Kristina Keneally (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Under standing order 74(5)(a), I seek an explanation from the Minister representing the Prime Minister, Senator Birmingham, as to why questions on notice Nos 236, 238, 240, 242 and 255 from the finance and public administration estimates hearings remain unanswered.

Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Minister for Finance) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank Senator Keneally for advice shortly prior to question time in relation to these matters. As I informed the Senate earlier this week, there have been an unprecedented number of questions posed through the life of this parliament—both questions on notice provided through the chamber and questions on notice through estimates committees. In fact, if my recollection is correct, those coming through the chamber are close to being in excess of the total number handled in the two previous parliaments combined, showing the many thousands of questions that have been presented. Overwhelmingly, those questions are answered in as timely a manner as possible. We will look into the particulars in relation to the questions that Senator Keneally has highlighted, and no doubt efforts will be made to provide responses to those in as timely a way as possible.

Kristina Keneally (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Under standing order 74(5)(b), I move:

That the Senate take note of the explanation.

Well, what will happen first in Australian politics? Will the Prime Minister hop into his Comcar and head down to the Governor-General's to call an election, or will he and his ministers finally answer the questions put to them here in the 46th Parliament? It's disturbing how easily those opposite ignore their duties as public servants in this place. 'Accountability', 'transparency' and 'responsibility' are all nouns without a home in the Morrison-Joyce vernacular. 'I don't hold a hose, mate,' said the Prime Minister. Well, apparently he doesn't hold any answers either. He doesn't appear to do much of anything. We know that the Prime Minister failed on the two jobs he had this year: roll out the vaccine and set up fit-for-purpose quarantine.

Today I have picked five questions that have been ignored by this Morrison-Joyce government, but there are hundreds. There are over 500 questions unanswered, dating back to March 2020. There are pre-pandemic questions for which no answers are yet provided. Those unanswered questions from March 2020 were asked of the Prime Minister of Australia, Mr Morrison. The Prime Minister won't answer them. If that's the example he's setting, no wonder the Morrison-Joyce government acts the way that it does. A fish does rot from the head down, after all, and this rotten behaviour undermines the community's faith in our democratic institutions.

There are some in our community who might think this is all business as usual, but an increasing number of Australians are growing disillusioned with the way Mr Morrison plays politics in this country. They see the bad behaviour of the Morrison-Joyce government go unpunished and think that it represents the parliament at large. My message to those people is this: This is not normal. This is not the status quo. This is how bad government operates. The Morrison-Joyce government have plumbed new depths in every aspect of accountability and transparency.

Compare this government to its most recent predecessors. I personally never thought we would pine for the days of Prime Minister Turnbull, but a comparison between then and now just shows how quickly the standards have deteriorated under Mr Morrison. Dr Parkinson, the former Secretary of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, put the real value on accountability and transparency. That standard was set from the very top, and it flowed down accordingly. There was an expectation that you would do your job as a minister. They got it wrong—a lot—under the Turnbull government, but at least people were disciplined on occasion. They were disciplined for misconduct; they were disciplined for their lack of accountability. The current Prime Minister, Mr Morrison, does not punish bad behaviour; he rewards it.

Look no further than the current Minister for Emergency Management and National Recovery and Resilience. This is an unlimited debate, but I still wouldn't have enough time to go through the intricacies of the sports rorts scandal. The sports rorts scandal saw Minister McKenzie forced to resign, but she was quickly brought back by Mr Morrison, and now she is deciding Australia's climate change policy. She is one of the gang of four that's going to decide how many millions, or perhaps billions, of dollars of pork are going to flow through to allow Mr Morrison to secure a deal on climate change. Maybe he will; maybe he won't. Today we saw the minister openly threatening her cabinet colleagues—quite an extraordinary performance in question time.

But Minister McKenzie is only one of the many scandal-prone ministers who've made startling comebacks under Mr Morrison: Ministers Taylor, Joyce, Colbeck, Cash, Ley, Dutton, Fletcher, Robert, Tudge, Hunt, Ruston, Reynolds and Porter. If you want to work out what they did, go to our website notonyourside.org.au. If you're a backbencher in the Morrison government, if you are stuck looking at the back of someone's head in question time, you have got to be asking yourself, 'What have I done right to be stuck up the back here?' It's truly staggering what gets rewarded on Mr Morrison's watch. Ministerial standards are dead under Mr Morrison. We will see that again, I predict, when, after the cabinet adopts net zero by 2050, Minister McKenzie and Minister Pitt don't have to abide by the ministerial guidelines. Let's see if they get a free pass. Comparing the days of old with the current standard is truly an exercise in despair, a stark contrast between a bygone era when ministerial standards and government accountability existed and the utter mess that we are in today.

