MATTERS OF PUBLIC IMPORTANCE
Senator RUSTON (South Australia—Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) (16:57): The Albanese Labor government has indeed failed its own integrity test and is hiding behind a culture of secrecy, spin and broken promises, and we've seen that again today. But it's not just us in this chamber that see this. The Centre for Public Integrity released its integrity report card this week, and the verdict on this government was damning.
It says the Albanese government's new freedom-of-information laws are 'a serious and alarming step backwards' for transparency. Under these laws, you will pay up to $60 just to ask for information about yourself. So now, if it's under your name, you can ask for it and pay for it, but nobody can ask for information anonymously.
These laws represent the biggest crackdown on access to information in 15 years. The Centre for Public Integrity has previously revealed that fewer than one in four FOI requests are now being fully granted, down from half just two years ago. Prime Minister Albanese came into this place promising transparency, but, instead, Australians are living in the most opaque environment, with the most secretive government in recent history.
In parliament, ministers often table some of the most heavily redacted documents you have ever seen. Just this week, in the case of the department of energy's incoming government brief—which had to be got out of the government with it kicking and screaming, because this institution demanded it through the Clerk—97 per cent of the pages were redacted and, in total, more than half of the document was redacted.
Experts warn that secrecy is on the rise and that our democratic checks and balances are being completely and utterly trashed by this government. The real effects of the changes are fewer documents, higher costs and more excuses—all of this just to keep Australians in the dark. This government is making it really hard for the public to hold its power to account.
People might rightly ask, 'Why is the Prime Minister doing this?' Well, the reason is clear. FOI requests so far have already exposed some of the uncomfortable truths for this prime minister. For example, bureaucrats warned Labor that disability groups did not support his rushed NDIS timeline, but the government pressed ahead anyway.
Officials raised doubt about Labor's changes to bulk-billing incentives, but that advice was kept hidden. The Treasury secretly received advice on tax hikes to fix its botched bottom line, but that wasn't released. And, yesterday, we found out under FOI that Labor had been warned of significant increases in retail electricity prices next financial year.
Labor's answer is not accountability; it is actually secrecy. To the government I say transparency is not a burden; it is a duty. Secrecy is not a sign of strength; it's actually a refuge of a weak government.
But it's not just FOI, as we've seen today, that's under attack by this government. Orders for the production of documents in the Senate are systematically ignored. With orders for compliance, after the Senate has demanded that those documents be released, the will of the Senate is completely ignored.
But, today, we saw that the will of the Senate cannot continue to be ignored. The government must comply with the will of the Senate. Probably the most interesting thing today was that the government voted against transparency—the very transparency that it continually demanded of previous governments, including the government of which I was privileged to be part.
You cannot have it both ways. If you want to come into this place and tell Australians that transparency and accountability are going to be your modus operandi, then you have to be transparent and accountable. That doesn't mean stopping people from getting information.
It doesn't mean that you can act in the way that you have, secretly hiding documents with no plausible excuse and hiding behind an indemnity or an immunity that doesn't even exist. This Senate called that out today. Everybody in this Senate but the Labor Party understands the importance of transparency and accountability, and it's about time the government did too.