Hansard debates

Mrs McARTHUR (Western Victoria) (16:21): I rise to speak in support of Ms Crozier’s motion, which is just the latest effort by this house to extract from the government information which it ought in any case to be releasing. The phrase ‘blood from a stone’ springs to mind. Many of us in this place have spent a great deal of time and effort condemning the government’s failure to govern in accordance with good, time-honoured democratic practice. The parliamentary calendar itself has been reduced, sittings truncated and delegated legislation enacted with little opportunity for scrutiny. State-of-emergency powers have been relied upon well beyond the timescale for which those powers were originally intended. Within the executive, cabinet government has been downgraded.

Now, as reasonable people, we understand that in a crisis it is proper, indeed sometimes essential, for government to operate more quickly and decisively than is possible in the normal course of affairs. Provision is made for this in legislation, in the rules and indeed in the conventions of Parliament, but an essential trade-off for these greater powers is the requirement on government for transparency—and this is where I come back to Ms Crozier’s motion. Transparency is desirable at all times, but in times of crisis, when the Premier and his ministers employ shortcuts to our normal processes, it becomes absolutely essential. When ministers can act without prior consultation, transparency after the fact becomes our only safeguard. Yes, it is right that ministers can do more unilaterally, but it is absolutely required that they explain exactly what they have done and exactly why they have done it. Honesty, frankness, exposure, transparency—whatever you like to call it—is part of the bargain which differentiates a democratic administration governing through a time of crisis from a despotic regime assuming even more absolute power and explaining and justifying itself to no-one. And it really matters, because failure to disclose breeds mistrust and damages the social contract between the government and the governed—the people.

The Premier and his acolytes may be convinced—Messianically convinced—that they are doing the right thing for the right reasons, and in some cases they might even be right, but if they fail to disclose, to explain, to justify, even the most correct and defensible process or decision becomes suspicious. Often this suspicion is well founded and there is no justification for the government’s secrecy. This is not wartime, with an urgent need to protect public morale or an overriding need to prevent information from falling into the hands of the enemy. Instead the explanation can only be arrogance, stubbornness and political self-protection. The Premier treats Parliament with contempt and the people like children.

Now, I would like to give an example of why this matters, which relates directly to the hotel quarantine program, specifically the security employed. In September last year I lodged a freedom-of-information request with the Department of Jobs, Precincts and Regions seeking all correspondence between 29 March 2020 and 29 April 2020 between Minister Pakula and DJPR secretary Simon Phemister about Unified Security, between Minister Pakula and Simon Phemister about the use of private security firms in Victoria’s hotel quarantine program, between Minister Pakula and Unified Security, and between Simon Phemister and Unified Security. Only one document was found in the department’s search—a single email, eight pages long, from Simon Phemister to the office of Minister Pakula.

I was refused access to the document due to the cabinet document exemption, as it was prepared for cabinet consideration by Mr Phemister. I was not taken aback by the refusal but more by the extraordinary lack of correspondence between either the minister or the department secretary and Unified Security, particularly given that the services agreement between the department and Unified Security was reportedly valued at $30.2 million. On top of that, it is alleged that the services agreement was in fact signed by Mr Phemister.

One of two things can therefore be true: either the freedom-of-information unit at the Department of Jobs, Precincts and Regions dishonestly refused to disclose the existence of more correspondence than this single email from Mr Phemister to Minister Pakula—but I do not suspect that is the case—or Mr Phemister signed a $30 million contract with Unified Security to work on hotel quarantine without he or the minister ever having corresponded with them prior, leaving it all to their departmental juniors, a contract which ultimately contributed to the deaths of 800 Victorians and the destruction of the state’s economy. The problem here is that I do not know the truth. The response given to me raises more questions than it answers. If you sow secrecy you reap suspicion. The government and indeed our state’s health officials are quite rightly worried about paranoia in this time of COVID. They fear viral hoaxes—anti-vaxxers and campaigns of civil disobedience against public health restrictions. The antidote to this is not endless lectures from the Premier in the guise of openness. You cannot lecture a paranoid person, especially if you are from the government.

Mr Leane: Well, you shouldn’t encourage them either.

Mrs McARTHUR: State education programs will not cut it. The only thing which works, Mr Leane, is openness. The vaccine for paranoia, even hyperinfectious paranoia, is transparency, and it applies to us all. We do not need to be told that ministers are doing the right thing on hotel audits or anything else. We do not need selected extracts and the commentary. We probably will not believe it. We need all the documents, all the information available—unvarnished and unredacted. This motion is about more than just hotel audit records. It is about the Premier’s whole approach to government and the damage he is causing our state. If you do not appreciate the damage that has been caused by the lockdowns that have destroyed businesses, destroyed jobs, destroyed families, and created an unprecedented level of mental illness and the lack of ability for people to get proper health care and ongoing surgery, which they have had to put on hold, let alone the damage that has been done to children through not going to school, continually having to have parents being babysitters and teachers while they are trying to hold down a job in their own home—if you do not understand that damage that you have done—then you should not be here. If government ministers are not responsible, then who is responsible? We have spent millions of dollars trying to establish who was responsible for issuing these contracts which I have referred to, and we have got no answers.

You have got a problem with amnesia in this government. We heard that a minister cannot read emails. You do not know. You cannot remember. I mean, what sort of an operation are you running? You should be able to provide us with all the evidence as to why you want us locked down all the time. Why should my half a million constituents outside the tram tracks of Melbourne be subject to this lockdown when there are 13 cases in six local government areas in Melbourne? Why do you subject the whole of Victoria, especially at the most important time of the year—in holidays—to this sort of lockdown? What we need is the evidence, the documents that we are seeking, and you should provide them in a timely fashion. Otherwise, what are you hiding?