This Prime Minister doesn't like answering questions, because he knows the Australian people won't like the answers. This Prime Minister governs by focus group. How do we know that? Because one of his own colleagues told the media, 'At the heart of the Morrison government is a focus group.' His own colleagues, including Senator Fierravanti-Wells, call the Prime Minister's office the 'prime marketing office'. So the hundreds of unanswered questions on notice are a massive red flag to the Australian people. Let's be clear: if the answers were good news for the government, they'd be shouting them from the rooftop. The Prime Minister can't build a chicken coop without a ribbon-cutting ceremony and a social media post. That is because he is all photo-op and no follow-up.

There's very little substance to what goes on in the Morrison government. There's no big, grand plan. There's no ambition for the Australian people. The Morrison government—Mr Morrison and his ministers—are not interested in Australians' jobs; they're only interested in their own jobs. Mr Morrison doesn't care about anything except his own political agenda, and he is certainly not on the side of the Australian people. If Mr Morrison were, he would be upfront with the Australian people. He would answer the questions put to him in this parliament. He would hold ministers to account for their actions and behaviours. He'd be proud of his work, rather than hiding the answers in the shadows.

The Australian people have a right to know, in a democracy, what decisions are being made in their name and how their taxpayer dollars are being spent. The problem for Mr Morrison is that, on the rare occasions he and his ministers do answer questions, the Australian people don't seem to like their answers, so they know that being truthful to the Australian people will jeopardise their own job security. There's an election right around the corner. Do we seriously think these 500 questions on notice that haven't been answered are somehow 500 good-news stories kicking around the ministerial wing that they're going to roll out in the advent of an election? Of course not. That's absurd. These are questions they don't want to answer before an election because they don't want the truth to come out.

So the Australian people have a right to know how their government's being run. Scrutiny of the Morrison-Joyce government is essential. It's essential for our democracy. It's essential for restoring the public's faith in democratic institutions, because on this government's watch we have had sports rorts, robodebt, the Ruby Princess, safer seats rorts, the Leppington triangle, car park rorts, jobs for mates, Paladin, the Great Barrier Reef Foundation grant, Helloworld and the JobKeeper rorts, where they gave $13 billion of taxpayer money to companies that turned a profit during the pandemic and they're not lifting a finger to try to get any of that money back. Under robodebt we saw the pursuit of the penniless, in some cases to their deaths, but the government don't lift a finger against their corporate mates. They don't even suggest they might want to pay the money back—$13 billion, wasted. A trillion dollars of debt has been run up, with so little to show for it.

What did we see last week? The Building Better Regions Fund rorts. What a joke! The money overwhelmingly went—90 per cent, I think it was—to government-held or marginal seats.

Of course, let's not forget, as Senator Green points out, that some of it went to areas that could only in the wildest of imaginations be considered regions. I think my personal favourite in New South Wales was the regional funding that went to refurbish the North Sydney Olympic Pool. Right there under the Harbour Bridge, next door to Luna Park and directly opposite the Opera House, a regional fund was used to build a swimming pool. I don't know. Maybe they think people from the regions in New South Wales like to travel all the way into North Sydney to have a swim.

Anyway, we know about billions and billions and billions of dollars of rorting, scandal, waste and mismanagement under this government's watch. Every time they appear before Senate estimates, what do we get? Another colour coded spreadsheet. What did we hear last week? Anne Webster, the member for Mallee in the other place, basically belled the cat. She inadvertently let it out of the bag. There was a green spreadsheet and a pink spreadsheet, but only government members got told about the green and pink spreadsheets. If you wanted your project to move from the pink to the green, you had to lobby some government minister really hard. Well, no wonder about 90 per cent of the funding went to government or marginal seats—because they were run in a colour coded spreadsheet scheme!

