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

by leave—I move:

That the Senate take note of the documents tabled earlier today.

It is particularly important to look at these documents in the context of the current public debate and the debate within this Senate chamber about the role of Senate committees and apparently—according to statements made by the leader of the government in this place, Senator Minchin, in recent days—the failure of the system we have with Senate committees. Until those statements were made, I was not aware that the system had failed or even that others in the government had thought it had failed.

Looking at the report to the Senate on government responses outstanding to parliamentary committee reports that has just been tabled, to put a bit of history to this, as is quite helpfully detailed in the document, this is a practice that has been in place since 1973. It used to be that the government ministers would respond to the tabling of a committee report and respond to the recommendations within those reports within six months. The new Labor government in 1983 made a commitment to shorten that period to three months. When this government came into power in 1996, it affirmed, according to this document, its commitment to respond to relevant parliamentary committee reports within three months of their presentation.

Let us look at the reality of how prompt the government’s responses to committee reports are after being in office for 10 years. I will only pick out some of the reports I know the detail of; I will not pick on all of them. There might be valid reasons for the time taken to respond to some of them, but we should keep in mind the commitment of the government to respond to committee reports and the recommendations they contain within three months.

We saw tabled just a few moments ago the government response to the Community Affairs References Committee report on the delivery of services and treatment options for persons with cancer, a report that I am fairly sure was unanimous. The report was tabled on 23 June last year, so the government have had 12 months almost precisely to respond to it. Maybe you could say that taking a year to respond was just a one-off, but I can give another example in the environment references committee report. Although I am currently chair of that committee, I was not at the time of the presentation of the report into the invasive species challenge called Turning back the tidewhich was a report on the regulation, control and management of invasive species.

There was also a private senator’s bill, which was mine, that suggested amendments to the EPBC Act. The committee recommended unanimously not to proceed with my bill—it totally rejected what I proposed—so I probably should not be drawing attention to it. But it also brought into place, unanimously, a lot of recommendations about what was needed to do better on invasive species. It is an issue that I know is of concern to many people on all sides of the chamber. It costs people in rural and regional areas in particular an enormous amount of money, apart from its environmental impact. The report was tabled in December 2004. It was a unanimous report with a range of important recommendations. Eighteen months later: no response. The only responses we have had from government are: ‘response being prepared’, ‘response being considered’, ‘response available soon’ or ‘response available in the near future’. Those are the sorts of responses that the government puts forward. But the reality is that 18 months later there is no response.

The issue of water is a crucial one, and is more crucial now than it was when the environment committee held an inquiry into Australia’s urban water management. The report was tabled on 5 December 2002. I do not think it was unanimous, but it certainly had some components that were. Again, the inquiry was held before I became chair of the committee; I think my colleague Senator Allison was chair at the time. There is still only an interim response to the report. There has been no full response.

This not only reflects badly on the Senate but also points to where the real problem is. The biggest problem in the committee process is not, I think, whether or not there is a government chair, a Labor chair, a Democrat chair or a Green chair; it is that the committees do all this work and produce all these recommendations—they certainly do in my experience and in the experience of many of us here, although I would not say that is universal. They attempt to find common ground to try to get unanimous recommendations and put forward constructive proposals but are met with silence—a total absence of any response at all from the government.

I am not saying the government should agree to all the recommendations. The other day they responded, as they sometimes do, to a superannuation committee report on early access to superannuation benefits. I remember reading it. The government’s response was presented just a few days ago. The government rejected, I think, all but one of the recommendations, and that is fine. The government can reject them and put forward the reasons why. The problem is that that response took four years and four months to be presented—it took four years and four months to say, ‘No—don’t think so’. How ridiculous! It shows contempt not just for the Senate and the committees but also for the public.

I am sure we all know this, because we are all involved in Senate committees, but let me remind senators that perhaps people outside do not realise how much work people put into submissions to committees, particularly businesspeople and community organisations. They do not have lots of spare time. They do not have lots of spare money. But they put in the time to put in submissions. They put in the time to come and sit before public hearings, give their views and answer questions because they want to make a difference. They want to influence the public debate because they want to influence the direction of policy. What an insult it is to them to produce a report with recommendations—based on their evidence and after all of their work—that is met with total silence. That is where the real problem lies in our committee process.

If the government genuinely want to fix up the effectiveness of our committee process, I suggest they look at the report on government responses to inquiry reports and at their complete failure in so many areas to respond to so many substantial reports with significant recommendations. I know there are some inquiry reports listed in that document that were partisan reports or reports where clearly there was a split along party lines, such as some of the telecommunications and workplace relations ones. Personally, I do not believe that that is an excuse for the government not responding. In fact, it is easier for them to respond because they already have their response in mind. It is predetermined, partisan and on party lines. But we should not fall for the myth that there has been a whole raft of committee inquiries that have all been party political and partisan point-scoring exercises with no substance to them.

The vast majority of reports listed in the report on government responses are reports of substance. A very significant component of them—the majority, I believe—have unanimous recommendations. They might have a few additional comments or dissents to some recommendations, but the bulk of them are unanimous. Frankly, I am sick of spending a lot of time genuinely working constructively in committee inquiries with my colleagues to bring down reports and then hearing nothing. I am not saying that that is the only value that Senate committee reports have, which is just as well because, to use the invasive species example, that report has been very influential in driving actions of federal and state governments and other bodies in the community. It has provided a useful benchmark to use to measure actions against, and it has provided a lot of valuable information that people draw on.

Government responses are not the be all and end all. It is not all purely us providing a report and then begging the government to please accept it, but the government’s lack of response is a key flaw and I believe it is significantly diminishing the effectiveness of the committee report process. That is something that I believe must be addressed, because it already reflects poorly on the Senate. Senators may recall the series of reports—I think they were by the Sydney Morning Heraldon just this factor written about a year ago. And it is not a matter of who controls the committees. The government is just as tardy—in fact, it is even more tardy—in responding to House of Reps committee reports that are government chaired and controlled. It is even more dismissive of them, so if that is what we have got to look forward to once government members are chairing all the Senate committees, then God help us. It is a completely unacceptable situation.

Mr Acting Deputy President Chapman, as the chair of the Joint Committee on Corporations and Financial Services—a committee that I am not involved with, but my understanding is that it often brings down constructive and unanimous reports—you will be interested to know that it has had very slow responses from the government. I have reports going back to 2002 here that have still not been responded to properly by the government. There is a whole series of them. I can see nine or 10 from 2002 through to 2005 that have still not been responded to in areas to do with ASIC, corporations amendments, property investment and the like.

Some of them may have been surpassed by time—I would hope so; you would not want policies to sit in a vacuum for all of that time—but that is still no excuse not to respond, and it is an affront to the Senate and the parliament not to have responses. And for a government to come in here talking about some problem with the way the committees are running when they come up with performances like this is a joke. I suggest they look at this first, before they start trying to make so-called improvements to the committee structure.

Question agreed to.