Jane Hume (Victoria, Liberal Party, Minister for Superannuation, Financial Services and the Digital Economy) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr President, thank you for the opportunity to speak to the order for the production of documents discussed during a public hearing of the Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport Legislation Committee on 19 July 2021, agreed to in this place yesterday. I note that the documents sought under this order were also sought under order for the production of documents No. 1217. I also note that the Minister for Communications, Urban Infrastructure, Cities and the Arts, through me, responded to that order on 2 September 2021.

With regard to clauses (1)(a) and (1)(d) of this order and further to the minister's correspondence to this place of 2 September 2021, I am advised that the documents subject to this order, reliant on the description during a public hearing of the Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport Legislation Committee on 19 July 2021, cannot be tabled, as no document matching this description has been seen by either the minister, his office or his department.

With regard to spreadsheets sought under clauses (1)(b) and    (1)(c) of this order and further to the minister's correspondence to the Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport Legislation Committee of 4 August 2021 and, to this place, of 2 September 2021, I remind the Senate that the documents subject to these clauses of the order are subject to a public interest immunity claim on the grounds that the release of those documents would disclose the deliberations of cabinet. I table that document relating to the order for the production of documents concerning the Urban Congestion Fund.

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

I move:

That the Senate take note of the statement.

Well, you can set your watch to it: the Senate orders the Morrison-Joyce government to produce documents relating to a dodgy grant, and the Morrison-Joyce government just flat-out refuses to deliver. They are shameless, are they not? They're addicted to secrecy and allergic to accountability. There is no standard so low that they can't limbo underneath it. They think they are above the law.

Senator Patrick points out there are blind trusts. Perhaps, as we saw in the House yesterday, there is a new low standard. Well, here we go. We know that the Morrison-Joyce government members break the rules that they don't care about and they change the rules that they can change.

The Senate ordered that the minister lay on the table emails, spreadsheets and maps related to the car park rorts scandal. We know from the ANAO that the projects under the car park rorts program were picked from a list titled 'The top 20 marginal electorates'. You can't get more blatant than that. We know that hundreds of millions of dollars was shovelled out the door on projects announced during the 2019 federal election campaign, and we know that 77 per cent of the car park sites ended up in coalition electorates and not in areas where they were most needed. The ANAO found out—surprise, surprise!—that none of the 47 project sites selected for funding commitments were proposed by the department of infrastructure—none of them. This is egregious. This is wholesale rorting.

The government that Mr Morrison leads is littered with examples of scandal, rorting and waste. I have lost track of the number of ministers who've been exposed for their misconduct and their dodgy dealings: Taylor, McKenzie, Colbeck, Cash, Ley, Dutton, Fletcher, Robert, Tudge, Hunt, Ruston, Reynolds and Porter. All of these ministers have been linked to one scandal or another. I wish car park rorts were an anomaly, but this is the new normal for the Morrison-Joyce government. They spend taxpayer money as if it is Liberal-National Party money. The sheer quantum of misconduct by those opposite is simply staggering. I don't think it's about to get any better, by the way. There's a federal election right around the corner, and this tired eight-year-old Liberal-National government doesn't have any other tricks up its sleeve. There's never been a better time, in fact, to be a colour coded spreadsheet than under Mr Morrison and his mates.

Anne Webster, the member for Mallee, had an uncharacteristic moment of honesty from the Morrison-Joyce government, but she's new; she might grow out of that. Anyway, she had an uncharacteristic moment of honesty when she belled the cat on the Building Better Regions rorts. She revealed that coalition MPs can basically just ask for any money they want, regardless of the rules of the grant. Depending on the whims of the minister on any given day, they might just get that money.

I've been in politics long enough to know that there is a view out there in the community that grifting, graft and dodgy deals are just par for the course, the nature of the beast and the cost of doing business. I think the former Premier of New South Wales Gladys Berejiklian said: 'What's wrong with pork-barrelling? Everybody does it.' She might have a different view about that these days, by the way. This view is supposedly factored in by voters, because 'all political parties do it and all politicians are in it for themselves'. But what is clear from car park rorts, sports rorts, Building Better Regions rorts and all 22 of the slush funds in Mr Morrison's recent budget is that we are experiencing an all-time low for government accountability in this country. This is uniquely bad. We've had grants for rural and regional communities handed to projects that are literally next door to the Sydney Harbour Bridge. We've had sports clubs in marginal seats given money for female change room facilities when they have no women's teams. We've had funding for community safety grants cut so the minister could spend cash in an election announcement.

The behaviour of the Morrison-Joyce government is brazen. Mr Morrison appears to have a blatant disregard for the rules and institutions of our democracy. The Australian people have a right to know what their government gets up to. They have a right to know how their money is being spent. They have a right to expect a higher standard from their elected officials.

