Ministers’ diaries: taxpayers deserve transparency on what MPs are doing

The states that already allow their citizens to have some idea of what their highly paid ministers are doing are extending that transparency, yet resistance to meeting diaries continues elsewhere.

Queensland and NSW have ministerial meeting diary requirements in place and have done so for some years — as has the ACT. And both states are extending their requirements in the wake of integrity investigations. In response to the Yearbury review, Annastacia Palaszczuk has announced an overhaul of Queensland’s lobbying rules, including requiring ministerial meeting diaries to identify the reasons for meetings with lobbyists, and requiring the leader of the opposition to provide a meeting diary.

The Queensland government is also implementing the recommendations of the Coaldrake review, which will include releasing cabinet documents after 30 days. Currently it’s 30 years.

The reforms — if implemented properly — would put Queensland even further ahead of any other jurisdiction on transparency: on political donations, on meeting diaries, on lobbying, and even on cabinet deliberations — rightly described by Palaszczuk as transformational.

The Perrottet government, which to put it mildly has its own integrity issues, has also embraced further reform and will implement the recommendations of the NSW ICAC’s investigation of lobbying, with a significant strengthening of lobbying register requirements, establishing a lobbying regulator, and making ministerial and parliamentary secretary diaries more accessible.885366

Significantly, NSW is doing something ICAC didn’t recommend: extending diary requirements to all MPs.

Perhaps they’ve been reading Crikey — we’ve been urging this for years. There are few parliaments where crossbenchers, combined with oppositions, can’t amend legislation and thus are exposed to influence-peddling. And all MPs are paid by taxpayers — taxpayers should rightly expect to see what they are doing with their time, and who is seeking to influence them.

Elsewhere, however, the momentum for transparency is lacking. The South Australian Labor government is opposing a Greens private members’ bill in the state to require meeting diaries. The reason? Diary requirements are “onerous”, says the SA Attorney-General Kyam Maher, and meeting diaries have led to complaints about privacy being infringed.

Maher is talking crap. The reporting requirements are hardly onerous in an age of electronic diaries. And if someone is seeking to influence a minister, they don’t deserve privacy — taxpayers deserve transparency.

It’s a different argument when the requirement is extended to all MPs — constituents should be able to contact their MP with an expectation of privacy, but only in regards to constituent issues per se, not policy issues. It’s a non-argument when it comes to ministers.

At the Commonwealth level, there appears no interest at all in meeting diaries, despite federal Labor looking to claim the mantle of transparency reformers with improvements on political donation reporting. But there’s nothing to stop MPs and senators from voluntarily publishing their diaries to enable voters and the media to see who is seeking to influence them.

Ministerial meeting diaries — ideally, MP meeting diaries — should be a default transparency requirement for every level of government, something voters are entitled to expect in exchange for funding politicians. Showing up to any other workplace and refusing to account for your time wouldn’t be acceptable; there’s no reason why politicians should be any different. They work well, without burden, in Queensland and NSW, sufficient that they are being expanded. There is no excuse for this not to be an immediate reform at the Commonwealth level. Over to you, Albo.