This is why the Morrison government ministers and the Prime Minister himself are not answering questions put to them through the finance committee. I can't imagine how bad this is all going to look when the ANAO inevitably reports on all the dodgy pork-barrelling that's going to happen to get to a deal on net zero emissions by 2050. What was it one of the government members called it—a giant green rainbow that's going to spread across the regions with crocks of pork sprinkled about? We've got a minister here in the chamber, the Minister for Finance, who won't even tell us how much money they're prepared to spend for this political fix, who won't even tell us if it's in the budget. That trillion dollars of debt—nothing to show for it going up and up; just a political outcome. But this is an inevitable outcome when you have a prime minister who views every act of governance as a marketing opportunity. There's nothing that can't be solved with a catchy slogan, no storm that can't be weathered.

Look at what we saw in the chamber here today: the Morrison-Joyce government sought to politicise domestic violence victims. I strike a deal with the minister, Alex Hawke. After two years—two years I've been trying to get a meeting with the minister for immigration—finally, I get one. Finally we get a deal, an agreement. We're going to deliver this piece of legislation. We're going to fix some things for women and children who are suffering domestic violence. We're going to deal with the problem of low-level offending. We're going to try to address the concerns raised by New Zealand. We strike a deal. We're going to come to a conclusion in two weeks time. What happens? Mr Morrison pulls the rug out from underneath his own minister, because what would he rather have? A political outcome, not a practical solution—and what a low act. Women and children who are victims of domestic violence: is there anything this Prime Minister won't politicise?

The Morrison-Joyce government does not, as the Prime Minister once said, 'burn for' Australia; they simmer in self-interest. The Australian people are waking up to the Prime Minister's schtick, his adman approach and his prime-marketing office. And there's something to see here with these unanswered questions. There must be, because they wouldn't be so intent on hiding the answers if there wasn't.

Being the Prime Minister of Australia actually requires leadership. It means making the tough decisions and being held to account. It means bringing people with you and holding them to a standard. So the malaise that's swept through the cabinet is a choice made by this Prime Minister because it's the easy way out, and it's the Australian people who are worse off as a result. This Prime Minister won't hold himself or his ministers accountable. I hope the ministers and secretaries listening today do take notice and take time to prepare thoroughly for Senate estimates next week. We can't expect questions to be answered when they're taken on notice, so we're hoping for a lot more cooperation in the room next week.

Rex Patrick (SA, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to also take note of the minister's answer to Senator Keneally. There's a great difficulty taking place in the chamber. We are asking questions, as we do as part of our oversight role. It's an important role of the Senate—to ask questions, to inform itself as to the conduct of government such that we can do our job properly, we can discharge our responsibilities properly, in the oversight of government. Yes, questions are asked, and there's a time requirement placed in the standing orders—or, in the case of estimates, time requirements placed by the committees themselves—for the return of those answers, and it is disrespectful for ministers not to supply those answers within the recognised time frames. It's disrespectful not just to the senators who ask those questions but to the people whom those senators represent.

I ask many questions on the basis of an email I receive in my electoral office from a constituent that just wants to know something. I'll happily put a question on notice if a South Australian asks me a question and I don't know the answer. It's an important process.

Of course, we could stop questions on notice if indeed the government found some other source of money to pay for the things that it does, but, you know what? It gets its money from taxpayers. It gets its money from the citizens of Australia, from the businesses of Australia. And, until such time as you find some alternative source, I'm sure senators will continue to ask questions.

Minister Birmingham stated on Monday and again today that the number of questions that are being asked and answered in this parliament are significantly more than in the last two parliaments. In fact, I think he said that the number of questions answered this parliament equals the same as the last two parliaments combined. Let me just talk about that. There is a fundamental difference between a response to a question and an answer to a question. I can give one example in relation to the cost of some proceedings that concluded over a year ago, and I've had to ask three times—three times for an answer! So, maybe, that explains the reason why there are more questions to this government, because they simply don't answer the question; they respond to it. That means I have to go back and now ask a second question, and sometimes I have to ask it again. So please, Minister, do not stand up in this chamber and suggest that there's something untoward going on here, on this side, in terms of how many questions we're answering, because, on your side, you're simply not answering the questions properly. You're responding, but you are not answering. When you start lifting your game, maybe these problems will disappear for you. Maybe, Minister, you can go back to the party room, to the cabinet, and suggest to them that they take the obligation of properly answering questions seriously.

