Mitch Fifield (Victoria, Liberal Party, Manager of Opposition Business in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

The motion before the chamber is quite extraordinary. This motion proposes that no fewer than 33 bills go through this chamber this week. If senators were not particularly inclined to speak on many of the 33 bills, that might be okay, but that is not what this motion provides for. This motion institutes a rolling guillotine. If this motion is successful, at the end of each day every single bill listed for debate will be put through the voting on all stages—even if the Senate chamber is still at the second reading stage of the first bill listed, even if not a single senator has got to their feet and even if not a single senator has had the opportunity to ask one question in a committee stage. This motion seeks to deny senators their basic and fundamental rights, but, worse than that, this motion seeks to deny this chamber the ability to perform its duty and its obligation to scrutinise legislation, to debate legislation, to critique legislation and to ask questions of government ministers about legislation.

This motion goes to the very core of why this chamber is here. We are a house of review. Our purpose is to scrutinise. Our purpose is to hold the government to account. Our purpose is to ask questions about the detail of legislation and this motion seeks to deny that very opportunity. Even if this motion were not before us, I would think that it is a pretty extraordinary ask of the chamber to consider adequately and properly 33 bills in the course of a week. But there is no need for this motion. The Senate has already passed a motion that the chamber will sit next week on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. They are scheduled sitting days for the Australian Senate. They are not simply pencilled in on a draft parliamentary program as days which might be required, as days when senators should not book too many things in their diary in case they are called upon. No. Those sitting days—Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday next week, 28, 29 and 30 November—were listed, were scheduled and were agreed upon by this chamber at the time the rest of the sitting schedule for this year was decided. Those dates are there for a reason—to facilitate proper and adequate debate of the bills which come before this chamber. So there is absolutely no need for a guillotine at the end of each day. This is the first time I have seen that procedure in the time I have been in this place. The guillotine which was put in place for the carbon tax legislation was bad enough, but to have a guillotine at the end of each and every day, regardless of the stages which multiple bills have reached, is extraordinary.

What absolutely flabbergasts me in this matter is the Australian Greens, who have held themselves out as paragons of parliamentary virtue, who have held themselves out as the great defenders of the rights, duties and obligations of the Australian Senate, who have held themselves out as being better and purer than what they refer to as 'the old parties' or 'the big parties'. The Australian Greens, who have always presented themselves as an entirely different parliamentary beast, have shown their true colours today. They are no better than the Australian Labor Party—and that is the most damning thing I can say of any other parliamentary party—because they are complicit in this act to seek to deny the chamber the opportunity to consider this legislation.

There is a very simple solution. We would not expect the government to change their mind. We know what they are made of. We saw that in the carbon tax debate. The simple solution is for the Australian Greens to recognise that what they are doing is abominable, that what they are proposing to do goes against every speech on accountability they have given in this place. It goes against every one of the group doorstops which they do in the courtyard outside this chamber, where they bemoan the trashing of parliamentary democracy, where they bemoan the denial of opportunity to scrutinise legislation. They do still have an opportunity to reconsider their position. Mr Deputy President, it was bad enough that the government and the Greens conspired to deny this chamber the opportunity to address the carbon tax legislation in proper detail. It is in your recent memory, I know, so you will recall that barely seven sitting days were dedicated to the scrutiny of the 17 or 18 bills in the carbon tax legislation package. Compare that with the five months of scrutiny that the GST: A New Tax System legislation received. That was bad enough. Worse than that of course was the government lying to the Australian people that they would not introduce a carbon tax. That was bad enough. Not worse than that but approaching it was the denial of the opportunity in this place to properly scrutinise the carbon tax legislation. But you would have thought at the very least—putting aside the fact that the government lied about not introducing a carbon tax and putting aside the fact that they denied this chamber the opportunity to properly scrutinise that legislation—that with legislation of a more routine nature they would allow just a modicum of parliamentary scrutiny. But no.

We recognised, though we did not agree, that with the carbon tax legislation the government had a political imperative they were determined to see through. We recognised that they set up the false deadline of the Durban conference by which they had to get the carbon tax legislation through. We thought it was atrocious but we knew what they were doing. But here we have an entirely different crime against the Australian Senate, which is to deny it consideration of more routine legislation. I would have thought the Australian Labor Party would be looking for the opportunity to redeem themselves after the carbon tax outrage; that they would have been looking for the opportunity to say, over the balance of this parliamentary term: 'Sure, we did the wrong thing with the carbon tax legislation. We completely disregarded the rights and prerogatives of the Senate. But look at these other 100-plus bills where we allowed proper and decent debate.' You would have thought that at the very least, in seeking to regain a bit of decency, the Australian Labor Party would have afforded this chamber that opportunity. But no. Even on bills of the nature of those before us today they seek to deny us that opportunity.

As I said, the Australian Greens should think again, but if they are not prepared to think again the government should honour the parliamentary program and sit the parliament on the 28th, 29th and 30th. They should do that so this legislation is not forced through this chamber without due and proper consideration. But there is another reason the parliament should sit on 28, 29 and 30 November, and that is the rapidly deteriorating budget position. The government, we know, are going to release a midyear economic update in a week or so, maybe in a matter of days. It will in effect be a minibudget. The government have been trawling for savings because they have been spending so much that they will be unable to achieve their commitment to have the budget back in surplus by 2012-13. Because of that, they are in effect producing a minibudget, though it is dressed up as a midyear economic review. That no doubt will be delivered on Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday next week, and an economic document of that significance should be considered by the Australian parliament. So not just the Australian Senate should sit on the 28th, 29th and 30th, next week, as is scheduled, but the House of Representatives should also sit on those dates to provide the opportunity for the parliament to examine that economic update, to examine the nation's finances.

