Consideration of Legislation

Mr HAWKE (Mitchell—Manager of Opposition Business) (12:03): I note the Leader of the House's remarks about the calendar; I thank him for that. We'll celebrate the Burke birthday sitting tonight; I look forward to that! I move:

That so much of the standing and sessional orders be suspended as would prevent all remaining proceedings on the Freedom of Information Amendment Bill 2025 taking place in this Chamber.

The opposition has looked carefully at what the government is attempting to do here. The Customs Tariff Amendment (Geelong Treaty Implementation) Bill 2025 should go to the Federation Chamber, but it was never intended to have matters of supreme importance to this parliament, like freedom of information—the primary governing legislation that protects citizens' rights against this government—dealt with in the Federation Chamber. We are moving today to stop this Labor government sending what is an important bill to the media and to the public—it was a commitment of the Prime Minister's at several elections that the government would have increased transparency and integrity in their legislation—off to the Federation Chamber. We do need to debate it here.

We've canvassed widely across the crossbench and the parliament, and there is extreme concern for the government's agenda in relation to freedom of information bills. Sending it to the Federation Chamber sends a signal that this parliament is not taking this primary piece of legislation as seriously as it ought to in relation to what is a critical matter to its citizenry. This government came to office promising increased transparency and increases to the protections of citizens against government, and we do need to suspend the Standing Orders so we can get this bill back to the House. That's why we didn't oppose the Leader of the House's motion—because he had two bills attached to it. The customs bill can go there—that's a simple matter for the House. No-one in this House would suggest that the freedom of information changes the government is proposing is a simple bill or an unimportant bill. Let the government come forward today and say this matter isn't important enough to be debated in the primary chamber of our country's parliament, the House of Representatives.

We have moved with great passion to make sure that this is debated here. It should be in the full light of scrutiny, in the daylight that the Prime Minister has called for repeatedly on many occasions of the media, before every single member here, and before the public who can be here to witness this in the galleries, and who are here today in many numbers to see us speak to the Freedom of Information Amendment Bill and to access their rights against government. There are a lot of people here; I want to note that.

In the 47th Parliament, amendments in 201 bills about this issue—or 44 per cent of all bills presented to the House—were referred to the Federation Chamber, sometimes with objections from the opposition. The government is regularly sending matters to the Federation Chamber that probably shouldn't be going there, so we will object where that's possible. This is the first time we have objected in this parliament. I want a government minister to come forward and say 'Freedom of information is a matter that should be shunted to a second chamber, because it isn't controversial.' I can assure the government and the Prime Minister that their changes to freedom of information are highly controversial and deserve a serious examination by this parliament.

We know what the government are trying to do here; they are trying to restrict freedom of information for citizens. They are trying to charge people as a way of limiting access to freedom of information requests —the foundation of our democratic system. It's not just my view; it's a view of the Prime Minister's. It's his view, and he can come here and tell us why he is allowing his Leader of the House to move this to the Federation Chamber when he has insisted that Australia needs increased transparency from its government. I look forward to that contribution.

In the perspective that I have just raised, the Federation Chamber has become a legislative clearinghouse, and that is bad for democracy and bad for transparency on a bill that is so important to democracy and to transparency. The opposition and many of the crossbench cannot accept that in relation to a bill like this. This is a reasonable argument, and I know members sitting opposite understand that. I know that they like to have views exchanged between us about this. Let every single member of the government come forward with passion to say, 'We are restricting access to freedom of information under our changes,' let them argue why it's better for the executive and their own government to have less scrutiny over them.

