Bernardi, Sen Cory

Senator BERNARDI (South Australia) (14:44): Minister, governments have gone to great lengths to hide controversial spending, resulting in federal freedom of information requests surging by 60 per cent over the last five years. There were about 38,000 in the last reporting year. The US, the British and many European governments run online, searchable, spending disclosure gateways, enabling taxpayer and journalist scrutiny. These gateways have saved national budgets hundreds of millions of dollars. Why don't we have searchable gateways so taxpayers can scrutinise spending?