Jonathon Duniam (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Environment, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the explanation concerning the response to the order relating to the Nature Positive bills.

In taking note, Acting Deputy President, I'll first say that the new era of transparency the government said they were going to usher in clearly hasn't arrived yet, even though we're on the eve of an election. In much the same way that Senator Lambie earlier showed the chamber just how little respect the Australian Labor government has for democracy and this chamber, I'll point out that the same has happened here. I simply asked, on behalf of all Australians, what dodgy, dirty deal the government had entered into with the Australian Greens and the other crossbenchers to get their nature-positive bills across the line. Well, I asked. I note that in his explanation a little earlier the minister said that they take transparency seriously and, as a result, they've partially released the documents that I was referring to. I have here a 4½-page letter. It says: 'Dear Senator Hanson-Young. I write further to our recent discussions about the nature-positive bills currently before the Senate. The nature-positive bills will deliver—' and then there's a big black box with everything blacked out. On the next page there's a big black box with everything blacked out and then another page with a big black box with everything blacked out. And then we get to the final page—a big black box with everything blacked out.

What is it that the government don't want Australians to know about their dodgy, dirty deal with the Australian Greens and other crossbenchers on the nature-positive laws? What is behind these black boxes that is so bad that we must hide it from Australians who are considering how they'll vote at the next election? All of the detail's redacted, so you have to wonder what it is they've offered. Is it a ban on native forestry? Perhaps. We will never know, because this government has decided you don't need to know, Australia. Is it a ban on new coal and gas exploration that would help generate energy and bring down power prices? Again, we don't know. We can only speculate. Is it a ban on new housing developments in certain parts of the country that the Greens don't like? Again, we don't know.

What is alarming about this, of course, is the fact that the Minister for the Environment and Water, in thinking it's okay to hide this information from Australians, says that for our second attempt to get this information she had the arduous task ahead of her of going and checking with the recipients of these letters, Senator Hanson-Young and Senator David Pocock, as to whether they were okay with the letters' release. I don't know about you, Mr Acting Deputy President, but for the last two weeks we've been sitting in the same room as these people. It was pretty easy for me to walk up and ask them, 'Do you have a problem with this information being released?'

I'll let them speak for themselves, but my impression, from what they had to say to me, was that there was nothing to hide, yet the minister, in her response of 11 February, said, 'I need time to seek advice on the texts of the documents to determine whether I assert public interest immunity.' Well, that information is information she shared with them, and they don't seem to have a problem with releasing it. She 'needs time to talk to them'. Well, I'm sorry; we've been here for two weeks.

Again I say: the government promised they would usher in a new era of transparency, yet since the election we have time after time seen the government hide behind bureaucratic reasons and refuse to reveal to Australians what it is they're up to in the smoke-filled back rooms of this building, doing dodgy deals with their coalition partners the Greens. It is not what was promised, and we are falling far short of what we deserve as representatives of the Australian people trying to make this democracy work and make the government accountable. They refuse at every turn.

Here we are this afternoon, on potentially the last sitting day of this term of parliament, and it's clear that the Senate has had enough. I do not recall when, in my nine years in this place, we have had three attendances and explanations demanded of ministers, and senators from across the political spectrum have stood to take issue with the ridiculous responses provided.

There is no excuse for this sort of response, which is just page after page after page of information blacked out based on spurious reasons. The real reason is that they just don't want Australians to know what they were willing to trade away to the Australian Greens and other crossbenchers to get these ridiculous bills across the line. Let's not forget these are bills the Prime Minister said were dead when he went to Western Australia. 'We would not do deals with the Greens.' He said it himself, black and white—no deals with the Greens. Yet here we have it, a letter outlining deals with the Greens which will kill mining, kill forestry, kill farming and kill fisheries. The government are not interested in job-creating industries. They're interested in deals with the Greens to hang onto government.