Kim Carr (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I present the report of the Legal and Constitutional Affairs References Committee, Nationhood, national identity and democracy, together with the Hansard record of proceedings and documents presented to the committee. I move:

That the Senate take note of the report.

This report is not a typical Senate committee report. It was a new challenge for the Senate staff who helped us to produce it. With that in mind, let me just give a special acknowledgement of the committee's secretariat, whose expertise and diligent work in dealing with what is a very complex problem made it possible to reach this point. I'd especially like to thank the committee secretary, Sophie Dunstone, and her team, made up of Dr Emma Banyer, Antony Paul, Sara Lailey, Brooke Gay, Sofia Moffett and Margie Morrison.

I would also like to record my appreciation of the works of Senator Stoker, who was the deputy chair for most of the duration of the inquiry, and Senator Henderson, who replaced her for its completion. I'm also grateful for all the committee members who participated in the inquiry: Senators Chisholm, Green, Dodson, Scarr, Thorpe, Chandler and McKim. The report we tabled today is nearly 80,000 words. It's much longer than most Senate reports. It contains 18 focused policy recommendations that go to building confidence in our democratic system. They are recommendations that go to the heart of all policymaking. They are about sustaining public trust in government and our political system. That is a major problem for democracy here and internationally.

This is a problem whose nature has changed throughout the inquiry, as a result of the pandemic. Recent political research highlights that people are in search of certainty and security as they have been lashed by the devastations of the pandemic. The restoration of confidence in science is gratifying. However, there are clear signs of fatigue in the public response. The RedBridge survey, which has been given prominence on the front page of the Herald Sun today in Melbourne, has highlighted that it's the poorest and most vulnerable of our community who are the most sceptical, for instance, about things like the various side effects of any vaccination program. So the question about the depth of commitment to the government's assurance, in my mind, remains an open question.

This report shows that we ignore the threats to our democratic system at our peril. The core recommendations that we present today are about strengthening the parliamentary process, and, in particular, the committee system, as the most important means by which parliament holds the executive government to account. It's about a way of focusing public trust by strengthening public institutions and, as I say, especially through the use of parliament. We call for the strengthening of the parliamentary committees because those committees have the role of providing the Australian people with direct access to this parliament. We argue that members of parliament must also be more vigilant when it comes to defending the democratic process and discharging their responsibility as elected representatives and ensuring adequate scrutiny of legislation.

Nearly half of our legislation now contains some form of delegated legislation, and far too much of it contains measures which cannot even be disallowed by this parliament. We have a responsibility to restore trust in the accountability of the people's elected representatives. We must strengthen our civics and citizenship education to ensure that citizens understand the democratic choices that they have in how this place operates. We call for further political education on the value of science, through the establishment of a parliamentary office of science. This report reflects the fact that this inquiry was conducted in a greater spirit of bipartisanship than is usual in Senate committees of this type. The original Senate reference was identified on 29 July 2019. The pandemic delayed our work. It caused us to question the way in which we operate and asked us to present the material that's before us in different ways. There were some 205 written submissions conducted through three public hearings. The report gives us a snapshot of what Australians thought about themselves and their country in this time of global anxiety.

However, the decline in public trust in public institutions and democratic processes has been apparent at least since the global financial crisis of 2007-08. The origin of that decline can be traced beyond that upheaval to the end of the Cold War at the beginning of the 1990s. In liberal democracies, the consequences of the decline in trust has been a backlash against what people refer to as the elites—or at least against those perceived to be the elites. It is a backlash from people who feel, and I believe often rightly, that the system no longer works for them. These are people who feel that they have been excluded from a full share in the opportunities that are available to others. These feelings of resentment and alienation have driven a rise in populist political movements, and, in some countries, especially in Eastern Europe, liberal democracy—I would say social democracy—has all but been extinguished. The liberal world order that many in the West expected would arise at the end of the Cold War has in fact yet to be achieved.

Populism is not an inherently bad thing, and populist attitudes are not confined to any one part of the political spectrum, but the populist movements that have transformed politics around the world in recent times have mostly been on the far Right. They have whipped up virulent nationalist sentiment in pursuit of their aims—the kind of nationalism that all too easily spills into xenophobia. This is what has been happening in countries like Hungary, Russia and Poland. It's been present in events such as the Brexit referendum in the United Kingdom in 2016, in the election of Donald Trump in the United States and in the resurgence of the far Right parties in France, in Germany and in Italy. It's far too early to tell whether or not the movement started by Donald Trump in the United States will survive his electoral defeat. The upheavals formed by the global context were the basis on which this Senate committee examined its work. Australia has not experienced the chaos, the deceit and the manipulation of hatreds that we've seen in other countries. We've done a much better job than many other countries in coping with the stresses and strains of globalisation. But, in undertaking this inquiry, we were also aware of the decline in trust which allows populist politics to take hold, and that certainly has been happening here as well.

The decline is measurable. The Democracy 2025 project, based in Old Parliament House, has tracked the fall in public satisfaction with democracy in this country, from 78 per cent of the survey respondents in 1996 down to 41 per cent in 2018. The disaffection with the democratic process and public institutions has not, however, been a relentless downward plunge. There have been peaks and there have been troughs. In particular, the decline in trust that seemed so widespread when the committee began its work became less evident once the pandemic was underway. It was replaced by a renewed public confidence in the power of government, particularly in the power of the states. It remains to be seen whether that confidence will outlast the pandemic. What is undoubtedly true is that the level of civic engagement and debate in this country remains disturbingly low. Australians respond, in my belief, if they are persuaded that politicians and this parliament are acting in the defence of their living standards, their liberty and their democratic rights. I remain absolutely confident about that.

The Legal and Constitutional Affairs References Committee hopes that this report can be treated as a benchmark for Australians whenever they debate ways to preserve and extend the country's vigorous democratic history. I commend the report to the chamber.