assistant Ministers) will observe standards of probity, governance and behaviour worthy of the Australian people.

That's part of the code of conduct. Behaviour worthy of the Australian people? I think today showed that, no, they're not—certainly not their backbench, when they call for genocide and the destruction of Israel. But there we are. Mr Albanese tweeted: 'We do need to restore faith in our political system. We need to make sure that there's transparency, accountability and integrity.' This is a government that is incapable of any of these things, and that's why we're here.

To Senator Price's point, last year $456 million was spent on the Voice to Parliament—the Voice to Parliament that was going to be so important because we cared so much about Indigenous Australians. We were so wanting to make sure that Indigenous Australians had a direct voice into government, affecting decisions and having an impact on decisions that were going to have significance in their lives, yet here we are again. That was just part of an ideology. It was part of something Mr Albanese thought was a good idea. Again, once it failed, and spectacularly so—another great waste of money. To be fair, though, $456 million on the Voice now seems just like a little flurry, a bit of a flush, when you compare it to the billion dollars they're going to spend on the rebranding of the Administrative Appeals Tribunal. These guys have just got absolutely no clue. Fiscal responsibility be damned.

We know that there is no accountability, no transparency and no honesty when it comes to the Australian people. Senator Thorpe has just made a request for some documents. She just wants to know what consultations happened, who's been spoken to and what the impacts are going to be, but we get arrogance and hubris from this government. We see it every Monday when we come back to parliament, on NDIS Monday, when we ask for documents that underpin the modelling of the NDIS and the assumptions that are made there. This is a program that's now going to cost more than Medicare, but these guys are unable to provide any modelling to show how they're going to dramatically impact the budget changes in that area, so why would they tell anyone what they're going to do around the national Indigenous heritage sites?

I'm in New South Wales, but I used to live in Perth, so I do pay a little bit of attention to what's happening over in WA and WA politics. They had an absolute disaster over in Western Australia because the state Labor government brought in legislation that meant that, in effect, if you wanted to trim the hydrangeas or dig a little hole to put a new tree in, you had to pay to get an Indigenous heritage assessment. It took away the limits of what you could do on your land. It was increasing costs and it was completely disastrous, and it had to be revoked.

For some reason, the federal Labor government is determined to push on with these sorts of legislative programs. Because they're so arrogant, because they are so carried away by their own importance and significance, and their belief in their own belief, they're not even going to tell you about it before the next election. They assume they'll be re-elected and they can just do it without your imprimatur, without the Australian people knowing what they're even trying to push through. Shame on you all.

Question agreed to.