Helen Kroger (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is with real regret that I am standing up to discuss this because it is a motion that we should not have to consider and it is a demonstration that this is a sad day for Australian democracy. Why is it a sad day for Australian democracy? Because the government, in moving this variation of hours, is demonstrating that what we are witnessing here today is the tail wagging the dog. We are seeing the tail wagging the dog with the Greens running the show here. Senator Brown, the Leader of the Greens, said earlier on that this was based on consensus, that this was a consensus arrangement. It was clearly a consensus arrangement between the government and the Greens, but I would suggest that it would be reasonable to ask: who actually pitched this arrangement? Was it the government or was it the Greens who put this arrangement together?

This is a clear demonstration that we have a minority party running the agenda of this country. Let us not forget not only what has happened in the last 12 months since this government came to office but the way in which the agenda has rolled out over that time. We must note that when the Leader of the Greens, Senator Brown, gets up and speaks of a consensus arrangement he is the leader of a minority party that could not even win a seat in the House of Representatives in its own right. It could not win one seat. Such is its minority support in Australia that it could not win one seat in its own right. It only won its seat with preferences, and I would suggest to those who are listening to this broadcast that they stay tuned for the next election because I would like to see whether the member for Melbourne, Adam Bandt, can win that seat in his own right. I would think that the Australian people and the constituents of the seat of Melbourne will have a very different view as to who they are supporting at the next election.

So we have a minority party that probably do not get any more than 10 per cent of the vote across the country. We have a minority party that, as we see in the news polls on a regular basis, are not improving their support. Their support base is declining. We have a minority party that get up here in this chamber and argue about scrutiny of the media. They supported an inquiry into the media, and we hear day in and day out in this chamber that the Leader of the Greens hates criticism. They cannot cope with any criticism levelled at them. The minute that they are given proper and due scrutiny, they scream foul and call for a media inquiry. The sad fact for the Australian population is that the tail is wagging the dog. It is the Greens who are influencing and leaning on the government in terms of the agenda that has been established and it is the Greens that are very much behind this agreement to vary the hours. Why are we concerned about it? The parliamentary schedule, the sitting dates for each calendar year, is established by the government in the previous year. I understand that it is the Prime Minister of the day himself or herself who sits down and considers their policy and agenda criteria, their priorities and what they want to achieve in a year. One would think that the determination of that would be based on election commitments that were given. This government went to the last election, in August of last year, saying that there would be no carbon tax under any government that the Prime Minister leads, but it did a backflip. Why did it do a backflip? Because the Australian Labor Party could not form government in its own right. We had an agonising seven-day period, when clearly negotiations were going on behind the scenes, that ended with the Greens and some Independents supporting the current Prime Minister in forming government. But she and the government use that as an excuse as to why they cannot have a properly laid out legislative framework for the year. It is because of that that she has come back and said: 'No, a carbon tax is critical for this country. This package'—this so-called clean energy package—'is absolutely critical and it is vital that it gets through this year.' We know that is because as part of the deal with the Greens the Australian Labor Party in government is supporting the imposition of a carbon tax on all Australians.

If you look at the parliamentary calendar, you will see that it was established last year and was circulated to all MPs and senators so that they could plan their business itineraries for the coming 12 months. It is very important for MPs and senators to be able to do that. You will note that there is a great blank in the calendar during the first six months of this year. Only six sitting weeks were scheduled for the first half of this year, yet we have a fairly intensive program for the second half of the year. I am one to put up my hand and say that I do not mind being here at all and that I am prepared to do whatever hours it takes to make sure that we scrutinise legislation properly. Senator Conroy, you are sitting opposite; I will ask you. The shape of the parliamentary calendar begs the question: why did we sit for only six weeks in the first half of the year? Why was that determined? Did it have anything to do with the formal alliance of the Greens and the ALP, which I am going to call a coalition of the willing because it is a coalition? In the government's words it is a formal alliance, but the Australian public knows it is a coalition.

