Katy Gallagher (ACT, Australian Labor Party, Minister for the Public Service) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank senators Birmingham and Waters for allowing me to be the minister that attends the Senate to give this explanation.

On Tuesday the government tabled its guidance to departments on responses to estimates questions on notice without requiring any order of the Senate to do so. So it is bizarre that Senator Birmingham and Senator Waters rail against what they continue to erroneously describe as a secret document. They are more interested in conspiracy theories than facts. Senator Birmingham and Senator Waters decided to take the word of a media report rather than just asking the government for the document, which we were only too happy to provide. Then, having provided it, they still went ahead with the motion requiring Senator Wong's attendance today. This is despite there being ample opportunity to ask Senator Wong about it ad nauseam at estimates in just over a week's time. This a stunt worthy of student politics, not leaders of parties in the Senate, one allegedly a party of government. I can confirm that the Prime Minister did not see or review this document, but now anyone can read it because we've tabled it in the chamber and have put it on the public record.

The Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet distributed this document to agencies to assist in the timely and efficient response to Senate estimates questions on notice. It was then shared with ministerial officers. Consistent with the Government Guidelines for Official Witnesses Before Parliamentary Committees and Related Matters, successive governments have seen departments consult with each other as part of the drafting process, including instances where similar questions are asked of all or multiple departments. Individual ministers, departments and agencies are ultimately responsible for the answers they provide. I can also confirm that there has been no subsequent advice or revisions in response to media reporting.

These guidelines exist because we've seen an extraordinary surge in the number of questions on notice tabled in the Senate in the 47th Parliament. When those opposite were in government, the median average of questions they received each estimates round was roughly 3,800. In some rounds they received fewer than 1,000 questions. By comparison, the government is now receiving twice that number of questions—7,600—including more than 9,200 questions from February's session alone. Some of these questions then contain numerous subquestions, meaning that the true number is far beyond that.

This government wants the Public Service focused on working for all Australians. This includes answering questions that are genuinely in the public interest. But what we are too often seeing from the opposition are questions seemingly written to waste the resources of the Public Service. This is the grand irony of the feigned outrage from those opposite. Senator Birmingham wrote an op-ed overnight, bemoaning our efforts to rebuild the Public Service and complaining about perceived waste and inefficiencies. But Senator Birmingham himself tabled a question on notice that asked the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet what temperature their office thermostats were at. Yet he must stand in awe of the efforts of Senator Hume, who has asked nearly 13,000 questions since May 2022, including over 330 questions about the use of paper alone.

This newfound interest in accountability is particularly galling from the coalition, given that they boast a former prime minister who secretly appointed himself to five other ministries, including Senator Birmingham's areas; a current shadow attorney-general who refused to cooperate with an AFP investigation; and a leader of the nationals in the Senate who only gave evidence to an inquiry into sports rorts after the Senate forced her to do so. They also left more than 1,000 questions on notice unanswered when they left government, including some questions they refused to answer that dated back to October 2019.

Across the board, our government is delivering a higher standard of integrity, transparency and accountability than those opposite ever did. We have lifted the country's ranking on Transparency International's annual Corruption Perception Index from 18 to 13, after a decade-long slide under the coalition. The National Anti-Corruption Commission has been established. We've strengthened the ministerial code of conduct, increased funding to the ANAO, restored transparency to AAT appointments, reinstated a standalone privacy and FOI commissioner and implemented the recommendations of the Bell inquiry.

The Albanese government is receiving far more questions than the previous government, and we're answering them at a higher rate than the previous government. We do so because we are committed to accountability and transparency, and the vexatious use of questions on notice by the Liberals and Nationals diminishes the capacity for us to respond in substance to legitimate questions asked by other parties and Independents. We believe that the Public Service, like this government, should spend its time working for Australian people and not auditing thermostats for Senator Birmingham's amusement.

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

I move:

That the Senate take note of the statement by the minister.

This is a shameful and shameless attempt at systemic cover-up and obfuscation by the Albanese Labor government. The benignly named Approaches to SEQoNs asked of all (or multiple) agencies was provided by the government—let's be clear—only after journalists had found and published extracts of it and only after every single non-government senator had indicated their support for a motion requiring that it be tabled. The tabling of this document shows the systemic approach of the government to avoid answering questions. There is no defence to the blatant attempt to subvert legitimate processes of this Senate and no defence to the contempt shown by the government in this document. We've heard Senator Gallagher try to make a virtue out of tabling the document, yet the reality is that they were pushed and forced to table the document. And credit goes to the journalist at Capital Brief for uncovering it.

