Labor’s hypocrisy on integrity
Senator VAN (Victoria) (15:36): Wow. We just heard about this side of politics being depressed after losing an election. We all know parties lose elections from time to time. When I first came into this place in 2019 what we saw on the other side was—how did Senator Cormann put it?—the seven stages of grief being displayed each and every day. What you can say about this side of the chamber is our tails are up. We're positive. We're fighting. We're holding this government to account, every time, every day. If we had more sitting days, you'd see them being held to account even more. Today people ask: Why do you need to hold them to account? Well, we just learned of our fifth example today.
The Attorney-General, Mr Dreyfus, the leading law officer of the land, can't even get right or understand what 'significant extent' means in the ministerial code—wow. Now, maybe it's okay for a foreign minister not to know what 'significant extent' means. Maybe it's okay for Senator Ayres not to know what it means—you know, he is just the Assistant Minister for Trade—but for the Attorney-General not to know what the term 'significant extent' means—
An honourable senator interjecting—
Senator VAN: Well, it would go down in writing and then be codified in very many places in law. You'd think that our primary, our No. 1, legal officer in the land would have some idea of what 'significant extent' means. It's talking about materiality; it's not talking about, oh, a little bit here or a little bit there. It has an actual meaning, and that meaning is written in the ministerial code that the Prime Minister himself has signed, as my good friend Senator Smith has shown us today.
The other side keep on talking about integrity, but talk is cheap, and we're seeing that daily from this government. They want to talk about integrity, they want to talk about parliament being a better place, they want to talk about it being more family friendly yet last night we saw, with the help of the Greens, that they guillotined debate. The Greens even guillotined their own disallowance motion. They just got rid of their own disallowance motion—like, really? This is transparency and a better parliament? I don't think so. Even the comments of my good friend Senator Hughes today in question time agreed that the way this government is acting towards people, particularly women in parliament, shows no respect. There's no respect even for their own code of conduct. This is just an incredible show of hubris. They come in here and talk about this code and transparency and integrity, and, apparently, we're going to see an integrity commission come before the parliament sometime soon. Do we know when? We don't know when. They signed an agreement with Timor-Leste yesterday. I tried to get a copy of that cooperative defence agreement. It's not available. There is no transparency from this government, let alone with what's happening with their ministerial code of conduct. What did they say in the Pirates of the Caribbean? Something you lean to rather than something to be observed in the obvious.
So we're not going to take lectures from those on that side about integrity. We will look not at what they say; we will look at what they do. We will ask them to be transparent—we will demand that they're transparent—and we'll hold them to account in question time, in take note of answers and, in a few short weeks, in Senate estimates.
Budget estimates, I might say, have been cut down from the normal two weeks, or eight days, to five or six days. They're not even going to allow us to hold them to account during Senate estimates. I'm just waiting for them to cut the hours of Senate estimates as well, to be a little bit more family friendly. But it won't be transparent, and it won't be integrity.
Question agreed to.
