Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

I have circulated an amendment to the reporting date which, given Senator Fifield's amendment, I will need to amend. I move:

Omit paragraph (b), substitute:

(b) in respect of the Building and Construction Industry (Improving Productivity) Bill 2013 and a related bill, and the Fair Work (Registered Organisations) Amendment Bill 2013, the committee report by 2 December 2013; and

(c) in respect of the Clean Energy Legislation (Carbon Tax Repeal) Bill 2013 and related bills, the committees report by the first sitting day in March 2014.

I will speak briefly to this. There is a very important principle here, and it is a principle that really goes to the sort of government this government said it would be. The government said they would be transparent. They said they would improve accountability. What we have seen since they were elected is a government that has a culture of secrecy, a government that is all about control. We have seen that in the context of the debate about boats, where we have the extraordinary situation of a minister of the Crown in question time refusing to give either the Senate or the House details about what is occurring and refuses to even say how many people have arrived in a boat that has been reported in a paper.

It is very clear also from the approach they are taking in the House of Representatives that this culture of secrecy and this desire to control extend also to the parliament. We see that in the changes to the standing orders they are ramming through in the House of Representatives—which are all about control. It is all about the executive government shutting down and limiting the institutions of accountability in our democracy, which include the parliament. The principle that is at stake here is a principle that this Senate has always adhered to, and that is scrutiny. It is the principle around the imperative of scrutiny that as the second chamber in the parliament we have responsibility to properly scrutinise the actions of the executive and to properly scrutinise legislation.

We know that the government of the day, in general, has a majority in the House of Representatives in its own right—obviously, we had a minority government in the last parliament, but you do not form government unless you have a majority in the House of Representatives—and we know that the capacity for scrutiny, when there is such a majority in the lower house, is limited. That is why the Senate always does its job. But what is proposed here by this government is a quick and dirty inquiry into legislation that is far reaching, that is costly, and the full implications of which—including the Direct Action Plan, which is what replaces it—have not been explored. This government wants a quick and dirty inquiry, to report by 2 December, on the removal of a whole-of-economy reform, the removal of the entirety of the architecture around climate change, without consideration of the costs of its replacement or even the costs of its repeal. I think it speaks volumes about the government that not only are they shutting down debate in the lower house through their changes to the standing orders, not only do their ministers—and I note Minister Cash is here in the chamber—refuse to answer questions in question time but they also want to avoid scrutiny.

The absolute shame of this is that today the Australian Greens are going to cooperate with the Abbott government in doing that. It is an astonishing position. If we look at the actual proposal put forward by the government in the Selection of Bills Committee report, their reasons for referral are:

The Carbon Tax has significantly impacted Australian households and businesses. The Committee will review the report and Bills and report to the Senate on:

et cetera. That is what the Australian Greens are supporting today. I think it is extremely disappointing, with the principle around democracy and scrutiny in this chamber, that something as important as these bills should be subject to such a quick and dirty inquiry.

I just want to respond to the 'it's an election commitment' argument that Senator Fifield ran. Since when has this chamber said, just because the government of the day think something is part of their mandate, that the Senate does not do its job—