A Senate Estimates hearing in the Finance and Public Administration Committee was disrupted late yesterday when the Rudd government prevented an official from Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet from answering questions about the processes involved in the preparation of the recently released Defence White Paper.

A member of the Committee, Senator Russell Trood (Liberal Queensland) said that the government's action in preventing a full public disclosure of the processes involved in preparing the White Paper treated the Estimates process with contempt and underscored the Rudd government's hypocrisy in claiming to favour greater transparency of government decisions.

Senator Trood said he wondered what it was that the government was trying to hide. "The preparation of a White paper is an extremely important event in the development of the nation's defence policy. The policy judgements, including the intelligence assessments, which underpin the document should be open to the widest possible public scrutiny."

Following a series of questions to Mr Angus Campbell from the Department's Office of National Security in the Committee, the Special Minister of State Senator John Faulkner, stepped in to prevent Mr Campbell from providing the Committee with information on the intelligence agencies which had contributed assessments to the preparation of the White Paper.

Following advice that the names of the agencies – the Defence Intelligence Organisation and the Office of National Assessments, could be revealed to the Committee, Senator Faulkner then refused to allow further questions on the widely reported controversy within the government on the strategic significance that should be attached to the rise of China.

"Given the importance which the White Paper attaches to China's rise as a plausible threat to Australia's national interests, and the future defence spending premised on this threat: and particularly in light of the Budget’s $57 billion deficit and $300 billion debt for the next 22 years, there can be little doubt that the public has a compelling interest in learning how the government reached its policy conclusions," Senator Trood said.