Amanda Vanstone | Commercial in confidence is a fob-off when government pay with taxpayers' money

What they really mean is: "the government should decide to allocate our taxes towards this or that". It's an important distinction.

We elect governments to make decisions on behalf of all of us. The money they spend is our money not theirs. Governments allocate our money towards this or that policy but they would rather we think of it as their largesse. It isn't. Prime ministers of all political persuasions encourage this thinking when they refer to "my government".

They might dish out the portfolios and they do have to satisfy the governor-general that they have the numbers on the floor of the House in order to form a government.

But it's not theirs. It's ours. We collectively elect the government. Sadly, we have experienced too many changes of leaders within the term of a government in past decades. That's testament to the fact that it is not the leader's government, they come and go.

And governments come and go because of our collective decision making. Leaders get tipped into and out of office by their own party room.

How refreshing it would be to hear ministers and prime ministers saying: "your government has decided". Bringing us into the conversation just might help reduce the ridiculous gladiatorial nature of political reporting. In a gentle, but not inconsequential, way it pushes the debate towards issues, rather than political parties and personalities.

Given it is our money, there is every reason for them to be transparent in how it is spent. A few lessons from my early days in the Senate never left me.

Back then if you were a newcomer, you got whatever committee memberships the more senior (and male) members were happy to leave on the table. One of mine was finance and government operations.

For a newcomer, a look across different portfolios into government spending is an opportunity.

The most contentious issue was when someone asked in an estimates committee what Geraldine Doogue was paid. This was back in her heady days of fronting the 7.30 Report. The ABC chose to allege it was "commercial in confidence".

The issue of whether that was an acceptable answer went to the nicknamed "F&GO" committee.

The media played it for "how much is Geraldine paid", but that wasn't the issue. The question was whether Parliament was entitled to know the answer.

My own view both then and now is that the ABC is not a commercial station, it is government-funded and both governments and the Parliament are entitled to know how the money is being spent. Actually, they are obligated.

Don't forget committees can meet "in camera" to receive information which for a variety of reasons either need not or should not be in the public domain.

It isn't hard to imagine a number of scenarios where you and I would agree that it is in nobody's interest to make certain information public.

Nonetheless, transparency should be the order of the day. The then Labor attorney-general, Michael Lavarch, saw the merit in transparency.

For years, senior barristers appearing on behalf of the Commonwealth had somehow been able to keep secret the daily fee they were charging. Perhaps they were giving a cut rate to the Commonwealth out of the goodness of their heart and didn't want their largesse publicised.

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There are other more likely explanations, not limited to but including, they didn't want their private clients to realise what a cheap rate the government had negotiated. Or perhaps they were among the few barristers competing for the title of "most appearances in the High Court that year" and had consequently dropped their normal fees to win the bragging rights. The reason doesn't matter. Lavarch accepted that point and for a while the information was available. I think however the secrecy has crept back.

A carpenter who provides chairs for Parliament House or various departments doesn't get the right to say " you can't tell the public what you paid for these chairs". So why should anyone else be able to?

Allowing "commercial in confidence" to be used as a shield against parliamentary questions just allows all manner of incompetence, corruption and mismanagement to be hidden from oversight.

Without that proper oversight stupidity, incompetence and rorting can continue. And, more to the point, it is impossible for us to make assessments about whether the government has spent our money wisely.

The government in my state recently spent hundreds of thousands of dollars getting Sam Smith to perform at an invitation-only event for key influencers. They claim the sate earned millions in "free" advertising.

They also brought Princess Anne's daughter and son-in-law out to a car race. We may never know what was paid but we will be able to see if tourism numbers spike in the way they might have had we run targeted, paid-for campaigns.

I don't question using influencers, it's a new marketing tool. But it isn't magic. You need the influencer matched with the market and the product.

As I learned in my time on the F&GO committee, there's a gold mine of information out there on what governments are doing with our money. You just have to cut through the "commercial in confidence" fob-off.

It is important for ministers, departmental secretaries and public servants to remember that just because the money has been "appropriated" to them doesn't mean it is theirs.

Someone with a low-paying job, who maybe had higher aspirations for their life, is paying taxes. Everyone spending them should remember that.