Alex Hawke (Mitchell, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Industry and Innovation) Share this | Hansard source

I accept that, and I did explain this was a very last-minute process, from the government's point of view, in providing the very substantial standing orders changes, and we did our best to produce amendments very quickly and provide them to the parliament. I've already apologised to members, but we had no idea what the government was doing. Thank you for that reminder about the procedure.

I move back to our conversation about the antidemocratic nature of some of these changes. On committees, that sounds very reasonable: why can't we just share the deputy chairs? The government knows exactly what it is doing in relation to choosing the portfolio areas where it will change the mechanism for electing a deputy chair. That is designed to reduce scrutiny and transparency as well. There was zero consultation with the opposition. I don't know if there was consultation with the crossbench on this issue.

However, the selection of the Standing Committee on Economics is no accident. What the government are saying is that they want less pressure from the opposition on the issue of the economy. They are saying they do not want an opposition member in the deputy chair, asking questions on that committee, raising matters and scrutinising the office bearers that are brought before that committee. And they are saying that of course they want less pressure on the economy. The economy is the No. 1 issue of our day. It is the matter of our time, and the government's agenda on the economy is more government intervention, higher taxes and, of course, an unrestricted commitment to increased government spending—endless government spending! So it's no surprise that the government have said, 'We want to change the procedures on the economics committee.' The economics committee has been a vibrant and important part of our democratic system, and deputy chairs play a vibrant and important part in that. The government are also trying to play politics with parliamentary committees on the topics of their choosing, and we understand why that is. We do not, obviously, support those changes.

In the time I have left, I will refer to a couple of the things that we think are important. I do welcome the Leader of the House's commitment to more speech time. I think that is relevant to this parliament—here and in the Federation Chamber. It's a proposal we welcome and would have put forward, so we support those changes. However, we will have no choice but to oppose the government's amendments.

There are some other matters on which we are moving amendments, including questions in writing. We have increasingly seen a lack of transparency from this government in relation to questions in writing. There are ministers who are failing to respond to this time-honoured mechanism within the prescribed 60 days. According to the Procedure Office, there were more overdue questions in writing in the 47th Parliament than in the 45th and the 46th. This is an executive—just so everyone is clear here—that is not committed to transparency. There will be fewer questions during question time, less scrutiny of government, fewer responses to questions in writing for the parliament. What is going on inside the government? Not only will we have less opportunity to ask; we'll have fewer answers, and we will not know what our own government is doing. So, when the people send us here to do this—and this has happened more in previous parliaments—now we'll have fewer and fewer opportunities under the second term of the Albanese government.

We believe the government's amendments to the standing orders, as they stand, need amendment. Without further time, I will just flag that, while there are some good changes here, we will be opposing the government's amendments.

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