I was at a Senate inquiry last Friday in relation to submarines, and I asked Admiral Mead, the head of the task force that informed the government before it made its announcement on 16 September to go down a different pathway to where they were going before, a simple question about the advice that had been given to government about simple things like cost and schedule. One would think, if you're cancelling one program and moving to another program, that, in actual fact, you would only do so if you had at least some fundamental advice as to the cost and as to the schedule. I would ask the question about advice that was given to government, and the answer I got was an answer to a different question. I had to ask it several times. Not only did I have to ask it several times, I then had to remind the Admiral that he wears a naval uniform and he serves the Australian public and not political masters.

The culture that we're seeing when we carry out estimates is getting worse. We're getting officials turning up refusing to answer questions, pretending they're answering when they're only responding. We have to go again and again and again to get the answer. I know that the select committee on COVID has sought answers in relation to national cabinet information, and, despite a ruling by Justice White that national cabinet is not a committee of the federal cabinet, the committee is still not getting answers back. That's disgraceful. That's a judicial officer that's made a ruling that's being ignored by the government. The Senate needs to observe what's happening here: answers coming back that aren't answers—they're responses—and going to estimates and not getting proper answers from officials. All of that is led from a culture at the top which is about secrecy. We can see that in the COAG amendment legislation where the Prime Minister, having lost the battle between me and him in the AAT, is now seeking to introduce a new secrecy law—obsessed with secrecy. Just answer the questions. Just be open and honest. In actual fact, I pressed the admiral. I actually had to say to him, 'You are running very close to being in contempt of the Senate,' before he finally answered. The answer he gave me was quite reasonable, but why do we have this culture in there of, 'Let's not answer questions'?

We've got two matters before the Privileges Committee now, the first being the government's refusal to provide documents to the economics committee, which relates to naval shipbuilding—to one of the biggest government expenditures ever. The documents that were requested were not confidential. They're not secret. They're not top secret. They were simply documents provided to the government in order to help make a decision about which shipbuilder was going to get the job. These are documents that go to what these shipbuilders promised Australian industry. The government has refused to provide those documents to the committee. It's gone off to privileges, and there is some progress being made in relation to that. But how did we get to this point? How did we get to this point where—even with documents being given to a committee, who are willing to accept them in camera, such that they are protected by criminal sanction in the event of a leak—the executive says, 'We're not going to provide those documents to the Senate'?

Then we have a statutory official who receives a lawful order from the Senate. The Senate makes an order for production. The Senate's always very reasonable in the way it conducts its business, much like a court who might issue a subpoena. The person subject to the subpoena or the order is given the opportunity to step forward and say, 'I don't think I should respond to the subpoena or the order for production for these reasons.' What happens, in the case of an OPD, is that the Senate considers that response and makes its final decision. That's exactly what happened in relation to the tax commissioner: the Senate made a decision that the balance of the public interest lied in disclosure. It disagreed with where the balance lied in terms of public interest, and made a lawful order.

To anyone who thinks that I'm making this stuff up, go and read the 1998 High Court case of Egan v Willis. I know Senator Keneally knows that, because it relates to Mr Egan in the New South Wales parliament. The High Court affirmed what was always known through section 49 of the Constitution: that houses of parliament have the ability to acquire or require the production of documents from the executive in order for it to be able to discharge its functions.

So we're now in a situation where we have a couple of matters on foot with the Privileges Committee. I'm hopeful that this is a Senate mojo moment. I look at how the US Senate conducts its inquiries, and I see officials that turn up to the US Senate. They dare not not answer a question. They dare not not provide a document which the US Senate orders, because they know that the US Senate will act. In some senses, there's a test running in the background right now for the Australian Senate. We can push ourselves back into a position where we are treated with the absolute respect that the US Senate is treated with in the US, or we can fail to deal with what I say—as a question of fact—is a contempt: the delay of the naval shipbuilding committee's proceedings for well over a year. That can't go unaddressed. I hope the Privileges Committee finds that to be a contempt and issues a fine or applies a sanction. We have to change the culture. Whilst I assert that there is a culture of secrecy in the Morrison government, driven from the very, very top, in some senses the Senate, when it seeks answers and doesn't get them, basically lets the executive get away with it and becomes part of the problem. I’m hopeful that we will see a change and see some Senate mojo.

