Carol Brown (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Pursuant to order and at the request of the chairs of the respective committees, I present reports on the examination of annual reports tabled by 31 October 2012.

Ordered that the reports be printed.

Scott Ryan (Victoria, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Small Business and Fair Competition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

by leave—I move:

That the Senate take note of the Finance and Public Administration Committee's report into annual reports.

I rise to speak briefly on the Senate Finance and Public Administration Legislation Committee's Annual reports (No. 1 of 2013). For those unaware, the Finance and Public Administration Legislation Committee has responsibility for the oversight of the Department of Parliamentary Services, the Prime Minister and Cabinet portfolio and the Finance and Deregulation portfolio. This report in question examines the annual reports of the departments and agencies within the committee's remit.

I understand it is long-held practice that the committee is not obliged to report on acts, statements of corporate intent, surveys, policy papers, budget documents, corporate plans or errata. But it is important that these are noted and it is worth considering whether they should be included at future times. There are two documents in particular that I wish to refer to. The first one is the Department of Finance and Deregulation's 2011-12 report Campaign advertising by Australian government departments and agencies and the second is the Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook 2012-13 statement by the Treasurer and Minister for Finance and Deregulation.

Firstly, on the advertising report, government spending should always be examined to ensure not only that taxpayers' funds are spent appropriately but also that due process is followed to determine whether the advertising campaigns are honest and fair representations of the facts. On these grounds, this government fails yet again. This specific report on agency advertising expenditure shows that, for example, the Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs spent $1 million on a campaign and consultation that resulted in editing a single line from the federal government's carbon tax compensation campaign. That $1 million edit, running at a couple of hundred thousand dollars per word, basically changed a voice-over line from 'to see if you are eligible' to 'for more information', all because the earlier line—'to see if you are eligible'—implied that some people were not eligible and would not receive compensation, as alleged by the government. The government was so sensitive that its electoral bribe would not be recognised that it had to remove the word 'eligible' because it told people about the truth of this campaign, that the great majority of Australians were going to be profoundly worse off in cash terms after the program came into effect.

But it does not stop with the carbon tax compensation ads. Just days after the Commonwealth backflipped on its funding cuts to Victorian hospitals a series of advertisements appeared in the Saturday and Sunday newspapers across Melbourne and Victoria. Unlike the carbon tax ads, which merely stretched the truth and avoided words that might tell the complete truth, these hospital funding ads told absolute untruths. One line in the advertisements stated, 'This will reverse the cuts made by the Victorian government.' As we heard at the Senate committee—and that report was tabled last week and will be debated this afternoon—the Commonwealth government's own officials admitted that these were cuts imposed by the government. It was the Commonwealth government's cuts that they were reinstating. In yet another example of the Labor Party's allergy to the truth, they had to somehow assert that it was someone other than them. They tried to allege, with spending taxpayers' money, that it was the Victorian government that cut funding to Victorian hospitals rather than the Commonwealth.

On reinstating the funding, the Minister for Health in the other place said, 'This is money that would have been paid to their Treasury'—referring to the Victorian Treasury, admitting herself that this was money cut by the Commonwealth government. They were Commonwealth cuts that were being reinstated. To be truthful, the advertisement should have read, 'This will reverse cuts made by the Commonwealth government, the federal government or the Labor government.' But this government's allergy to the truth would not allow them to say that. This particular example amongst many others shows why we should consider whether these reports are examined in more detail in the future.

I briefly turn to the MYEFO statement released in October 2012. We know this is a crucial document. It allegedly provides parliament with a mid-year update on the government's fiscal and economic position, but we know that was not the case this year. We had the MYEFO update in October, yet only weeks later the Treasurer said that it was completely out of date and the long-promised surplus, which we always knew was farcical and mythical, that the Treasurer had promised for this year was not to be. On a level of achieving its most basic objective, not only is the MYEFO out of date but also the most recent update that this government provided to the public of Australia has been shown by admission by the Treasurer to be completely and utterly inadequate.

These are just two documents that I have had the chance to look at and I think in future we will be considering them in more detail.

Question agreed to.

Gavin Marshall (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! It being 12:45 pm, I call on government business orders of the day.