But Mr Morrison and his mates don't even try to hide it anymore. Asked about the car park rorts earlier this year, the Minister representing the Prime Minister in this place, Senator Birmingham, simply shrugged and said: 'The Australian people had their chance and they voted the government back in at the last election.' They're not even trying to hide this anymore. Why attempt, by the way, to defend the indefensible? You have to admire the hide of the whole thing. They're just hoping that no-one pays close enough attention to their bad behaviour. As long as they get re-elected, what do they care? It's a disgraceful attitude. It is beyond contempt, particularly when we see communities that need community safety funding not getting it, particularly when we see areas that are affected by congestion neglected for a car park because they just happen to be in a Labor-held seat.

Frankly, though, people are catching on. Look at what we saw yesterday in the House of Representatives. For the first time since Federation, a government has voted against the Speaker. It voted against a motion that the Speaker had given precedence to—namely, that former minister Christian Porter should be investigated for his failure to declare a million-dollar blind trust. We're all public servants in this place. We all have to follow the rules. We all have to be accountable to our constituents and the broader public. Christian Porter's decision to accept this money without declaring it constitutes at least an investigation. It looks like an outrageous breach of office, and he should be investigated. That was the view of the Speaker, a Liberal Party colleague of Mr Porter, who ruled there was a prima facie case for referral, and Labor supported the referral. It was Mr Morrison, the Prime Minister, and Mr Joyce, the Deputy Prime Minister, and all of their mates in the government who didn't. They held their noses and they voted against the Speaker for the first time in nearly 120 years, in a blatant display of disregard for transparency and accountability. It's extraordinary. It is quite literally without precedent in this country.

The member for Pearce is being protected by the Prime Minister. That's the only explanation here. He's the only Western Australian this Prime Minister has ever stood up for, and that speaks volumes of this Prime Minister. The Morrison government will hound people to their death with robodebt, but they'll help a disgraced former minister cover up his million-dollar blind trust. No wonder they don't want to fund a federal ICAC! No wonder they don't even want to present the legislation for a national anticorruption commission! No wonder they don't want to answer questions on notice! No wonder they don't want to abide by orders of the Senate to produce documents! This Prime Minister doesn't like answering question, because he knows the Australian people won't like the answers. If the documents requested by the Senate today could make the government look good, then we'd have seen them by now. So what are they hiding?

When voter cynicism in government grows, politicians like Mr Morrison flourish. Blokes like Mr Morrison have made a career out of exceeding ever-shrinking expectations. The only way we can restore the Australian people's faith in our democracy is by showing this lot the door, because, unless we get a government that is serious about a national anticorruption commission, these types of rorting, scandals, blind trusts, disregard of the Speaker, not answering questions on notice and not producing documents are simply going to continue. After eight long years of this tired Liberal-National government, the Australian people deserve a government that is on their side. Let me be clear in this chamber and with the Australian people: an Albanese Labor government will deliver a national anticorruption commission—one with teeth, one that will bring the transparency and accountability so long lacking in this tired eight-year-old national Liberal government. We will bring that to the national level, because the Australian people deserve to know what's being done with their money. They deserve to have accountability and transparency in their government, and they deserve a government that is on their side.

Janet Rice (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I was so disappointed with this minister's response to my order for the production of documents—incredibly disappointed but not surprised. This government has got form. They have got so much form with hiding information—hiding the fact that they make decisions based on their political interests, what suits their interests. They make decisions based on the interests of themselves, their mates, big business. They make decisions based on what they think it's going to take to win them seats rather than what's in the interests of ordinary Australians. This is the second time the minister has failed to present the documents that were set out in this order. I was particularly disappointed that they didn't even attempt to give any extra reason as to why they shouldn't give these documents. Basically, they simply resent a letter stating that, in relation to some of the requests, neither Minister Fletcher, his office or the department have seen the documents.

May I remind people that this is despite the fact that these documents were referred to by the Australian National Audit Office at a hearing of the rural and regional transport committee. The ANAO aren't making it up. The ANAO are there as the Audit Office to inquire into actions and programs of departments. They don't make stuff up. The Auditor told us there was this document that referred to the top 20 marginal seats. Yet Minister Fletcher and Minister Hume are saying that no-one happens to have seen these documents. How closely have they looked? The letter says the documents 'aren't to hand'. How convenient! Maybe they just fell into a shredder or something!