The hypocrisy of the government in claiming time and again that a Labor government would herald a new era of transparency is on show. The minister often tells us how much words matter, and she's right—words do matter. They mattered when, in the lead-up to the election, the opposition promised Australians greater transparency, and when the Prime Minister said, pre election, that there would be a deeper respect for the Australian people and for the integrity of our democracy and real accountability. That's what he promised. After the election, he said that transparency is always a good idea. And he was still claiming that it was a good idea in January this year, just a few months ago, even as his office and/or his department were working on this manual—a manual of opaqueness and obfuscation. His own code of conduct promises integrity, honesty and accountability and that his ministers 'will observe standards of probity, governance and behaviour worthy of the Australia people'. Yet, remarkably, when this document has been exposed for what it is the government stands by it. How does this government act? It instructs department heads and departmental officials on how to avoid answering questions.

Now we know what the Labor government means by 'transparency'. If a departmental secretary is asked how many meetings they've had with a minister: 'Don't answer the question; just say you've had lots of meetings with ministers.' If they're asked how much money is spent on retreats and external speakers: 'Don't actually detail that; just say it would be a diversion of resources to answer that.' If they're asked whether a department is spending taxpayer dollars on training or giving advice—even advice on how to answer questions at estimates—they should just say, 'We don't know, because it's not centrally recorded.' If they're asked for data or information that is routinely provided to senators through estimates, the Labor government's advice is to tell senators to just google it: 'Go and look it up elsewhere.' If they're asked detailed questions around estimates variations by government agencies and departments, the response is, 'Go and look in the parts of the budget paper that don't actually detail those estimates variations to the same extent.' This is apparently how the Albanese Labor government demonstrates integrity, honesty and accountability.

Senator Gallagher may say the Prime Minister had not seen this statement prior to its publication, but he certainly should have heard about it by now and he should not be standing by it. The Prime Minister should have torn this document up and instead said: 'Consistent with what I promised pre election, my instructions to ministers and departments are: do the best you can to answer the questions that are asked. Do it as directly, as straightforwardly, as you possibly can.' But that's not what we get. The Labor government is remarkably standing by this document, claiming it's because they're getting too many questions, and then having the gall to claim that they are answering more questions than had been answered before. Guess what? It's not answering the questions if you respond with the rubbish that's in this document. If your responses are what is written in this document, then you are avoiding answering the questions. If the government's responses are consistent with what's in this document, then it is a deliberate contempt and obfuscation of the Senate.

The government can expect more questions to be asked of this document, about how it was developed and about what it means for the government's contempt of this chamber and how it can be held accountable in the future.

Larissa Waters (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Once again, we find ourselves in the uncomfortable and very rare position where all the non-government senators have agreed that the conduct of the government is deeply underwhelming. We saw a leaked version of this document, which is effectively a cheat sheet on how to not answer senators' questions in Senate estimates—a core part of our democracy—and, after pressure from this chamber, the government, five seconds before that, coughed up the full document and then wanted to leave it at that. They thought that was enough, that the document was tabled. The reason we are here today again is we need to know who wrote that document. We want to know how the Prime Minister ticked off on that document, and we want to know who had been sent a copy of that document.

I'm grateful the minister representing today has answered some of those questions. She said the Prime Minister hadn't seen it or reviewed it. We will be asking in estimates how that's possible—for a document emanating from the Prime Minister's Office to somehow not have come to the attention of the Prime Minister or have his imprimatur on it. That'll be a question for estimates. We now know it was distributed to agencies and through ministerial offices. We still don't know who authored it. I would like to understand the process of how a Prime Minister's Office document doesn't have the imprimatur of the Prime Minister; that doesn't make sense to me. Maybe I'm missing something; I've never been the Prime Minister before and I never will be, but I'd like to understand the level of involvement of the Prime Minister in this document.

We will be pursuing this in estimates. I thank the minister for the invitation to do so; we will certainly be doing that. This is a manual on how to not answer questions, and it's deeply disappointing because we were promised a more accountable and more transparent government. That's what people voted for, and that's why it's deeply shocking when a manual like this indicates that, in fact, that's not at all the approach that this administration is taking to important issues like transparency in Senate estimates.