The other thing the government should do is get Treasury to re-examine the carbon tax legislation, to re-run their numbers. As we found out from President Obama's visit last week, the United States is not going to have a carbon tax any time soon and it is not going to have an emissions trading scheme any time soon. As we found out from the Canadian foreign minister when CHOGM was on, the Canadian government is never going to introduce a price on carbon. So Treasury's assumptions that by 2016 there will be a full-blooded global carbon trading system and that the United States will have put a price on carbon are completely wrong, which means that all of the revenue assumptions on which the carbon tax is based are wrong, the pricing assumptions for the carbon tax itself are wrong and the assumptions on which the proposed compensation package is based are wrong.

So we have a number of reasons that the parliament should be sitting next week: it should be sitting because it should be doing its job in examining legislation—it should be examining these 33 bills which the government proposes to ram through this place—but it should also be examining the midyear economic statement, the crisis minibudget, which the government will be handing down next week. We in the Senate should sit on the days scheduled and so should the Australian House of Representatives.

On this side of the chamber we have, I think, been genuinely surprised over the last few months. As I said, it was bad enough that the government lied to the Australian people about the carbon tax, but even we, with our deep and well-founded cynicism about the Australian Labor Party, did not think they would seek to deny this chamber its right, its privilege and its duty to properly examine legislation. On this side of the chamber we were genuinely surprised that the government denied us the opportunity to examine the carbon tax, that the government denied the Senate's own committees the opportunity to examine the carbon tax. We are pretty cynical, but I thought, and a number of my colleagues thought, that even the Australian Labor Party would not be so cynical, would not be so craven, would not show such contempt for this chamber. We were proved wrong. What we on this side of the chamber learnt was that, yes, our cynicism was well founded but it actually should have run deeper than it did. I can assure the Senate that our cynicism runs very deep indeed—but it does not run as deep as the sense of disappointment of the Australian people, who were denied the opportunity to have a say on the carbon tax at the last election. The Australian people are a wake-up to the fact that this parliament was forced to rush through guillotined legislation. I know those opposite think that the Australian public do not pay much attention to parliamentary affairs, that they do not pay much attention to chamber tactics. Sure, they do not follow closely each motion that goes through this place but they are well aware that the opportunity for scrutiny of the carbon tax legislation was denied and they will be well aware that the opportunity for debate on this list of 33 bills before us is also being denied.

The Australian Labor Party national conference is coming up. Whenever I see you, Mr Acting Deputy President Cameron, I think of the Australian Labor Party national conference. I know of your commitment to having full-blooded debate at the conference. I know of your commitment to having motions adequately scrutinised and to ensuring there is opportunity for discussion. How ironic it is that just as the Australian Labor Party is about to present themselves as a great democratic party willing to debate and thrash out the tough issues, they are doing the exact opposite in this place. They are seeking to deny the opportunity to debate 33 pieces of legislation. Everyone will tune into the Australian Labor Party's national conference and the debates and the punch-ups, with Mr Acting Deputy President leading the charge on a number of issues. That is just a bit of show, a bit of a bunfight for the benefit of voters. That is just so the Prime Minister can say, 'Look, I am actually a pretty conservative kind of person—look at all these lefties in my own party who are gunning for me; look how much I have got them offside'. That is all stage-managed, as are the fights with the Australian Greens that the Prime Minister is manufacturing now: 'Look, I have really upset the Australian Greens by proposing uranium exports to India—look how upset they are; I must be pretty conservative'. She is doing the same thing with you, Mr Acting Deputy President. I do not doubt your sincerity, but you are playing the role exactly as she wants.

I am not interested in these confected debates between the Australian Labor Party and the Greens and between the Australian Labor Party and themselves. I am interested in the debates that take place in this chamber. The Australian Labor Party can talk all they want about reforming their internal rules, about bringing democratic processes to bear in their party organisation—they can talk about that till the cows come home. Maybe they will institute some reform. I do not know and I do not care. Even if they do, it means nothing if the Australian Labor Party are not prepared to support due process in this place. It means nothing if the Australian Labor Party are not prepared to support proper scrutiny. It means nothing if the Australian Labor Party are not prepared to allow legislation to be the subject of second reading debates. It means nothing if the Australian Labor Party are not prepared to allow committee stage consideration of legislation in this place. It means nothing if the Australian Labor Party will not allow third reading debates—which I have to tell you, Mr Acting Deputy President, we are starting to take a real shine to. It means nothing if the Australian Labor Party will not support motions to refer legislation as important as the carbon tax to the Senate's own committees. All that posturing, all those phoney debates in the ALP national conference, all those phoney arguments with the Australian Greens, mean nothing—they are merely a cover for the denial of proper process and proper accountability in this chamber.

Rest assured that we will be paying close attention to the Australian Labor Party national conference and whenever we are asked for comment on it—as we are from time to time—we will say, 'Do not worry about what is happening at the ALP national conference, look at the way the government conduct themselves in the Australian Senate; look at the way the Australian Labor Party deal with scrutiny in the Australian Senate.' Each one of these 33 bills before us, whether it is of great significance or whether it is relatively minor, deserves appropriate scrutiny, each one of them deserves appropriate debate and each one of them deserves senators being provided with the opportunity to pose questions to ministers. This motion seeks to deny that opportunity. It seeks to flagrantly disregard the role of the Australian Senate. We cannot support this motion, we will not support this motion and no senator in this place should support this motion. The government should think again and, if they do not, the Australian Greens should. Any senator who supports this motion stands condemned.