Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Minister for Finance) Share this | Hansard source

Senator Hanson-Young, I know, is very good at turning up the dial when she needs to have a degree of outrage. I think there's a little knob under Senator Hanson-Young's desk somewhere so she can work out which level of outrage she wants to flick to on the outrage machine. So she'll have her degree of outrage. Perhaps she'll have something to say about the finfish aquaculture industry as well. But, no doubt, there will be that approach taken from the crossbench, and probably from the opposition as well, notwithstanding the fact that I'm sure that, if we were to work our way through the period of their time in government, we would equally find many different committee reports that were not responded to within the 1973 standard of three months that I suspect governments of all persuasions have honoured more in the breach in that period of time.

I wouldn't want anybody to think that that means that Senate committee reports are any less valuable. The work of Senate committees is of crucial importance in a range of ways, and that of references committees has a unique role in terms of how they operate across our parliament. References committees of the Senator operate with a certain freedom and liberty to explore issues beyond the remit of specific legislation, and the unique aspect of references committees in this place is that they not only have freedom in terms of exploring issues beyond pure legislation presented to legislation committees but, of course, those references committees are constituted with a non-government balance in this place. Oftentimes that is a good thing. Those references committees with a non-government balance—I've been there, as chair of a references committee myself, back in the dark, dim days of opposition.