As I called for multiple times yesterday in my contribution, the Prime Minister needs to retract this document. This is not an appropriate level of guidance. This is not what a government that wanted to be better on transparency and accountability should be telling their officers to do. The Prime Minister must retract this document and issue a fresh edict that says, 'Answer the question to the best of your ability in the most succinct and efficient way.' I don't understand where the chain of communication is failing here. The Prime Minister should have voluntarily done that already. Perhaps it will take further questioning in estimates and further consideration of this chamber for the Prime Minister to do that. It's deeply embarrassing yet again that it has to be this chamber that requires this government to conduct itself better. You should have coughed up this document in the first place. It shouldn't have taken a joint motion of all of the non-government senators to force you to disclose it. It shouldn't now be taking another move by all of the non-government senators to disclose who drafted it and where it was sent. We still don't know who actually drafted it. It shouldn't take the rest of us to call on the Prime Minister to make good on his promise to be more accountable and more transparent.

The Prime Minister must retract this document. There are no two ways about it. The reason for that is that the author of this document could be in contempt of the Senate. Privileges resolution No. 6 is very clear about not interfering with the free exercise by the Senate or a committee of its authority. It's also very clear about an offence by a witness to not answer a relevant question or to give evidence that's false or misleading in any material particular or not substantially true in every material particular. We have those rules for a reason. It is deeply inappropriate for a document from the Prime Minister's office to essentially be instructing officials to ignore those rules and to do everything possible to avoid answering questions. That is not a government of accountability and transparency. You're not doing what you said on the tin. People didn't want to buy that tin, and they're not going to want to buy that tin next time if you don't fix this now. For the last time, we are urging the Prime Minister, through his representative in the chamber here today, to retract this document, have some ethics and stop showing contempt for the proper processes that you said you'd stand up for.

Bridget McKenzie (Victoria, National Party, Shadow Minister for Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Development) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Since being elected, the Labor government under Anthony Albanese has been one thing: incredibly consistent. They've been consistently disregarding the democratic principles not just of this chamber but indeed of the great privilege of holding government and the executive. This chamber exists to hold executive government to account. We are known worldwide for our estimates process that other parliaments wish they had. They wish they had a process as robust and genuine as the Australian Senate estimates process. But it is being absolutely trashed by Anthony Albanese, aided and abetted by senators in senior ministerial positions, who should know better. I know that Senator Wong and Senator Gallagher are two ministers in Albanese's government who respect the Senate, but they are being expected to mop up after Albo for this shocking document. This is a cheat sheet of how to evade scrutiny and genuine, legitimate questions not just from the crossbench but from the opposition, who have a right and entitlement to ask sensible and legitimate questions. This is a training manual for government departments.

The government have made a big deal this week about expanding the APS, with 36,000 new Australian public servants coming to serve the Australian public. Yet they trash the professionalism of those very public servants by assuming that they don't know how to do their job—that they don't know how to fulfil the government's orders and also submit themselves to legitimate public scrutiny through the estimates process. This is essentially a document that gags the APS from doing their due diligence and duty as Australian public servants. It's one thing for the CPSU to clap for this government on the tens of thousands of new public servants; meanwhile the government is trying to silence them from doing their job, as other senators have made very clear—the whole chamber, bar the Labor Party, has done this. It seems that this is just business as usual for the Labor Party under Albo. It's BAU to be shutting down debate in the Australian House of Representatives on the biggest change to our transport industry since we got rid of the horse and cart. That happened this morning.

They're shutting down inquiries. They're guillotining today, not because it's the end of the year or the end of the financial year or because there's some technical reason we have to get legislation through this afternoon by close of business because otherwise the legislation will be moot—no, it's only for political reasons. It's so that the public doesn't know what's happening here, that a new tax is being implemented. It's that it doesn't need to know what this government is doing. The government is shrouding these public chambers and our public processes in secrecy. Mr Albanese swore that he'd operate a classic cabinet process, yet we've got ministers here refusing to answer questions and refusing to respond. It's a trashing of our very institutions, day in and day out.

I just want to remind the Leader of the Government in this place of things she spoke about prior to becoming Leader of the Government in this place. Senator Wong said:

Each time a minister comes in here and refuses to give an answer or refuses to table any information where documents are ordered to be produced, the Senate is diminished.

Yes, it is! And you are diminishing this Senate daily and diminishing our democracy every time you use the guillotine for political purposes. This is not a student union where you just get to walk in with your constitution, do your numbers, wham, bam, we win, you don't and you're shouting us beers at the union pub. This is the Australian Senate. This is the Australian parliament.

