Barry O'Sullivan (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

Today I felt a little bit cheated, as we had quite energetic exchanges and debates here this afternoon on a motion I refer to as the Labor/PUP motion to investigate Queensland's government, because for some weeks now I have been limbering up; I have been researching, making notes, refining my notes, applying Deep Heat and getting ready for the big event, only to be denied the opportunity to make some very important points about what I see as a complete abuse of the processes of this Senate.

For the first time in the seven months since I have been here, I have seen a motion proposed in this place that had an inbuilt guillotine. The motion was meant to gag debate in this place before debate even started. I understand why that was so, particularly for my colleagues from the Australian Labor Party, because a very high percentage of them did not believe in the thrust of the motion. They were offended by the fact that the party had joined with PUP in this manoeuvre which was nothing less than an abuse of the privileges of the Senate of our nation.

We watched as events unfolded and saw that the movers of the motion never wanted the debate and, in fact, when amendments were afforded, they did not want a debate on the amendments. Of course, their efforts in this regard failed dismally. The third element of this motion that offended the principles of this place was that the motion completely ignored constitutional provisions relating to the issue of comity, which has to do with the principle that this place should not investigate the House of Representatives, and neither the House of Representatives nor the federal Senate should engage in investigating state governments. Indeed, state governments themselves should not engage in investigations of the federal government in any form, nor of other state governments. This is a principle that has been around since the beginning of time. This fragile Commonwealth of states we have, this federation of states, is based on principles that allowed our forebears—our forefathers—to make the decision to create the federation. It was based on principles that allowed them to support the decision across this nation and one of those very important issues was to allow the states to have autonomy to get on and do what it was they needed to do without fear that the federal government would investigate those moves.

This was not just some select committee to have a look at some things—I have heard references made to a dam and to gambling in Victoria; I have heard all sort of precedent arguments. This is not any of that. This is akin to a royal commission by one house of the federal parliament into a state house. If none of that offended anybody—if none of that challenged the principle of democracy in this government—then one needs to look at the make-up of the committee. I do not intend to deal with all of that, but one thing I do know is that the Palmer party was supported right to the death today by the Australian Labor Party, to the Labor Party's long-lasting embarrassment. They were supporting a committee made up of five or six people, representatives from this place, representing less than two per cent of the appointments to the Senate. There was to be a representative from the House of Representatives who, while not physically on the committee, would obviously have control of the committee—in the sense that Mr Palmer would have been governing what his Three Musketeers intended to do as a result of this being passed by the Senate.

Again, the fig leaf came off with the last-minute amendment to make sure the leader of the PUP was also the chairman of the committee. This was not something that was circulated; nobody was given notice of this, and it was ultimately meant to give ironclad control of this committee to Mr Palmer.

Senator Moore interjecting—

I listen to colleagues from the Labor Party now, making a fuss. I lost respect for any number of your members this afternoon when you failed to support an amendment to this to allow this investigation to go ahead.