Nicolette Boele (Bradfield, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

by leave—I move amendments (1) and (2) as circulated in my name together:

(1) Schedule 1, item 2, page 7 (line 2), omit "members.", substitute "members; and".

(2) Schedule 1, item 2, page 7 (line 2), at the end of subsection 110ABA(2), add:

(e) 2 persons, each of whom is a member of the House of Representatives or a Senator but not a member of the Government or the Opposition.

In this year's federal election, Independents and minor parties received more votes than the Liberal-National coalition, achieving 34 per cent of the primary vote. While Labor would have us focus on their 94-seat so-called supermajority, only about 35 per cent of Australians gave Labor their first preference. This is no anomaly. This is a very long trend in Australian politics. In 1975, minor parties and Independents accounted for only four per cent of the primary vote. Fifty years later, the non-major-party vote of 34 per cent represents the highest recorded since the emergence of the two-party system. That's nearly a ninefold increase. This is the modern Australian political landscape—a third of the votes for Labor, a third for the coalition and a third for the rest. Understandably, the major parties do not like this trend, and, understandably, they would like the status quo to remain where the two major parties are the only voices in Australian politics, and this bill is evidence of that.

For good reason, the government is creating a parliamentary joint committee on defence, and the stated aim of the bill is to inject greater parliamentary transparency and accountability and oversight of Defence. In fact, I was very interested to hear the member for Fremantle speak on this bill last week. He seems to share my view in relation to the committee, noting it is important that, with respect to matters of national security and the national intelligence community, ordinary parliamentarians who are not members of the executive can have some visibility over these matters. These are worthy aims, and I am very much on board.

Other committees in this place have rules that not only allow but require crossbench members to be part of them. Membership of this proposed committee has no such requirement. It has no requirement that a member of the crossbench be included—members of parliament who the Australian people have entrusted with a third of their vote, the same as Labor and the same as the coalition. The bill provides only for government or non-government members. In fact, the appointment provisions are identical to the appointment provisions for the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security. This means that, in practice, both the Intelligence and Security Committee and the proposed Defence Committee will never include members from the Australian parliament's crossbench.

There is something wildly arrogant about this—that when it comes to security and intelligence matters, when it comes to the defence of our nation, only Labor, Liberal and National Party members are considered qualified to weigh in; only major-party members are to be trusted to oversee these vitally important matters. This is despite the breadth of experience on the crossbench in relation to these matters—the member for Calare, for example, and the member for Clark. The member for Clark has been a lieutenant colonel in the Australian Army, has had senior management roles with an American defence contractor, has served as an intelligence officer with the Office of National Assessments and is a two-time winner of the Australian Intelligence Medal. That membership of the Labor, Liberal or National Party makes you more qualified than this to serve on a defence committee is preposterous. The defence of our country, the security of our citizens is a matter for the entire nation, not just those elected to major parties. My constituents and the constituents of every one of the 13 members of the crossbench in this place deserve to be represented. It's profoundly undemocratic. I fail to understand how it can be justified.

The amendment that I am proposing to this bill simply requires that one crossbench member from the House and one crossbench member from the Senate be appointed to the Defence Committee—simple, fair, democratic and entirely reasonable. To repeat, this is now a firmly established trend in Australia's voting patterns. At this year's election, 34 per cent of voting Australians—that's 6,150,000 people in this country—put their trust in independents and minor parties. That is 6,150,000 who wanted those candidates to represent them in parliament, in all aspects of the business of this parliament. Locking out elected members in order to protect the major-party duopoly does not pass the pub test. The duopoly ignores the reality of the Australian political landscape of the 21st century at its peril. I commend this amendment to the House.

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