Helen Polley (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Aged Care) Share this | Hansard source

I have been motivated to speak on the Commonwealth Electoral Amendment Bill 2016, which has been received from the House of Representatives. I concur with so much of what Senator Ludwig contributed to this debate. There is a message for Greens senators in this place, who, at every opportunity, like to take the high moral ground. How many times have we in this place heard about how bad it is for whoever is in government to cut off debate? Well, the Greens are party to doing exactly that when it comes to changing the laws to elect senators.

For 30 years the electoral system has worked very well. Under the laws currently in existence, the Australian people have been represented by all of those who have been elected to this place—irrespective of whether or not I agree with them.. I can only speak for my home state of Tasmania, from which an array of senators have been brought to this place over the decades to contribute to debates on very important legislation.

In this instance, we see the Greens of old—a point on which I disagree with Senator Ludwig, because unfortunately for far too long we in Tasmania have had to deal with the Greens always wanting to take the high moral ground, always talking as if they are the only people who represent their communities with a principled position, whether here in the Senate or in the state parliament. My colleague Senator Bilyk, who is here in the chamber tonight, and I know only too well that the Greens are an opportunistic party. They condemn the major parties and make those sorts of accusations against us, but they want to limit the scrutiny of this legislation by the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters, which represents both members of the House of Representatives and senators. As a former member of that committee, I can say that committee members might have had different views on the issues that came before us, but we always had the respect to allow proper contributions by those who wanted to make a contribution. Whenever we held hearings, we ensured that people representing all views on the issue before us had the opportunity to come and make a contribution.

But what do we see here? When the Greens are motivated, along with the government, by an opportunity to improve their self-interest, to improve what they perceive to be the chance to put more Greens on the leather seats here in this chamber, that is exactly what they will do. I am all for taking an opportunity if you think it is in the best interests of the community, but if you are going to do that you do not roll over so easily and sell out. The Greens have come in here and preached about the sorts of reforms you believed were necessary in relation to political donations. They had their opportunity to really do something about having proper scrutiny of political donations, about having transparency. But what did they do? All they said was: 'Yes, government, we will support Mr Turnbull and we will support Senator Brandis to ensure this legislation gets rushed through. We will support reducing the opportunities for those people who have an interest in electoral reform to make a contribution or to be part of scrutinising legislation by reducing the amount of time the committee has to pass judgement and to take evidence on this proposal.' The Greens never took the opportunity to have real reform.

We in the Labor Party have said many times that we should be looking at electoral reform, but with that comes the necessity to have a proper strategy for ensuring that all issues on the table are considered. When the government are talking about tax reform—although they were not very keen on talking about that in question time today—they say that everything is on the table. Isn't it funny: when it comes to electoral reform, which affects every Australian over the age of 18, they do not want to put everything on the table; they just want to run their own agenda. That agenda is being part of a dud deal that ensures the Greens have finally, once and for all, put it out in the arena that they can be bought, that they are not a group of people with any real principles. They are prepared to sell out the Australian people because they see an opportunity to maybe increase their representation. That has yet to be determined. There were no negotiations. The Greens just agreed to whatever the government wanted. I ask: if you are really serious about reform, about scrutinising political donations, why didn't you negotiate that point with the government?

This is just a dirty deal which purges the Senate of small parties and independents. It prevents new parties from ever getting elected; it exhausts the votes of 3.3 million Australians and risks turning the Senate into a rubber-stamp for a coalition government. All those issues that the Greens go out into the community and say they are sincerely committed to—ensuring that we have proper climate strategies in place, changes in the environment and climate change—all of those are at risk, because the coalition government will rubber-stamp. As someone who was here during the Howard government, when it had outright control of the Senate, I know exactly what they will do—they will use their numbers every single time. It will not matter if the Greens have nine, 10 or 12 senators, the policies that you purport to hold dear will be rolled over in the same way you are trying to roll over the changes in electoral reform by participating with the government.

It was never envisaged that the Senate should be made up of the two major parties and the Greens. It was the intention at Federation that all states have equal representation of senators. But what we see now is a government which is not prepared to talk about the big issues—about taxation reforms or the economy and the plan for strengthening that. When I asked a question in the chamber today we had Senator Brandis say that the Prime Minister was too busy to outline his plan, not only to the Australian people on tax reform, but also—