Joe Ludwig (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the explanation.

I thank Senator Fifield for his efforts on behalf of the Minister for Communications, Mr Turnbull—however, he has not enlightened me on the date the remaining questions will be answered. That would be particularly helpful, given that estimates are just around the corner. One of the things that Senator Cash quite eloquently said is worth repeating. She said that the minister:

… needs to understand a very crucial thing: every senator as an elected member of this Senate has fundamental constitutional and other rights conferred upon them which they are entitled to exercise in this chamber. One of those fundamental rights is that we are entitled to ask questions of the government and, in asking those questions, senators on this side—

this is when she was in opposition—

senators on the other side and senators from the minor parties are entitled to receive answers to those questions in a timely manner.

It is apposite that the government should take a leaf out of its own book when it was in opposition and demanded that questions be answered, and of course on that basis I do think that the government should provide the answers to those questions. They could indicate a time that those question are going to be answered for the benefit of the Senate. It is an area where the minister for communications really does need to lift his game. Speaking on SBS news the night before the election, Mr Abbott said:

No cuts to education, no cuts to health, no change to pensions, no change to the GST and no cuts to the ABC or SBS.

Since that untruth by Mr Abbott he has cut more than $240 million from the ABC and SBS. Mr Turnbull has said that there is more to come, and these cuts will be substantial—proving that Mr Abbott was misleading the public—yet the Prime Minister and his team have steadfastly refused to admit this broken promise. This morning, though, it appears he has had a change of heart. Speaking to Chris Uhlmann on the ABC AM program, and also broadcast live across Australia on the ABC News Breakfast program, Mr Turnbull said:

Look we are making cuts to the ABC and SBS budget, that is true …

The Prime Minister should admit that he has broken his promise not to cut the ABC and SBS, or own up and reverse the cuts to the ABC and SBS budgets.

These are areas where we do have a right to seek to ask questions and to elicit responses from the government in a timely fashion, as the senator opposite has informed the parliament. It is not sufficient to simply come in here and say: 'We will answer the questions when we want to answer them.' That is effectively what you are doing when you are not meeting the deadlines that are set in this place. I have a few more to go through, so I will not delay too long on each issue, but that is the point that I make—that this is a very serious matter. This Senate does take it very seriously, and you ought to meet the commitments you have made and address the issues you have raised in opposition as well.