I refer back to a situation with Facebook a couple of years ago when the UK House of Commons wanted access to documents from Mr Zuckerberg. He refused. Of course, he's outside their jurisdiction. Someone turned up to the UK and the House of Commons said, 'We've got someone who's got the documents,' and they sent out the Serjeant at Arms, met up with the gentleman, invited him to come back in a very insistent way to the House of Commons and offered him two choices: 'Hand over the documents or you can sit in the jail for a while.' The UK House of Commons got those documents because it stood up. It exercised its powers. You don't have to do it many times. It is a little bit like freedom-of-navigation exercises. Every once in a while you have to sail a ship through international waters despite a country saying that they think it's their waters in order to be able to assert a right and to remind people of your rights. I hope the Senate stands up in these two instances, with these two privileges matters, to send a very strong message to the executive that they must respect our need to be well informed in what it is that we do and our need to be able to get access to documents when we ask for them.

What we're seeing today on the issue raised by Senator Keneally is in fact part of a much broader problem. I'd ask the minister to consider all of the things that I've said in relation to that today and understand the responsibilities of answering questions on time. It is really important and, again, it's disrespectful when you don't do that. I'll foreshadow to the minister that tomorrow I will also use the same standing orders in relation to the four answers to estimates questions I asked that haven't been returned. So consider that notice under the guidelines in respect of the standing order. Hopefully by tomorrow I will have all those answers; otherwise we will be back here having another conversation about the responsibilities of the government and the need for them to be able to respond to the Senate in a timely fashion.

Question agreed to.

Katy Gallagher (ACT, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Finance) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Under standing order 74(5)(a) I seek an explanation from the minister representing the Prime Minister, Senator Birmingham, as to why 2020-21 additional estimates questions on notice Nos 1, 3, 5, 6, 501 and 519 to 531 inclusive placed on notice with the finance and public administration committee in the Prime Minister and Cabinet portfolio remain unanswered.

Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Minister for Finance) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank Senator Gallagher for her question. As I indicated in response to Senator Keneally and have already indicated this week and on previous occasions, the government has been dealing with quite unprecedented numbers of questions posed through the parliament and, in doing so, the government has been providing quite unprecedented numbers of answers to questions posed through the parliament. We're not talking about hundreds of questions. We're not talking about thousands of questions. We're actually talking about tens of thousands of questions in the life of this parliament. The government work to try to provide answers, when we can, to those questions.

I know there are some senators who seek to be quite diligent and earnest in the approach that they take most of the time. I acknowledge in Senator Patrick's remarks that he just made that he stuck broadly to the question before the chair around accountability and government responsiveness. He addressed issues in terms of the particular nature of particular answers that are given. So, although I don't accept the premise of all the statements that Senator Patrick made in that regard, I acknowledge he at least stuck to the broad thrust of the debate.

I think, if the chamber reflected upon the remarks made by Senator Keneally immediately preceding Senator Patrick, we'd find that it was a much more politicised contribution, reflecting the fact that many times, particularly from those opposite, the questions asked are more about cheap pointscoring, more about trying to advance political agendas, more about trying to seize a cheap headline or the like. It's the right of those senators to spend their time asking those questions, and, again, of the many thousands of such questions that come about, the government responds to them, even where there's a whole swathe of hypocrisy attached to them.

Senator Keneally, in her remarks, jumped across many issues beyond the questions that she was asking about. She spent some time talking about grant programs and recent comments in relation to grant programs. I note that among the grant programs that were the subject of such commentary by Senator Keneally and others were the Community Development Grants Program and the Stronger Communities Program. I can't help but notice that so many members of the opposition quite happily take advantage of such programs, promote such programs and advocate for grants under such programs, but then of course, if there's a cheap headline to be had, they're lining up, forming a conga line, to try to go after a cheap headline in the national political debate, while trying to seek out a good headline in their local media or their social media.

The Leader of the Opposition himself had the fabulous social media post 'Grants for Grayndler: could your community organisation use a grant?' And there were not one, not two, not three, not four, not five but half-a-dozen different photos of Mr Albanese posing happily with different grant recipients, just in the one post there. Much of the commentary from Senator Keneally and others in this debate has been about whether too many of these grants have been going to city electorates rather than regional electorates. If I'm correct, the electorate of Grayndler is—

Sue Lines (WA, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Sorry, Senator Birmingham. Senator Patrick is on his feet. Senator Patrick?