We talked a lot about respect today. The President was talking about respect. Respect also means giving space for opposing voices to be heard. You will still win. Your legislation will still get passed, but you would have given the millions of people who don't agree with you an opportunity for their perspective to be put. I just think this is appalling and I have nothing more to say.

Michaelia Cash (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Wow! What are we actually taking note of today? We are taking note of the pathetic explanation that was given by Minister Gallagher, on behalf of Minister Wong, in relation to why the Albanese government prepared a document that, as we know, has been provided to public servants and sets out for them (a) how not to answer questions in Senate estimates and (b), worse than that, gives them the actual suggested draft response.

In all my years in this place—and I'm going on 16 years in this place—I don't think I have ever seen a bigger flouting of democracy by a prime minister and a government. Can you honestly imagine if a coalition government had prepared such a document? This is not a rumour. This is not a suggestion. The document is right here. We have in the Senate a document provided by the Prime Minister's office for all of the Australian public to see.

Senator Waters is right: if it's provided on behalf of the Prime Minister's office then quite frankly it's provided by the Prime Minister himself to the apolitical public service. I say 'apolitical' with tongue in cheek, because it's anything but when you've been provided a document by the Prime Minister of Australia's office that tells you how you should and should not answer questions in Senate estimates.

Mr Albanese talked a big game on transparency prior to the last election. Mr Albanese actually said to the Australian people, in fact, that it was one of the reasons they should vote him in. He said to the Australian people that if they elected him and the Australian Labor Party to office he and his ministers would deliver transparency, integrity and accountability in every single thing they did. This is a government that in relation to so much of what it said prior to the election came falsely to power on the promise of a new era of transparency.

Since that time, since that day in May 2022, it has done everything in its power to avoid scrutiny and transparency. But did anyone in this place ever think that Mr Albanese, his office and the Australian Labor Party would draft a document and provide it to agencies, who are there to provide frank and fearless advice and to answer questions put to them in Senate estimates in an honest and responsible way, a document that says to them, 'If you are asked this particular question, under the Albanese government we don't actually believe in transparency. We certainly do not believe in providing the opposition with answers to questions they are asking on behalf of the Australian taxpayer, and we want you to say this.'

For example: 'How many meetings has the secretary or agency head had with the ministers in their portfolio since whatever date?' You would have thought the secretary could flip through their diary and say, 'I have met with the minister once a week. I have met with the minister once a month.' Instead, this is what the Albanese government says its secretaries or departmental offices should say: 'The secretary regularly meets with portfolio ministers and, at times, ministers outside the portfolio.'

You've got to be kidding me. Seriously? Yes Minister or Yes, Prime Minister could not have scripted this, because it doesn't happen in countries like Australia. We are proud of our democracy. Mr Albanese, with a secret document, has done everything he can to undermine it. Shame on Mr Albanese.

Malcolm Roberts (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I note the minister's statement. I thank Minister Gallagher for her attendance and explanation, her explanation about Labor's destruction of democracy. The utter disrespect and contempt shown for this Senate and for the estimates process is beyond reproach. It's not just this instruction; it's the conduct of the bureaucrats that ministers allow. As a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia, I remind all senators that our Senate is the house of review. It is constitutionally empowered to get what it asks for. The government seems to think it can decide what we can and can't see based on what is politically convenient to them. That is contempt.

You are frustrating the ability of the Senate and its committees to receive the information it has requested. At every single round of Senate estimates hearings hundreds of questions on notice are simply ignored. This information is available, but the minister has simply decided they won't hand it over. When officials do the right thing and give the information, as they are constitutionally required to, they are intimidated and berated. Immigration minister Clare O'Neil left immigration official Stephanie Foster in tears after she produced information to an estimates committee. This is evil, anti-democratic behaviour. Quite frankly, there's no reason a question on notice needs to go to a minister. The department should simply answer to the best of its ability without the censorship.

Labor's culture of secrecy isn't limited to what we're talking about at estimates, though. We see orders for the production of documents ignored almost every single time, often with complicity from the Labor-Greens coalition, sometimes with teal Senator Pocock and sometimes from the Jacqui Lambie Network. I'll again flag to the Senate my proposal—I've introduced it many times—for a method to confidentially review a document subject to an order for the production of documents. We acknowledge that there may be arguments for not letting information be released to the public in a very narrow set of circumstances, but it's senators who should judge that; it should not be left to a minister's whim, a minister that wants to hide, to obfuscate. This estimates manual doesn't surprise me. Even if it didn't exist, my repeated experience is that there's a deeply embedded cultural problem in all government agencies to avoid answering questions to protect the minister, so-called, above them.

