Katy Gallagher (ACT, Australian Labor Party, Minister for the Public Service) Share this | Hansard source

I welcome the opportunity to talk about orders for the production of documents and the way that they are being used in the chamber. I think it requires going back and having a look at what has happened, and I've spoken about that in the chamber before.

In the past, in the early years of the Senate, orders for production of documents were used sparingly, and for a period of time in the sixties, seventies and eighties they weren't used at all. In 2006, there was one that passed the Senate. It was seen as the most significant power available to the Senate to call for documents. As Senator Wong just said, that has changed. It's changed most dramatically in this parliamentary term, where, on Monday, we had 32 orders for production of documents in one day.

If we think back to how they were handled, and it was the way that the opposition used to handle it when they were in government—not when there were that many—the practice was to let orders of production through, which was the approach that we took for a period of time. Then we were criticised and misrepresented by the Senate saying, 'Everyone has agreed to this order for the production of documents, and they are not complying.' So we decided that, yes, we would put our vote on the record every single time we did not agree with an order for the production of documents and have that recorded as a division—as is our right. That was so it could be very clear that, while the rest of the Senate was deciding that documents that had already been published online should be produced for the Senate or documents that maybe covered 130,000 documents should be provided tomorrow, we didn't agree with that. That is why we're dividing and that is why we're amending. We have every single right to do so, just as all of you have a right to move amendments to anything in this place. We respect that right. But don't come in here and say that this is a problem of the government's making. It is not. It is the way formal business is being misused and abused by the Senate.