Stephen Conroy (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

I thank Senator Moore for that very thoughtful and informative contribution, because she has belled the cat on a number of things that have happened in the last 24 hours. Can I say that her description—

Senator McKim interjecting—

Senator Rhiannon interjecting—

Here we are, the Stalinists are loose in the bottom corner! That is exactly what being on this committee must have been like. This is actually like going back in time to the 1950s in Stalin's Russia! We get an invitation to come to a meeting of the committee of senators. I roll along and I arrive for the first time after the invitation is issued and I am given the agenda, which includes the people who will be invited to speak. There was no discussion, no nothing. There was just, 'These are the ones we are going to invite.'

I have great admiration for the 70-plus people who have had an opportunity to lodge a piece of paper—and in some cases it is just a piece of paper—to the inquiry. I say to you that it is not likely they have even all had a chance to be put up on the website yet for us to download and have a read of them. They have not even been able to get them all printed out so I can have a read of them. I cannot have a look at them all online yet. We are being asked to conduct an inquiry starting at 8 o'clock or 8.30 tomorrow morning without even an opportunity to read all the submissions yet. That is how farcical this process has become.

The first meeting of this august joint standing committee basically says, 'No, here it is.' I said, quite reasonably, that perhaps someone who knows a little bit about this, named Malcolm Mackerras, might get an invitation. He writes regularly and is well known to everybody. In fact, we have mentioned the Mackerras pendulum. He has had quite a few things to say about this joint standing committee's previous report. That is a little bit embarrassing, because he is somebody of some stature. He is included, to be fair, as a concession from the Stalinists running this in the committee.

Then I suggested, 'Given that we've only just seen this, would the chair be willing to allow us to have a conversation during the course of the afternoon to put some other names up?' Well, no. That was completely unreasonable! There had already been discussion of this, but that was before we were allowed to come along. There had already been discussions about this, so it was rammed through with the support of the Greens.

Then we turn up to the committee hearing today. A number of the witnesses, surprisingly—I said with irony—are not able to make it on such short notice. So the chair has taken it upon himself to invite other people to fill the gaps. He actually says, 'We have done this.' I say, 'Excuse me, who is the "we"? Because I actually asked if I could be allowed to participate in a discussion about this.' To which he said, 'When I say "we", it's just me.' Even I am not prepared to think that he consulted Senator Rhiannon on such a matter, so I will let you off the hook on this one, Senator Rhiannon. He may have; you can feel free to confess. You can be included in the royal 'we', but I think you are innocent this time. It is one of the few times in this process you are innocent!

So he says, 'We—actually, no, just me—picked these other people.' I said, 'What process was there?' He just said, 'Well, this is what I have decided.' I said, 'Could we have some discussion about this? We would perhaps like some others to be able to come along. If I had known there were vacancies last week, when clearly you found out there were vacancies and got on the phone over the weekend, I might have been able to come up with some other names. But when you flatly refused to have a discussion about further or other witnesses—flatly refused—I didn't bother to look to see who else could be called. But now it is okay for you to do it?' Again, I was shut down. There was no support. The Greens go missing when it comes to transparency and democracy, not surprisingly. I was shut down yet again.

I should say that the committee then indicated they were passing a resolution telling people, 'You can't talk about what goes on in these hearings.' I am not surprised that they want to gag anyone from telling what is going on in these hearings, but I am not going to take any notice of that whatsoever. I am now a full member of this committee, and I am going to expose the little club that has been having all of this fun and actually refusing to allow any sensible discussion of the newly proposed reforms.

But then the next motion comes up. The next motion says, 'We want to decide how long each person is allowed to be asked a question for. We are now allowed to have one question that lasts a maximum of five minutes and then we are going to rotate it.' One question, a maximum of five minutes of question-and-answer and then the chair will cut them off. We could not possibly allow a witness to perhaps discuss this issue! There cannot be any follow-up questions. Seriously, this is like being at a metal workers' conference with George Campbell in the chair! I have been there. It just gets better!

We start tomorrow morning, and the great news is that the committee secretariat has to get the draft to the chair by tomorrow night. I asked, 'Have you already written the report? How could you possibly write a report in just a few hours straight after you have actually just heard the witnesses? How is possible?' It gets better! The committee has been called to another meeting at 8 o'clock on Wednesday morning, where it has to adopt a report. If you have a dissenting report, you must complete it and submit it by 8 o'clock, otherwise you are out of the game. This farcical process, masquerading as a hearing, is into the most significant voting reforms in 30 years. I have noted it has become a great favourite for everybody to quote, 'Well, this was the ALP's submission.' Let me be clear, this has never been adopted by the parliamentary Labor Party in this building. The caucus has never adopted it. And do you know what? There has been a good reason why. It is because the proposal is a dog. It has never got past the leadership group, it has never got past the shadow cabinet, and it has certainly never got past the caucus.

Honourable senators interjecting—