Rex Patrick (SA, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On a point of order: I note that the minister has wandered off the question that has been asked by Senator Gallagher and is actually referring to debate that took place in relation to a previous question.

Sue Lines (WA, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This part of the standing orders is about taking note of unanswered questions, so it's a wideranging debate. I don't have the unanswered questions, so I'm not really in a position, but he's not answering a question; he's responding.

Rex Patrick (SA, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I was just moved by his statement that it's a good idea to stick to the topic of the question.

Sue Lines (WA, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thanks, Senator Patrick. I'm sure the minister was listening to your words.

Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Minister for Finance) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Touche, Senator Patrick. Deputy President, indeed I am responding in a little lengthier way than I did to Senator Keneally's question to me about unanswered questions, because of the way in which Senator Keneally sought to then elaborate more broadly in relation to those matters. I don't wish to take up the time of the Senate at length. I was simply making the point around the highly politicised nature of some questions. In other cases, we have seen, particularly this year, that questions often are in pursuit of sensitive matters, sometimes legally sensitive matters, that do pose extra challenges in responding or answering them. That requires either extra advice being taken by government in response, extra care, or, sometimes, highlighting the fact that such details are difficult to provide without compromising or prejudicing legal proceedings.

I again come back to the substantive point that I made, which is that this government, in this parliament, has responded to more questions than were posed in the previous parliament or were posed in the parliament before that. We have been more responsive than any previous government has been asked to be. We continue to seek to be so. We have been handling literally tens of thousands—something close to 35,000—questions posed through estimates or Senate chamber processes. That doesn't take account of House of Representatives questions. It doesn't take account of Senate select committee, Senate standing committee, House of Representatives standing committee, joint standing committee or joint select committee questions. They're all on top of the 35,000 that we have sought to handle to date. Indeed, we'll continue to do so and provide responses in as timely a manner as possible, but it is in the face of record levels of questioning and, in some cases, highly sensitive approaches too.

Katy Gallagher (ACT, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Finance) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Under standing order 74(5)(b), I move:

That the Senate take note of the explanation.

When I listen to the Minister for Finance, I think the argument about the questions that I have asked for, which are, I think, 166 days overdue now, is essentially that the government has had a lot of questions asked of it—more questions than previous governments. I would submit that some of the explanation for that is that we've never had a government that has been so intent on not answering questions.

Many of the questions that I've asked that are now 166 days late could have been answered in the estimates committee, but they weren't, because this government's approach to transparency and accountability is to have public servants appear and, if there is anything that it is not in the government's interests to answer, have them take it on notice or find another way not to answer the question. There is a problem with the openness of this government, which now has a consequential effect on the number of questions that are being taken on notice, which now the senator, who is leaving the chamber, has used as an excuse to say, 'We're overworked.'

It's right that the Senate should not only get a reasonable explanation—other than, 'Sorry, we came to work and we're really busy and we haven't gotten around to it,' which was essentially Senator Birmingham's submission to the Senate—but demand that this information be provided. You are the government. You are responsible, as the guardians of hundreds of billions of dollars in public funds. You are making decisions on the nation's behalf. There are senators in this place elected to hold you to account. You answer those questions. You don't come in here and cry fake tears, saying you're a bit busy and you haven't got around to it. That is a completely useless explanation.

Prime Minister and Cabinet, which answers to these questions would emanate from, is the worst offender in my experience. The Prime Minister's right-hand man, the butler who runs to serve his every need when the bell gets rung by the Prime Minister, leads that department, and that is the standard they set. They take things on notice and then have no intention of answering to the Senate. That forces us to come in here and expose them and embarrass them, and I still don't think it'll matter to Mr Gaetjens or his crew, because that is the leadership that, under this Prime Minister, is shown about accountability, honesty, transparency and responsibility to the parliament and accountability to the parliament, not just to executive government. When PM&C are led like that and behave in this way, why should any other department be any better? It's clear they get rewarded.