We all know that the parliamentary calendar was framed this way because you could not form a majority in this place until after 1 July. The suggestion that you could not properly consider the legislative framework flies in the face of integrity when so much more could have been done in the first half of this year and when it was the decision of this government not to go down that track. Do not come in here and cry foul that you cannot possibly get all the legislative work done when it was your decision that determined the framework for the parliamentary sitting period. Your failure to do this is yet another demonstration of this government's incompetence and mismanagement across the board. We have seen knee-jerk reactions to rolling crises in the country, and this is yet another example of this government not appropriately managing the agenda before it. We know this because of what the government and the Leader of the Greens, Senator Bob Brown, have said.

We know why we have to vary the business hours in the next few weeks. It is because of Durban, as Senator Brown has said in his own words. It is because he wants to go to Durban with his partner, Prime Minister Gillard. He wants to go with the delegation of 40 or 50 public servants from the Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency that will go. He wants to go to the Durban conference with this parcel under his arm—this parcel that is the carbon tax, beautifully wrapped, probably in green velvet double bows. He wants to be able to go to the conference and say: 'Here we are; we have delivered it. No other country in the world has introduced an economy-wide carbon tax, but I have managed to convince the government here in Australia that this is what we are doing. I am the best man in the world.' It is all about international grandstanding. That is what it is about. It is not about proper scrutiny; it is about international grandstanding. It is a disgrace that the government is not standing up to the Greens in this endeavour. This is an indictment of the government and it will play out in the future. I have to say that, if we vary these hours today, you should be careful of what you wish for, because you know the Australian public does not support it. You will not take us to an election now to get an electoral mandate for this, because you know the Australian public does not support it. We say: 'Bring on an election.' If you want to play these games and form consensual alliances with the Greens whilst in office, be careful of what you ask for in view of a time when you will be out of office.

I want to turn to the Joint Select Committee on Australia's Clean Energy Future Legislation, which was mentioned earlier on. It is extraordinary that this joint committee was formally established only last Thursday. It has called for submissions, which had to be in writing and submitted within only five working days, I think. The first hearing is being held today. Treasury were asked, as was the minister, on countless occasions, for the modelling so that it could be properly considered through this process. Treasury had been non-forthcoming with that modelling. Yet I see that literally minutes or seconds before the beginning of that hearing today Treasury released their figures. That was only this morning—minutes before the hearing.

The point of the inquiry and the point of any of these inquiries is to provide proper scrutiny of all the relevant material. One would have thought that Treasury modelling based on a $23 per tonne tax would have been relevant to this inquiry—to the scrutiny of this legislation. Yet this modelling was only made available to the committee members literally minutes before the hearing convened. How could the members of the committee give that modelling due consideration so that they could ask Treasury relevant questions about to it? This is yet another example of the way in which this whole thing is being truncated—not so that there can be proper, transparent consideration and scrutiny of these 19 bills and 1,100 pages of extraordinary detail but so that the legislation can be rammed through before Durban in early December.

It was an even sadder day when I heard that convention that has been applied in this place for considerable time was just put aside—without any decent advice and certainly with no respect given to the opposition—when it was determined that the committee would be headed up by a government chairman, which is normal practice, and a deputy chair from the Greens, Senator Milne. It begs the question: how does that reflect on the independence of this committee to properly scrutinise this clean energy future package, as it is called, when the construct of the committee itself is not independent? We know what happens in other committees; we see it every day. The chair and deputy chair positions are held by government and opposition members or senators so that there is some form of independence in the committees.

The Senate committees are an incredibly important part of the business of the Senate, ensuring that all legislation is properly scrutinised. But that was certainly not the case with this joint select committee. One has to ask the question again: why is it that the Greens were able to displace normal convention—to displace an opposition senator in that deputy chair position and take it for themselves? I am asking these questions but, I must say, the answers look pretty obvious. It is a sad day when we see a minority party having this sort of influence over a government agenda. You have to question how that is playing out behind the scenes and what is going on. We see what is going on in here, but we do not know what is actually going on behind the scenes between these two parties.