Bridget McKenzie (Victoria, National Party, Shadow Minister for Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Development) Share this | Hansard source

Since being elected, the Labor government under Anthony Albanese has been one thing: incredibly consistent. They've been consistently disregarding the democratic principles not just of this chamber but indeed of the great privilege of holding government and the executive. This chamber exists to hold executive government to account. We are known worldwide for our estimates process that other parliaments wish they had. They wish they had a process as robust and genuine as the Australian Senate estimates process. But it is being absolutely trashed by Anthony Albanese, aided and abetted by senators in senior ministerial positions, who should know better. I know that Senator Wong and Senator Gallagher are two ministers in Albanese's government who respect the Senate, but they are being expected to mop up after Albo for this shocking document. This is a cheat sheet of how to evade scrutiny and genuine, legitimate questions not just from the crossbench but from the opposition, who have a right and entitlement to ask sensible and legitimate questions. This is a training manual for government departments.

The government have made a big deal this week about expanding the APS, with 36,000 new Australian public servants coming to serve the Australian public. Yet they trash the professionalism of those very public servants by assuming that they don't know how to do their job—that they don't know how to fulfil the government's orders and also submit themselves to legitimate public scrutiny through the estimates process. This is essentially a document that gags the APS from doing their due diligence and duty as Australian public servants. It's one thing for the CPSU to clap for this government on the tens of thousands of new public servants; meanwhile the government is trying to silence them from doing their job, as other senators have made very clear—the whole chamber, bar the Labor Party, has done this. It seems that this is just business as usual for the Labor Party under Albo. It's BAU to be shutting down debate in the Australian House of Representatives on the biggest change to our transport industry since we got rid of the horse and cart. That happened this morning.

They're shutting down inquiries. They're guillotining today, not because it's the end of the year or the end of the financial year or because there's some technical reason we have to get legislation through this afternoon by close of business because otherwise the legislation will be moot—no, it's only for political reasons. It's so that the public doesn't know what's happening here, that a new tax is being implemented. It's that it doesn't need to know what this government is doing. The government is shrouding these public chambers and our public processes in secrecy. Mr Albanese swore that he'd operate a classic cabinet process, yet we've got ministers here refusing to answer questions and refusing to respond. It's a trashing of our very institutions, day in and day out.

I just want to remind the Leader of the Government in this place of things she spoke about prior to becoming Leader of the Government in this place. Senator Wong said:

Each time a minister comes in here and refuses to give an answer or refuses to table any information where documents are ordered to be produced, the Senate is diminished.

Yes, it is! And you are diminishing this Senate daily and diminishing our democracy every time you use the guillotine for political purposes. This is not a student union where you just get to walk in with your constitution, do your numbers, wham, bam, we win, you don't and you're shouting us beers at the union pub. This is the Australian Senate. This is the Australian parliament.

We talked a lot about respect today. The President was talking about respect. Respect also means giving space for opposing voices to be heard. You will still win. Your legislation will still get passed, but you would have given the millions of people who don't agree with you an opportunity for their perspective to be put. I just think this is appalling and I have nothing more to say.