Alex Antic (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to pass on my extraordinary congratulations to the Australian Labor Party and the Greens—and no, Mr Acting Deputy President Smith, I haven't lost my mind, arguably! Yesterday both of those parties took out the gold medal in the hypocrisy olympics. In fact, yesterday the Australian Labor Party, the self-appointed champions of transparency, proved themselves to be really nothing more than the champions of hypocrisy with their partners in pretence, the Australian Greens, by voting against my motion seeking transparency of parliamentary interactions with NGOs like the World Economic Forum. We weren't talking simply about a referral to change the register of interests; we were talking about a simple referral to a parliamentary committee.

The reason I raise the issue about hypocrisy is that less than 24 hours earlier, in question time in this chamber, we had an interaction from a question posed by Senator Lambie, who asked a question about transparency in super funds. Senator Gallagher responded with:

No, we are a big supporter of transparency and we'll be a lot more transparent in a whole range of areas than those opposite have ever been.

Twenty-four hours later, they voted against a simple referral to committee to try to get this investigated on the register of interests.

These self-styled champions of democracy and openness simply wouldn't have it. They wouldn't have an addition to the register of interests. In essence, all it sought to do was to have members of this place record any association or involvement with lobbying groups or NGOs, charitable foundations or international societies, like, for example, the World Economic Forum, which is led by Klaus Schwab. I had 55,000 signatures on a social media campaign on this. The people in this area, those opposite, clearly talk the talk when it comes to transparency but simply cannot walk the walk. My question is: what are they trying to hide?