Of course, what makes this so upsetting is that this isn't the first time. This government has got form. Let's take us back to sports rorts. In January 2020, when the Prime Minister was asked about sports rorts at the Press Club, he said, 'All we did was provide information based on the representations made to us, as every Prime Minister has done.' And in March 2020 the Prime Minister said, 'We provided information based on the representations made to us, and that included information about other funding options or programs relevant to the project proposals.' It wasn't until two months later, in May 2020, after significant new information had come to light, that the Prime Minister admitted they'd been involved in providing approvals for those sports rorts programs. 'The only authority sought from the Prime Minister's office and from me was in relation to announcements,' they said, but what we subsequently learnt through the committee process was that Minister McKenzie's office had sent dozens of spreadsheets to the Prime Minister's office and had sought approvals for particular rounds of funding. And the sports rorts funding was expanded after a meeting between Minister McKenzie and the Prime Minister following spreadsheets being sent to the Prime Minister's office. So let's be very clear, when it comes to hiding information, being slippery with language and conveniently forgetting things until they're forced to acknowledge them, this government has got form.

When it comes to the information in these documents, this is not the end of the matter. There is a long way to go. We've got Senate estimates next week and we've got a committee into these car park rorts. I'm confident that more information is going to come to light. The refusal by this government to be transparent with the truth doesn't change our commitment to actually getting to the truth and holding this government accountable. We will use the Senate. We will use the information that we have got from the ANAO. The rorting of this grant scheme matters on multiple levels. As I've been saying, it's consistent with the government using government processes, using government funding and using grant processes to serve their own political interests rather than the interests of the community. But it also matters when it comes to just good governance and making good decisions.

I want to talk about the transport policy, before going on in a bit more detail about the corruption. This whole grant fund was the Urban Congestion Fund. The whole point of this grant fund is supposedly to be busting congestion. Let me share one of the submissions we received in the car parks inquiry that we've just set up on this issue. It's from the University of Melbourne transport experts. They say that after years of research on how to solve urban congestion:

The overwhelming conclusion of these investigations is that congestion reduction has failed because of the bias to solutions based on expanding road capacity. Put simply, the experience all over the world since the 1970s confirms that additional capacity induces new demand. This ensures congestion returns to or exceeds initial levels very soon after additional capacity is added. In the case of bottlenecks (a specific focus of the UCF), when one bottleneck is removed the choke point simply moves to the next.

It is now widely accepted by transport planners that building additional road capacity is not a cost-effective means to reduce congestion. More success has been achieved through measures that address demand such as pricing reform and strategic land-use planning.

Sadly, we haven't seen that road pricing reform, despite years of waiting for it. The submission then goes to what is so tragically wrong with this rort: building new car parks, just like building new roads, will not solve congestion. When we asked in Senate estimates what the justification was for even spending money on car parks in order to solve congestion, the officials of course had no clear answer about how they identified these car park projects or how they linked into broader infrastructure planning, including the work done by Infrastructure Australia.

But we know why that was—the officials had to try to pretend that there was some rhyme or reason or semblance of connection with transport policy behind them. But it was because the entire program is a rort. They didn't pick the car parks on any kind of sensible plan. Basically, they sent around yet another spreadsheet with a list of electorates each project was in. So it wasn't at all a surprise to learn that the same staffer who was involved in sports rorts was involved with the car park rorts.

We also saw government moving projects between programs—shifting them from the community support infrastructure fund to the Community Development Grants fund and the Urban Congestion Fund. It seems increasingly clear that this isn't a case of just a single rort multiplied multiple times: it is basically the Prime Minister's office serving as a coordination point between the Liberal Party election campaign and different programs that are being run across different portfolios. This is one mega rort being run out of the Prime Minister's office. That's why the wish lists that were used for sports rorts mattered. They weren't just wish lists for changing rooms; they were wish lists for election projects across multiple types of projects. As Michael West Media has noted, often these projects, particularly the car parks projects, follow a pattern. First, the MP organises a petition to harvest contact details. Then, hey presto, suddenly they've got a grant to announce right before the election. It's almost as if there was a systematic, coordinated process to use public announcements to bolster their election chances without doing the hard work of genuine consultation and policy development!

The scale of the Liberal Party's approach to these funds is so awful that there are layers of misspending. We saw that in New South Wales with the recent ICAC inquiry. One of Mike Baird's staff has questioned the advocacy by the then Treasurer of New South Wales, Gladys Berejiklian, and questioned why they were spending money in a safe seat. Clearly they saw the value in spending public funding in marginal seats for their electoral benefit. On top of that layer of corruption, the former Treasurer wanted a pet project. Entirely coincidentally, it appears it was in the electorate of someone she was in a relationship with! The sad truth with this government is that it's genuinely hard to keep track of all the different programs they've tried to rort: sports rorts, car park rorts, the Community Development Grants fund—the list goes on. It's exactly why we need a federal ICAC with teeth. It's exactly why we need to have something that goes to the heart of the corruption in this government, highlighting the inaction of this government and their refusal to pass an ICAC, despite the fact that the Greens bill for a federal ICAC passed the Senate two years ago and is there on the books ready to be implemented, if we only had an honest rather than a corrupt government. (Time expired)

Question agreed to.