QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE: TAKE NOTE OF ANSWERS
Senator DUNIAM (Tasmania—Manager of Opposition Business in the Senate) (16:42): I am delighted to make a contribution to this debate. I want to pick up where Senator Grogan left off, and that is that they don't govern the way we did. Well, I can tell you what.
If what we talked about in question time today is anything to go by, the people of Australia should be very grateful. It takes a great degree of skill to be able to argue that black is white. It takes an even bigger degree of skill to be able to say that something didn't happen when it actually did.
As we saw today and over the last couple of days, we have a prime minister who said that he never made representations—he had no knowledge of certain things and no relationships with certain groups of people. But then, of course, emerging out of those smoke filled rooms of Parliament House were all the videos proving exactly the opposite—that there was a relationship, that there was a history of use of this particular golf club and that there was clearly a series of representations and commitments made.
We are not against parties making election commitments. We're all for that. In fact, I recall that, when the now government was in opposition, there was a huge furore around commitments made by our party at election time.
An opposition senator interjecting— Senator DUNIAM: I'm taking that interjection. Apparently when one party does it, it's called a rort, but when another party does it, it's okay. Now, this is the point: it's a subjective thing.
There are two standards being applied to how we govern these sorts of things in this country. We think there is one standard, and good process is one to be followed here. We don't even know what process it went through.
There is this opacity— Senator Cash: No, we don't! They declared for one and didn't declare for the other. Senator DUNIAM: Exactly.
I take the interjection from Senator Cash, which of course is disorderly. It's Thursday afternoon, and we're all very happy to be going home at some point! The declarations are a problem, but the process is an issue here.
It is not the grant, not the club receiving it, not the fact that local members are doing their job. That is a good thing. We all do it, and I think it's an important part of what we do here.
But it's the process, the declarations, the failure to declare on the part of the Prime Minister and then, of course, the 'nothing to see here' approach by government. Now, if you've made a mistake, own up. Fix it.
That's it. Move on. But here we have this approach to dealing with this issue in which we cover up.
We try to pretend that the rules mean one thing when they actually mean something else or that there wasn't actually an issue here. Well, there was, and the facts bear it out. These videos are not AI generated.
They are real. The Prime Minister said these things. And so it goes to a pattern of behaviour.
Whether he fell off a stage or not or whether in fact he had a foot on the floor at all times, whether he made promises before the election that power prices would come down or that changes to negative gearing and CGT would not happen and then after a point in time—an election—things changed, this is the same. And so this government have a very different standard for how they deal with matters of integrity around election programs, promises made, compared to what we did.
We seek to hold this government to account—to the same standard—to ensure that taxpayers' money is used appropriately and that people making those decisions do so wisely and are open and transparent. Everyone makes mistakes. I don't know whether the Prime Minister is actually very good at golf or not.
Maybe he is. He did say he played golf— Senator Cash: No, he doesn't play golf. Senator DUNIAM: or doesn't play golf.
I'm not sure. He's good at tennis. He does tennis.
I was looking for things in golfing parlance to chuck into the debate here, but, as they say, you drive for show, putt for dough! (Time expired) Question agreed to.