David Shoebridge (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

You can hear the layers of frustration in Senator Lambie's contribution, and the reason is that this is a repeated story from defence. They sometimes even pretend that they're transparent and they occasionally say, 'The ADF is incredibly transparent.' They're about as transparent as a brick.

In this regard we're talking about an independent review that, by all means, government can have a look at, but is the government going to sit on this independent review for as long as it's sat on the non-independent review into the former CDF and his medals? Remember that one? I think that was kicked off 2½ years ago—the CDF marking his own homework about whether he should keep his own medals. That's been sitting on Minister Marles's desk for five seasons, I think. Winters have come and gone, and entire crops have been sown, grown to their potential and harvested while that report has been sitting on Minister Marles's desk. It's about something straightforward, I would have thought: whether or not the CDF should have kept the medal he gave himself when he extended the criteria and credentials for getting a medal. Is the same thing going to happen to this absolutely critical 20-year review?

When we get the answer from the government and the minister of, 'We're still considering it'—still considering it? Defence couldn't make a rapid decision to save their lives. Defence couldn't make a rapid decision, from my observations, to save the country. Defence could just for once release something—just once. And maybe even just once they could proactively release something.

Do we agree with the contribution and the level of frustration that we heard from Senator Lambie? Absolutely, the Australian Greens do. I can tell you now that there are people all across the country who are now closely watching a department that wants to spend three-quarters of trillion dollars of public money over the next decade and are asking: how could both the government and the opposition allow them to get away with such appalling responses to basic transparency, such appalling responses to misuse of public money and such appalling responses to major public interest issues like this? Show us the report.

Question agreed to.