Claire Moore (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Women) Share this | Hansard source

In terms of the process that Senator Heffernan has just outlined, indeed the role of all the senators is to ensure that they do listen to the community. However, the process yesterday was not about the bills that are in front of us. The community meeting that we went to this morning was. The whole process of that community meeting of young people from across the country was specifically on the bills that the government now wants us to rush in to debate straightaway.

I have heard the comments from across the way that we have had an election. Indeed we have. We are all aware of that election. But, just because we have had an election, the role of this place does not stop. If you think back to the discussions we had less than an hour ago, when we were swearing in the new Senate, it was said that we were going to ensure that the Senate would be a place where there would be independent, full debate. That is our job. What the government wants us to do now, as the first element of the business for the new Senate—and many senators have not have the opportunity to be in debates about this before—is to rush through a debate on bills for which we have not had the most up-to-date committee recommendations.

Getting committee recommendations should be the way we work. I think that would be evident to all of us. Those of us who have been lucky enough to be here for a while should have seen it in practice. The new senators would have heard about the way the Senate operates, which ensures that there is the opportunity for people to have information. We have a committee structure, in which committees are tasked to go out with legislation and seek the opinions of the people in the community on that legislation. The committee's job is to consider that evidence, have it all recorded and then come back into this place with recommendations.

We all know that, in legislation processes, many of us use the committee reports as the basis for what we are going to say. We look at what has gone on, we look at the submissions that have been received and we look at the concerns. We most particularly do not rely on things that have happened exclusively in the past. When the government brought forward these bills to the last Senate, we recommended that, before they be considered, they would go through the committee process. The committee process crossed over the conclusion of the last Senate and the beginning of this Senate. We now are faced with looking at legislation to be debated in this place. We had a Senate committee process in place which was considering this legislation—the standard process. The standard process is that the committee has the opportunity to present its report and then, on the basis of that report, we then flow into the debate in this place.

That is not an unusual situation. The way that that operates is clearly identified in the standing orders. So it is particularly important that, when we move into this first debate, we have the authority of the standing practice of the Senate behind us so that we move forward with confidence. That can only enhance the debate; it does not delay the debate. We have no intention of delaying the debate. I remember many times in this place when senators on the other side were making passionate declarations about how important it was for us to have the committee process in place. We heard that. We were reminded of our job, our responsibility to ensure that Senate practices were put in place. I but ask the same thing: if we are going to have legislation brought into the chamber, it is our job to expect that we have all the information available to the senators, that the committee process be fully concluded and that we would have the opportunity to give due consideration to those processes. It is not an unusual request; it is certainly not a groundbreaking request. It is simply asking that the process of the Senate run as we expect it to, the process of the Senate run as it should do and, in fact, the process of the Senate run as it does best—providing information for senators to consider what is important in the legislation, providing opportunities for the senators to ask questions about the legislation and providing opportunities for the senators to respond to their responsibilities as senators in this chamber.