Katy Gallagher (ACT, Australian Labor Party, Minister for the Public Service) Share this | Hansard source

I thank senators Birmingham and Waters for allowing me to be the minister that attends the Senate to give this explanation.

On Tuesday the government tabled its guidance to departments on responses to estimates questions on notice without requiring any order of the Senate to do so. So it is bizarre that Senator Birmingham and Senator Waters rail against what they continue to erroneously describe as a secret document. They are more interested in conspiracy theories than facts. Senator Birmingham and Senator Waters decided to take the word of a media report rather than just asking the government for the document, which we were only too happy to provide. Then, having provided it, they still went ahead with the motion requiring Senator Wong's attendance today. This is despite there being ample opportunity to ask Senator Wong about it ad nauseam at estimates in just over a week's time. This a stunt worthy of student politics, not leaders of parties in the Senate, one allegedly a party of government. I can confirm that the Prime Minister did not see or review this document, but now anyone can read it because we've tabled it in the chamber and have put it on the public record.

The Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet distributed this document to agencies to assist in the timely and efficient response to Senate estimates questions on notice. It was then shared with ministerial officers. Consistent with the Government Guidelines for Official Witnesses Before Parliamentary Committees and Related Matters, successive governments have seen departments consult with each other as part of the drafting process, including instances where similar questions are asked of all or multiple departments. Individual ministers, departments and agencies are ultimately responsible for the answers they provide. I can also confirm that there has been no subsequent advice or revisions in response to media reporting.

These guidelines exist because we've seen an extraordinary surge in the number of questions on notice tabled in the Senate in the 47th Parliament. When those opposite were in government, the median average of questions they received each estimates round was roughly 3,800. In some rounds they received fewer than 1,000 questions. By comparison, the government is now receiving twice that number of questions—7,600—including more than 9,200 questions from February's session alone. Some of these questions then contain numerous subquestions, meaning that the true number is far beyond that.

This government wants the Public Service focused on working for all Australians. This includes answering questions that are genuinely in the public interest. But what we are too often seeing from the opposition are questions seemingly written to waste the resources of the Public Service. This is the grand irony of the feigned outrage from those opposite. Senator Birmingham wrote an op-ed overnight, bemoaning our efforts to rebuild the Public Service and complaining about perceived waste and inefficiencies. But Senator Birmingham himself tabled a question on notice that asked the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet what temperature their office thermostats were at. Yet he must stand in awe of the efforts of Senator Hume, who has asked nearly 13,000 questions since May 2022, including over 330 questions about the use of paper alone.

This newfound interest in accountability is particularly galling from the coalition, given that they boast a former prime minister who secretly appointed himself to five other ministries, including Senator Birmingham's areas; a current shadow attorney-general who refused to cooperate with an AFP investigation; and a leader of the nationals in the Senate who only gave evidence to an inquiry into sports rorts after the Senate forced her to do so. They also left more than 1,000 questions on notice unanswered when they left government, including some questions they refused to answer that dated back to October 2019.

Across the board, our government is delivering a higher standard of integrity, transparency and accountability than those opposite ever did. We have lifted the country's ranking on Transparency International's annual Corruption Perception Index from 18 to 13, after a decade-long slide under the coalition. The National Anti-Corruption Commission has been established. We've strengthened the ministerial code of conduct, increased funding to the ANAO, restored transparency to AAT appointments, reinstated a standalone privacy and FOI commissioner and implemented the recommendations of the Bell inquiry.

The Albanese government is receiving far more questions than the previous government, and we're answering them at a higher rate than the previous government. We do so because we are committed to accountability and transparency, and the vexatious use of questions on notice by the Liberals and Nationals diminishes the capacity for us to respond in substance to legitimate questions asked by other parties and Independents. We believe that the Public Service, like this government, should spend its time working for Australian people and not auditing thermostats for Senator Birmingham's amusement.