Reading through the Hansard from yesterday (always a fun punishment) and independent David Pocock has proved he has absolutely mastered the parliamentary game – he pulled a swiftie on the government yesterday and won a motion for an extra five non-government questions to be added to senate question time.
That will extend senate QT by at least 30 minutes. The Coalition voted with him and the crossbench, which is what won him the motion. And it wasn’t because Pocock necessarily wanted more time to ask questions – but because he wants more transparency. He’s been waiting for the government to release the Briggs ‘Jobs for Mates’ review for the last two years, with no success. So now he’s forcing Labor to deal with him, by messing up their control of the senate.
Which it could do in the house of representatives, because that is where it controls the numbers.
So we have Labor, who campaigned on more transparency, withholding a report into how it has awarded senior public servant jobs for two years, now reportedly threatening to sack Coalition MPs from the deputy positions on parliamentary committee, because the Coalition voted with David Pocock for more questions during question time, in a bid to force the government to release the report.
What’s that they say about absolute power?
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"A Centre for Public Integrity report reveals the Albanese government has become more secretive than the Morrison era, significantly eroding transparency. Fully granted Freedom of Information (FoI) requests plunged from 59% in 2011–12 to just 25% in 2023–24, while outright refusals nearly doubled to 23%.
Senate compliance also slumped, with Labor adhering to only 32.8% of document-release orders compared to Morrison’s 48.7%." (The Centre of Public Integrity)
Labor just tried to completely pull the curtain on what they're doing, denying those who vote for them the means to see for themselves.