Kim Carr (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Housing and Urban Development) Share this | Hansard source

by leave—The customary practice in this chamber, until recently, has been that the opposition would be given notice of a ministerial statement. It has been the customary practice to at least advise us that there would be a response to a return to order. This is a circumstance in which one has had to glance up at the screen and discover that the government is making a statement on matters which we have had no advice on whatsoever.

I think there is gross discourtesy in that approach. One can only presume that the government has something terrible to hide when it has to sneak in here in this manner to drop these sorts of statements on the table, particularly in circumstances in which the government is refusing a return to order on the grounds of an unwarranted diversion of resources away from the key role of protecting the environment. If ever there was a catch-all expression, it is that one. It is a proposition that essentially says that the government does not want to answer this question, does not want to deal with this issue, because its key role is to protect the environment.

What does that mean? One can only presume that the matter that has been raised before the chamber is difficult for the government. There is correspondence concerning deductible gift recipient status for environmental groups in which the government made a statement that the Friends of the Earth and the Australian Conservation Foundation should only get deductible gifts if they were to agree that they would not campaign against the government. Those are the circumstances of this particular matter—that their taxation deductibility would be conditional upon their political acquiescence to the wishes of the government. What an extraordinary proposition.

I think it would have been reasonable for the matter to have been dealt with in the manner in which the senator who originally moved this return to order had sought. We have a circumstance now in which the government simply refuses to advise the Senate as to the reasons why the government does not wish to comply with this return to order. Frankly, this explanation of an unwarranted diversion of resources away from the government’s key role of protecting the environment is totally unacceptable. It smacks of arrogance; it smacks of contempt. You have a circumstance in which the government seeks to sneak in with this sort of statement without even bothering to advise the opposition that it intends to make it. I think it is totally inappropriate for the government to act in this way.

I would have thought that, even if the minister does not have the decency to tell us what is going on, the government whips’ office could have made a simple courtesy call to our whips to advise us that this was coming through. It is totally unacceptable, and it is a measure of the way in which the standards in this chamber have fallen. It is the manner in which the government, with its complete control of this parliament, is now seeking to essentially abuse the power it has. It has an all-powerful position in this parliament and does not even bother to make a phone call to say it is bringing on such a matter.