Andrew Bartlett (Queensland, Australian Democrats) Share this | Hansard source

I would also like to speak to this motion. As Senator Ludwig has outlined, the motion increases the sitting hours for this week and next week for late night sittings on Tuesday and Thursday. As a bit of an aside, it once again removes the opportunity for senators to debate and speak to government documents that are tabled in this place on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. This follows on from the same action that happened last sitting week in May, so since March senators have not been able to speak to some of these documents.

Some senators may think that it is not that exciting, that most of those documents are annual reports, they are not that significant and it does not really matter. Firstly, I disagree. The importance of annual reports should not be underestimated, nor should the opportunity for senators to speak to them and the issues they raise be underestimated. But it also means that other significant government documents are not able to be spoken to and expanded upon more fully in this place. I am thinking particularly of some of the reports that have been tabled by the immigration minister in recent times: reports from the Immigration Ombudsman about people kept in detention for prolonged periods of time and the government’s responses to those reports. Those reports have not been able to be spoken to in the appropriate place, in the Senate, after they have been tabled because of motions such as these by the government, which remove the opportunity to speak to them so that the government can give priority to its own business.

Documents tabled today, which again we will not be able to speak to, relate to the Refugee Review Tribunal reviews that were not completed within the 90-day period that is required under legislation. Similarly, there is the report on protection visa processing and how much of that has taken more than 90 days. That report, also, is not able to be spoken to. The report of LiveCorp, the body that oversees the live export trade from Australia—a topic that is of great interest to many Australians—has been tabled today and is not able to be spoken to. The report on how the prohibition on interactive gambling advertisements is going is not able to be spoken to.

Whilst the attitude towards some of these documents might be somewhat dismissive—and clearly is from the government’s point of view—I think it is a serious problem if you have prolonged periods of time when they are not able to be addressed in the Senate other than by a senator speaking individually on an adjournment debate late at night. I think there are 81 documents on the Notice Paper at the moment and there are another 15 or so, so there are close to 100 documents on the Notice Paper to be noted and spoken to should a senator desire. Some of those have had initial speeches made on them, but it is one area that is consistently being pushed further off the agenda and further away from any consideration that it is important business. I think it is a disconcerting trend. I am as willing as anybody else to forgo that aspect of Senate business when necessary from time to time, but to be doing it as a matter of course, week after week, becomes a significant problem.

The other aspect of this motion is that it enables the government to endeavour to put through a significant number of pieces of legislation about significant matters in a very short space of time. We have the problem that senators have to try to be across the content and detail of all of these different sorts of legislation. That is obviously particularly problematic for those of us in smaller parties; nonetheless it is something that all senators need to try to do and of course the community should be able to try to do. When you have a huge number of pieces of legislation being pushed through in a small number of days, it inevitably means reduction in the adequacy of the scrutiny that that legislation receives. So it is a matter not just of how many hours are available but also how many days those hours are spread over. The more things are crammed into a small number of days, the more difficult it is to have enough time to look at those issues. We are seeing that, of course, with some of the legislation committee reports that are coming down, where committees simply have not had enough time to look at legislation in the detail that is needed. Of course, that means that other senators that rely on those committees and their reports to get a view on legislation also do not get as full an idea as they might otherwise.

These things cascade into generally degrading the ability of the Senate to do its job and to properly scrutinise legislation and also that wider important task of not just senators but others in the community and the press gallery to communicate to the people the detail of all these measures. It is simply human nature and an inevitability that, if you have 10 important things all happening on the one day, the focus will only go to one or two of them, while if they are spread over 10 days then each of them will get the attention it deserves. That is a phenomenon that is happening more and more. It also leads to less awareness about what is going on, less awareness about the issues that are directly affecting people and, I would suggest, a continuing decline in the public’s faith in and connection with the political process. I believe that is a serious problem. It is one that is getting worse. I for one do not want to be supporting any contribution that continues to make it worse.

The final comment I would make is that this motion to extend the sitting hours over the next two weeks to enable the government to push through as many pieces of legislation as possible is something that is particularly necessary just because of the extremely small number of sitting days the government has allowed so far this year. Today is only the 15th sitting day for this year. There are only this week and next week to go and then we do not sit until August. So when we get to the second week of August—the second week of the eighth month of the year—the Senate will only have had around 22 sitting days. That is grossly inadequate. That is a point that I have raised time and time again.

I should remind the Senate that, when the sitting days were set for the first part of this year, I moved an amendment to have an extra sitting week scheduled for the Senate in the first part of the year to avoid this sort of situation. That was not supported by the government. It was not supported by the ALP either, I might say. Frankly, I think it suits the government to have a large number of pieces of legislation crammed into a short period of time. It might suit the government but it does not suit democracy. I think it is a real problem. The Democrats will continue to speak out against it to try to reverse this situation and to have the Senate operate more in accordance with the way that it should.