![\"Anthony](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/9fa84e4f6eb66b102a88d599603abfb7.jpeg\")
<\/p>\nTwo of Labor’s most senior ministers have been booted from the New South Wales upper house over the government’s suppression of secret documents.<\/p>\n
MLCs voted to suspended the government’s leader in the Legislative Council, Penny Sharpe, and her deputy John Graham, to protest the Labor’s failure to produce certain papers for scrutiny.<\/p>\n
Ms Sharpe was kicked out of the house on Tuesday for two weeks because the government would not release a statement Premier Chris Minns gave to police over a historical sexual assault allegation against a Labor official.<\/p>\n
She cited “strong and definitive” legal advice that indicated the documents could not be sought that way because they concerned the administration of justice.<\/p>\n
On Thursday, Mr Graham was suspended over the government’s failure to release a report by former judge John Sackar on hate speech legislation.<\/p>\n
The government has claimed the report is a cabinet document and therefore protected from release.<\/p>\n
Ms Sharpe had been scheduled to appear at a parliamentary inquiry hearing about data centres on Friday, before her name was removed from the list of witnesses.<\/p>\n
‘What is so important’<\/p>\n
Liberal MLC Susan Carter said the term “cabinet document” was being used like “Harry Potter’s cloak of invisibility”.<\/p>\n
“We can throw it over everything and therefore the public, the parliament never get to see these documents,” Ms Carter told 702 ABC Sydney.<\/p>\n
“Just ask yourself, what is so important about withholding documents from the public, from the upper house, that Labor are prepared to have 14 days without their leader?”<\/p>\n
Ron Hoenig, the government’s Leader of the House in the Legislative Assembly, said the other chamber was abusing its power to force the production of documents.<\/p>\n
“The Minn’s government is a minority government, and I’ve never known a government to be as transparent as the Minns Labor government,” Mr Hoenig said.<\/p>\n
“The cabinet are still considering the [Sackar report] but before documents are released, as you would imagine, government lawyers are viewing these things and making a determination and providing advice whether the documents and can or can’t be released, bearing in mind the cabinet conventions.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Anthony Whealy KC said the Sackar report was likely written for public consumption. (ABC News: Billy Cooper)<\/p>\n
Centre for Public Integrity chair and former Supreme Court judge Anthony Whealy KC said cabinet confidentiality was a “grey area”, but he doubted it applied to the report on hate speech laws.<\/p>\n
“I can’t understand how the Sackar report could be a document that falls within cabinet deliberations,” Mr Whealy said.<\/p>\n
“It was a report not designed for cabinet specifically. It was a report that Justice Sackar would have intended would be available for the public.<\/p>\n
“A lump of secrecy seems to be infiltrating governments at both state and federal levels.”<\/p>\n
Suspensions spell trouble for government<\/p>\n
If the government continues to refuse to release the Sackar report, Mr Graham is expected to be suspended again when parliament resumes on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
His and Ms Sharpe’s removal means Labor now has the same number of votes as the Coalition in the upper house.<\/p>\n
Usually, the government needs the support of just six crossbenchers to pass legislation opposed by the opposition.<\/p>\n
It could previously get bills through with the votes of the four Greens and single Animal Justice and Legalise Cannabis MLCs.<\/p>\n
Now it will require two votes from more conservative crossbenchers, such as former One Nation-turned-independent MLCs and the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party.<\/p>\n
The government said 24 bills are backed up in the house of review.<\/p>\n
It comes as the government’s war with the upper house has escalated on a separate front: the parliament’s powers to force witnesses to front inquiries.<\/p>\n
In December, the Court of Appeal has ruled parts of the Parliamentary Evidence Act 1901 invalid, in a challenge by Mr Minns’s chief of staff, James Cullen, to avoid appearing at an inquiry.<\/p>\n
The matter is now before the High Court, with a hearing likely to take place in September.<\/p>\n
The Coalition has proposed legislation that would restore these powers and tacked it on to select government bills, including laws to tackle demerit point fraud.<\/p>\n
On Thursday, the Legislative Assembly voted to send the legislation to a lower house committee with a Labor majority, delaying any debate.<\/p>\n
Mr Whealy believed there was only a “50-50 chance” the High Court appeal would succeed and said the Cullen decision had left the state in a “dangerous situation, democratically”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two of Labor’s most senior ministers have been booted from the New South Wales upper house over the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":20456,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[22,21,5225,3218,9576,4830],"class_list":["post-20455","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-austrlia","tag-john-graham","tag-parliament","tag-penny-sharpe","tag-upper-house"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20455","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20455"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20455\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20456"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20455"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20455"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20455"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}