We're heading into estimates next week. Let's see how many senior public servants, who are paid hundreds of thousands of dollars, turn up and don't have information available or 'aren't able to take that question right now; we'll get back to you', knowing full well that they can take 100 days or longer because there is no consequence and because they're rewarded by the leadership for doing that. That's my prediction of what will happen, and that's why we're here now, using up precious time in the Senate to make the point that this is unacceptable. That's why you just had those contributions from Senator Keneally and Senator Patrick, and I associate myself with the comments Senator Patrick made as well, because they were spot-on. I think what this government hopes is that this explanation, 'Oh shucks, we got to work and we're a little bit busy,' will keep it at bay until the election. You can see what's going on. But after eight years of this type of approach these institutions, these conventions—the parliamentary practice that has developed over time and enshrined these processes as part of our democracy—are getting chipped away at. It's important that we stand up for them and important that we call it out. Even if Mr Gaetjens isn't going to answer my letter asking him where these answers are, even if they come to estimates next week and refuse to answer, it is important that the Senate stands up, calls it out and tries to protect it.

When you whittle away the Public Service, as this government has done; when you whittle away the FOI Act, which this government has done and continues to attempt to do; when you disempower the Auditor-General, as this government has done, in punishment and retaliation for the audit reports that it puts out on the government's rorting of grants schemes; and when you start wearing away the integrity processes of the parliament, there will be consequences for our democracy and our access to information. That is what we are standing up for. That is what is happening here. My questions 1356, 501 and 519 to 531, asked at March Estimates 2021 might not seem much, but the fact that this is a systemic approach to dealing with questions on notice is about whittling away those parliamentary practices, the scrutiny role of the Senate, because it suits this government. That's exactly what it's doing. They've done it to the Auditor-General, they're doing it to the FOI Act, they're doing it to the way they deal with OPDs in this place.

It's all pretty obvious. Maybe, taken on their own, people don't see that it's that big a deal; but put it all together and there has been an eight-year-long assault on the scrutiny and accountability functions of the parliament. That's why we're raising these points today. It's not about an overworked government; it's about a secret government. It's a government that will do anything it can to keep information away from the public eye regardless of the fact that it is paid for with public dollars. If it's not in their political interests, they will withhold access to that information. That's why we're raising these points today.

The issues that are covered by my questions actually relate to a lot of questions around the matters surrounding Ms Brittany Higgins and the role of the Prime Minister's Office. There is a whole range of questions now that it didn't suit the Prime Minister to ask at the time and it doesn't suit him to answer them now. But the option available to the department is to provide an answer—for example, 'We are not in a position to provide this answer because there is a police investigation ongoing.' They could do that, but they don't bother doing that either. It's just a blanket refusal to respond to reasonable questions asked of officials. It suits the government to have this approach, I have no doubt about it. But we must stand up, we must ask for reasonable explanations, and we must demand that officials attend estimates with the answers to these questions; they are 166 days overdue.

I hope that, when you guys are on the opposition benches, you will seek to protect these conventions too but that you won’t have to fight so hard because you would be working under a different arrangement with a government that actually understands and respects these practices. So I don't accept Senator Birmingham's explanation in any way that this is just because they've got a lot of questions. They've got a lot of questions because they don't answer the questions when they're required to show up, and they don't provide the information they should provide without having to take it on notice. For example, the Doherty modelling that we spoke of yesterday. Why hasn't that been released? Why do you have to put in an FOI request and questions on without notice and questions on notice about accessing that information? There's a little saving on the count of questions on notice for Senator Birmingham. You could cut them down right now if you actually start releasing the information that you should release in the public interest. You should answer the questions that are being asked. Senators should be treated with respect and be able to fulfil their responsibilities for their roles in this parliament, including holding this government to account. That's what this is about.

To Mr Gaetjens: I hope I do get a response to the letter that I wrote. I'm looking forward to receiving all those answers to questions on notice that are now 166 days overdue before estimates meet on Monday. There is no reasonable explanation that I will accept about why these questions have not been answered and why they shouldn't be answered on time by close of business tomorrow afternoon, other than you are just wilfully obstructing the work of the Senate. You've had plenty of notice. You were reminded of the obligations in a letter. As per the guidance around this standing order, you were reminded again today that we are interested in the answers to these questions. I look forward to receiving them by the end of this week.

Question agreed to.