There's more than one contempt of this parliament happening almost every sitting day. What we need to do as a Senate is punish that contempt, to stop it. That's the only way democracy is going to work in this chamber. This disrespect will continue because it has been allowed to continue. To the opposition I say: you're more than happy to roll into this chamber and gently slap Labor over the wrist with five-minute puff pieces and then walk out, all forgotten; yet you won't move a contempt motion on the dozens of examples that have already happened, as we have repeatedly suggested. That's what we need to do: move contempt motions. As a Senate we need to hold people who have breached Senate orders in contempt—hold breachers in contempt.

The Senate has more powers than a royal commission. It has more powers than any upper house in the world except for the United States Senate. Sadly, the senators in here refuse to enforce those powers. It would only need to be done once or twice. Start taking real action against the contempt of this Senate or it will continue as it has and democracy will die. Senators, let's hold in contempt those who treat the people's Senate with contempt, to revitalise democracy, truth and accountability, and let's see less guillotining from the government as well. I know the Greens and some of the crossbench senators are regular supporters of guillotining, but guillotines don't allow the voice of the people to operate in this chamber. You're squashing democracy with guillotines, which we'll see in another couple of minutes. How many bills are going through? Is it about 18—16? I'm losing count now.

We've had the most far-reaching bill in recent history, the Digital ID Bill, go through with not one word of debate—not one word. Then we saw it go through with some significant amendments, with not one word on any of them. That's what the people of this country face. We need democracy. We need to revitalise democracy, truth and accountability. Let's hold breachers in contempt.

Paul Scarr (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Multicultural Engagement) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This is incredibly disappointing, absolutely incredibly disappointing. When you sit in a court of law as a witness, you're asked to take an oath. That oath is that you swear that you're going to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. I think those opposite have forgotten the middle phrase: the whole truth. That means you don't deflect, you don't divert, you don't intentionally withhold information from the Senate which you would be able to provide to the Senate. That's the mal-intent behind this manual which Senator Waters from my home state of Queensland touched upon. It's the mal-intent behind that manual, where you've got the information, you've got access to the information, you've had time to get the information, but you intentionally withhold that information and deflect. The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth—that's what the people of Australia expect.

As my friend and colleague Senator Cash said, it is like something out of Yes Minister. I've got the volume of Yes Minister at home. I'm going to bring it down for estimates. I'm also going to sit there with the manual, and every time a poor old public servant utters a phrase that's in the manual expect someone to say, 'Well, that's from page 4 of the manual, that's from page 5 of the manual.'

David Pocock (ACT, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Estimates bingo!

Paul Scarr (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Multicultural Engagement) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Estimates bingo—absolutely, Senator Pocock—a new game brought to you by the Labor Albanese government! The poor old public servants and bureaucrats—I feel for them! They're being placed in this invidious position by the Albanese Labor government. I actually really feel for them because of the pressure they're being placed under by this awful, awful manual. Who wrote this thing? It's extraordinary. And they put it in writing! It's shameless. It's obnoxious. It breaches every point of good public policy that has ever been invented. It just fails in so many avenues.

'The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth' is a standard which I think the people of Australia reasonably expect their governments to uphold. It's a standard which the Prime Minister, when he was in opposition, said he was going to bring in via a new era of transparency. It's a new era, but it's not of transparency. It's a new era of obfuscation, deflection and not answering the question. The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth—that is the reasonable expectation that the people of Australia have of people sitting in this chamber and of those who participate in the estimates process.

Again, how dare you put our public servants in that invidious position? Most of them are trying to do their best. Then you apply this brutal political power to them when they are doing their best to answer questions from those on the crossbench and in the opposition. You put them all in a terrible, terrible position. It really is shameful. It's made even more shameful by the pledges and promises before the election. Before the election, we were promised openness and a new era of transparency. After the election—exhibit A, your honour—this is the manual. 'How to avoid answering a question.' It's about how to obfuscate legitimate questions in the Senate and stop them being answered. 'Deflect, divert, and refuse to respond.' It's absolutely shameful. And then they're trying to deflect with this nonsense like, 'You've asked questions about X, Y or Z.' Sorry; that isn't the point. The point is the manual, which speaks for itself. The people of Australia have every right to expect senators in this place and from bureaucrats and public servants to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

Question agreed to.