Anne Ruston (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Health and Aged Care) Share this | Hansard source

Pursuant to contingent notice of motion standing in the name of the Leader of the Opposition in the Senate, I move:

That so much of the standing orders be suspended as would prevent further consideration of the bills without limitation of time.

What we've seen here today, for the people who are watching, is that the government has done a dirty deal with the Greens under the cloak of darkness. None of us should really have been particularly surprised by this, because it is not the first time it has happened. This week we saw the minister, who I would have liked to think would be standing behind a piece of legislation he believed in, just point around the chamber and say, 'Well, I'll do a deal with you, or I'll do a deal with you,' knowing darn well that the issues of concern to the coalition were completely different to the issues of concern to the Greens. But he didn't care; he just wanted his deal.

Really, the question that Australians should be asking today is, 'What does this government really believe in when it comes to our environmental protection act?' They were prepared to do a deal with anybody just so they could get this bill through. This is an absolute hallmark of this government—avoiding scrutiny. We had no bills pass this place until midday yesterday, when eventually they got the first bill of the week through. They have passed nothing since, and then this morning they come in with a guillotine of nine bills.

Nine bills will receive no scrutiny at all. We have nine bills this afternoon, some of which are very significant bills that have very significant impacts. There will be no scrutiny at all of any of these bills. Instead, we will have extremely shortened scrutiny on a series of a bills—seven of them, with 1,500 pages in the primary bill—in the next hour or so. But no-one should be surprised, because this government thinks that the guillotine is actually a standard part of it doing business. In the last parliament alone, 230 bills were guillotined by this government. They don't even seem to care about the processes, the procedures, the conventions or the reports of committees. We found out that the Senate Standing Committee for the Scrutiny of Bills have serious concerns about the lack of scrutiny undertaken on this series of bills.

As I said, there are many thousands of pages of bills being put forward here. Firstly, the primary scrutiny body of this parliament has expressed concerns about this series of bills, and the government is completely ignoring those concerns. Secondly, the secondary scrutiny body of this parliament, the Senate Standing Committee for the Scrutiny of Delegated Legislation, has also raised concerns about the fact that so much of what would normally be considered in primary legislation has been delegated to subordinate legislation. This is a government that is absolutely allergic to scrutiny. They are more than happy to bring bill after bill after bill into this place, with all of the headlines in them, but there is absolutely nothing in any detail. Who knows what might be coming. As we stand here today, we don't even know the details of the amendments that have been agreed with the Greens in order to get their support for this bill or what they mean. Of course, there is absolutely no scrutiny at all of these bills.

I remind the leader in this place that just a few weeks ago, on 6 November, she said:

What I would say to the chamber is that we shouldn't forget history. The committee system has been a really important part of our parliament.

There's no committee system and no committee report, and the two really, really important committees have been ignored when it comes to scrutiny. The thing that is really interesting here is the hypocrisy of what's going on. Senator Wong, back in 2021, said:

This is really undemocratic to turn up and say, 'We're going to roll over the Senate program.' … I am quite astounded at this way of managing the chamber. I am quite astounded that the government thinks it can just rock up with a few minutes notice … and say: 'We've got the numbers. We're going to ram this through.' … What sort of way is this to run government? I hope that for once you might actually tell us what the dirty deal is; usually we have to try and grab it out of you.

So what is the dirty deal that has been done with those at the other end of the chamber? Is it a new party room or something more that they have been offered in order to get their deal? I think the idea that the Leader of the Government in the Senate can come in here in this hypocritical manner and choose to do what she herself has condemned others for doing—this is absolutely a culture that is running rampant in this place. You would sell your soul for a headline with no regard for the consequences. Quite frankly, if you believe the rumours of a wedding on Saturday, I hope the PM hasn't prioritised the fitting of his tuxedo over scrutiny of these very important bills.