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

I did note the odd way that they were answering the standing order 74(5) request. However, it was interesting to hear. I move:

That the Senate take note of the explanation.

I do find that, in all of this, what I was trying to elicit from those opposite was a simple explanation as to the reason why they have not provided the answers to the questions that we have asked.

Senator Cash interjecting—

But, to take an interjection, I think they do, in this instance, protest too much. It is a simple matter. All you have to do is commit to answer the questions that we have asked. That is the simple thing you need to do. We have not heard a commitment from any minister yet to answer the questions that have been asked. We have heard some weasel words. We have heard part explanations. But mostly what we have heard is an attack on the opposition for simply doing what we are entitled to do in this place, which used to ask why questions have remained unanswered.

Senator Cash does, I think, protest too much, because I will go back to what Senator Cash said. They are prophetic words and you ought to be very careful when you make them because they will be served back to the Senate. To quote Senator Cash:

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

Senator Cash may want to attack me for raising this. I am big enough to take that attack. She may want to also throw slurs at me. I am big enough and my shoulders are broad enough to take that. But this is a simple matter that only needs to end in: 'Yes, we commit to answer those questions and we commit not to do what was done in other portfolios at budget estimates in that they dumped them on the Sunday night.' If you have sleepless nights when you are in opposition on Sunday night before budget, so do we in this instance because we dread the huge number of unanswered questions being dumped on us at the very late stage in estimates.

This opposition does have an opportunity to ask questions. We do want to be able to follow up with answers to those questions, and in setting their high bar, all that they have done in the explanation is complain about our record. Well, our record speaks to itself. You are creating your own record here and you are not meeting it very well. In fact, what you are doing is setting a very poor record. There are in the order of almost 2,000 questions on notice still unanswered lodged by Labor concerning basic questions about expenditure and operation. You have to ask yourself what this government has got to hide.

But Senator Cash, in her own estimates, we will not mention the time when Mr Morrison bumped her from estimates and make sure he was there to answer the questions rather than Senator—