DOCUMENTS

Senator SCARR (Queensland) (12:37): I wasn't going to speak in this debate, and I heard the contributions made by the minister defending the government's decision not to release information that was required by an order of this Senate. I've heard Senator McKenzie's contribution and I've seen Senator McKenzie in Senate estimates asking, in a determined way, questions on behalf of the people of Victoria and on behalf of the people of Australia with respect to corruption issues on construction sites in Victoria as part of Victoria's so-called Big Build projects, which would be better called Victoria's 'big corruption projects'.

I've listened carefully to Senator Hume's contribution as well. Senator Hume has been a fierce warrior in terms of requiring accountability from the administrator of the CFMEU construction division. So I'm moved to make this contribution.

And I want to make this point: the Senate is not seeking these documents for ourselves; we are seeking these documents for the Australian people. We are seeking these documents for you, because we want to shine a bright light on the circumstances in which the federal Labor government—your government—is providing billions of dollars of funding, your money, to Victorian infrastructure projects, and there is evidence after evidence after evidence that these projects are infected by corruption, driven in large part by the CFMEU construction division.

Billions of Australian taxpayer dollars are going into these infrastructure projects. We want to know what the Labor government is doing to protect taxpayer funds so they are not going into projects that are riddled with corruption in Victoria under the Victorian Labor government. What is the Labor federal government doing?

Now we have a situation where the minister has described the redactions made to the documents as 'minor redactions', and yet you heard my colleague Senator Mckenzie say there are 18 pages that are entirely blacked out. That's what 'redacted' means. It's covered in black ink.

The printers around this parliament have run out of ink because of the quantity of redactions. It's absolutely outrageous. Then the minister from the other place says that the minister's making a public interest claim.

That's not a public interest claim; it's a Labor interest claim. It's not a claim being made in the public interest. It's being made in the interest of the Victorian Labor government because they don't want the truth to come out with respect to the extent to which these Victorian Labor construction jobs are riddled with corruption and are being funded by Australian taxpayer dollars.

In my home state of Queensland, nearly every single major infrastructure project over the last 15 years has had the CFMEU tax. The budget has blown out by 30 per cent. Everything from Ronald McDonald House, which provides accommodation for parents and children seeking medical treatment, through to barracks being built at Defence establishments, highway projects and schools—every single infrastructure project—has blown its budget by 30 per cent because the CFMEU corruption, every single one.

That's our money. That's your money, which should be spent on schools and hospitals and services. As the Labor government goes to above $1 trillion of debt, think of what those funds could have been used for.

The Senate has sought this information to clarify what the federal Labor government is doing to protect Australian taxpayer dollars from the corruption riddled Victorian Labor government's Big Build projects. That's the information we're seeking, and that is the information that the Labor government is denying to the Senate and denying to the Australian people through the Senate.

We will keep raising these issues. We will keep determinedly seeking this information, because it's in the interests of the Australian people that we do so and because it's your taxpayer dollars, your funds, going into supporting these projects. You deserve better.

You deserve better than 18 pages of redacted information and no answers given whatsoever with respect to the response of the Labor government. Question agreed to.