Andrew Murray (WA, Australian Democrats) Share this | Hansard source

I cannot resist: as an old African I would remind you that the saying is, ‘You eat an elephant a mouthful at a time.’

Question put:

That the amendment (Senator Murray’s) be agreed to.

I move amendment (2) on sheet 4821 revised:

(2)    Schedule 1, page 3 (after line 17), after item 2, insert:

2A After section 27F

Insert:

27FA Procedures for merit selection of appointments

As the chamber is aware, well over 30 of these amendments have been moved over the last six or seven years and the message is the same every time: the government has to get with the program—as our friend Senator Vanstone likes to say—‘Get with the program, lads and ladies,’ because this issue of selecting people on merit is one being taken up all over the world in advanced democracies and our own democracy does not have a sufficiently robust system for the merit selection of appointments. In fact, recently there was another academic paper on the very issue. I forget the name of the person who wrote it but it was circulated, I think, in the democrat audit. That is not the Democrat party; that is the democrat audit section of the Australian National University—for those who are interested in these accountability matters.

I am not going to motivate this at length; the chamber has heard my arguments before. The government do not believe in appointments on merit. They believe in appointments of mates. Now and again, of course, the mates do have merit. They do not accept the argument that their processes need to be improved, so we will lose the vote and we will add one more to the list of the number of times they have opposed appointments on merit.