I can tell you, having been in the executive of a government, freedom of information provides a great discipline to ministers. It's good for ministers, it's good for their office and their staff, it's good for their departments. It means citizens have fundamental rights to get information when they need it. It has led to so many things in so many governments, I can't list them all here today. I can only say to this House that the process—the sacred process in our democracy—whereby citizens should have access to the executive to say, 'We know something has gone on, we have a right to access it,' that exchange between citizen and executive government is an important fundamental. That's why this bill should not be sent to the Federation Chamber and that's why this suspension is saying, 'We must debate this here.' Let the citizenry witness; let the kids who come here to say 'democracy is fantastic' come and see the exchange of ideas. We will advocate as a coalition for greater scrutiny and transparency over the executive of government. Let government members come forward and say, 'We don't want that, we want more restricted access, we want limitations on the access regime that people will have under freedom of information.' Let them say that this should be sent to a secondary chamber where the debate won't so fulsome, where it won't be scrutinised and where it won't be in transparency. It's not lost on anyone listening to this debate, or anyone who's concerned about the freedom of information. I can tell you the entire media gallery is concerned about their access under this. It doesn't matter what their political persuasion, their background or their length of time in the gallery, the gallery—if they had a vote in the gallery—would say: 'This is limiting our access to information, and we oppose this bill.' That would be it, if they had a vote. They're the extra chamber. But they should be here to witness it. They can't all fit in the Federation Chamber. There's another important argument. They want to be here. They didn't know this was on the agenda. I'm sure we're going to tell them very shortly and say: 'Get in here and help us defeat this government on freedom of information.' And we know they're going to turn up in numbers, en masse. So that's another reason why we need to have this debate in this House, in the full glare of the media.

I welcome it, because there are not many times where we can all be in alignment. But the crossbench, I know, have concerns about this. The media have grave concerns about it. Individual transparency and freedom organisations have already raised that this is a massive overreach from the government. It just got a massive majority, but this wasn't on the platform—there was no mandate to reduce transparency or to reduce integrity. In fact, the Prime Minister promised the exact opposite from his government. So this is not the mandate the Australian people gave the government—to restrict freedom of information and to take a step backwards in relation to transparency. They have said, clearly, that they believed the Prime Minister when he said: 'We need the full light of day over government operations. We need the full light of day and scrutiny. Let the sunshine in.'

Well, let the sunshine in. We can't charge people to let the sunshine in; that's just not going to work. In fact, we know what that means—a regime to increase the cost means, effectively, that people won't be able to afford access to freedom of information.

You can see, just from my own contribution, how important this matter is. We can't let this go to the Federation Chamber. I know the Leader of the House is considering it. He's weighing up the matter very carefully. I think, on the customs amendment, we agreed—that was something that could go to Federation Chamber. The customs amendment is a straightforward matter for the government. But on freedom of information—not for us, as an opposition, not for the member for Hume, not for the member for Lindsay, but for each individual citizen who has come to the gallery today to access information from their own government, their rights will be restricted under this proposed bill from the government. So we want to stand up for them today. We want to stand up for our friends in the media, who also deserve access.

Frankly speaking, on the serious point here, all governments need this discipline. This will weaken the quality of your government. So I say to any of the backbenchers that are wavering—I can see their faces, frowning in concern at what I'm saying—your executive will be weaker. Ironically, that may help you get to the front! I'm just saying: you want to run a good government; I'm sure you do—and I'm sure every member here wants to run a good government—but your executive will be weaker; your discipline will be less.

More importantly, in an era of big government—with more public servants than ever and bigger and more bloated bureaucracies—citizens need to access the information they need. They need rights against their own government. And the freedom of information regimes are fundamental rights. They belong in the hands of our citizenry.

We oppose the government sending this to a secondary chamber. This is not a clearing-house issue. This is not a debate that should be sent somewhere to just ram it through or have no scrutiny. In fact, ironically, this is the bill about scrutiny of government! It should be scrutinised by this House. It should be watched by everybody here and everyone that wants to be here. Let's have this debate in this House. Let's have a fulsome debate. We want to hear arguments. We want to hear why the Prime Minister was wrong when he said, 'We want more transparency and more scrutiny,' and why whoever designed this bill got it wrong in restricting citizens' rights, restricting the media's rights, and restricting what has been a well-functioning system, for all governments, of access to information.

The SPEAKER: The member for Macnamara, the chief government whip and the chief opposition whip and the member for Longman are not in their seats. You can't interject if you're not in your seat. I'm just reminding everyone. I'm not saying you did, but, everyone, we're just going to have normal rules. Is the motion seconded?