Peter Andren (Calare, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I have the greatest of respect for the previous speaker, the member for Fadden. Like me, he had a long career in the media before entering this place and I know he is an objective and well respected individual. But I think his speech was a brave attempt to justify the increasingly unjustifiable. We have seen in this MPI discussion today a blame game—‘You’re worse than we were’—and the public is sick and absolutely tired of the posturing and posing of both major parties in this parliament.

The Prime Minister said in question time that this is the most accountable government since Federation. It certainly is with due regard to some welcome reforms: this government is accountable to the top end of town; accountable to the media barons, especially News Ltd; accountable to the mining lobby at the expense of renewable alternative energy; accountable to Indonesia on border protection; accountable to the US at the expense of an independent trade and foreign policy, accountable to no-one who would challenge the increasingly narrow economic and social agenda of the government. We could also talk about the Labor Party and previous governments as accountable to unions, which they still are, and their special pressure groups.

The Prime Minister attempted to draw a parallel between his government’s performance and that of the former government, when he pointed to former Prime Minister Paul Keating’s famous statement that ‘question time is a privilege extended by the executive to the parliament’. What an absolutely arrogant statement that was from an essentially arrogant person. But I would suggest that the proper debate and scrutiny of bills is now a privilege extended by this government to the parliament, so there is no high moral ground on either side and that is the issue that eats at the psyche and the basic patience of the electorate with regard to the performance of parliament, particularly the performance of this place where we do not have the sort of proportionality of representation that the Senate has and has had in far stronger force over the last 20 years up until the 2004 election.

In the 10 years I have been in this place, neither side, I believe, has done justice to the role of the House. We have seen an opposition in the first parliament completely flattened and disillusioned by its huge loss, licking its wounds and not moving any motions or any amendments of substance throughout probably the first two parliaments, leaving it all to the Senate, transferring the responsibility of the people’s house to the other place, which, while proportionally representative—and that is a good thing—is not the house where the forensic debate and attention to detail should take place. The previous speaker referred to the committees of this place. We do not have legislation committees. We do not have a process that enables us to completely examine and bring recommendations to this parliament where the people are properly represented—not the states but the people—by people who are elected by and large because they are recognisable, they are trustworthy in the eyes of their electorate and they are the people whom their electorate wants to represent their best interests.

But no, we have seen a constant bypassing of the House of Representatives and we have seen the media concentrate solely in most cases, with a couple of notable exceptions over the years, on the common farce at most times of question time, with the dorothy dixers and the ministerial statements—famously underlined by that defence answer yesterday, which should have been a ministerial statement. From the opposition, you can mostly pick on any one day the line of questioning based on what the shock jocks are saying on the radio stations in our national capitals. It is not very hard to pick how and why and wherefor the questions are coming from and how lacking in any substance the process is—except, I may humbly say, when an Independent stands, you can hear a pin drop, because it is truly a question without notice.

The government’s amendment to the second reading summing-up of the renewable energy bill yesterday was a classic example of the demise of the processes in this place. It was an urgent bill for whatever reason. We were supposed to be having a debate on renewable energies—but no, it was wound up as a matter of great urgency. By whom? The Minister for Veterans’ Affairs, who incorporated a government amendment about which he knew absolutely nothing with any summation of that second reading debate.

How could anybody stand in this place and say that we have a proper and improving democratic process when, in the last few days, we have had the Leader of the House moving at the beginning of each day that there will be truncated debate and also no amendments from this House by other than the government? What are we? Are we legislators or are we to sit here in mute disbelief while the executive sit there in all of their smug contentment, rubber stamping material through this place with absolute disregard for the processes.

We do not have a democracy in this country. Do not kid yourselves that we have the best democracy. ‘Rubbish,’ I hear. There is no true democracy where every person has not proper and fair representation through the voting process. We have a distorted outcome in the Senate now, by virtue of an outcome whereby a two per cent primary vote delivered a crucial extra senator favourable to the government’s processes.

We have seen changes to the Electoral Act. It is $10,000 now before you have to declare where the money is coming from. Members of parties do not have to declare anything about their spending in any campaign, a nil return. They may have had a quarter of a million dollars spent on their behalf. They do not have to say they spent a zack, a cent. What an absolute travesty of the democratic process is that?

Today the minister was again about to move that standing order 47 be suspended for the remainder of the period. That is the very order that enabled me to move a motion in this House yesterday to try and have a debate—on what? On democracy. What happened? I was gagged. There is your democracy. I was moving an eight-point motion, not only criticising the government but also pointing the finger at the media, who leave this place after the circus of question time not to concentrate on the important issues in this parliament but to write up the scorecard on who won question time. It will be on tomorrow. Have a look. It is like a soccer match. It is lazy journalism. I was in journalism for 30 years. I know something about it, and this is the supposed cream of the media sitting along the gallery. I wouldn’t give two bob but for three or four of them in terms of their commitment to properly covering this place.

We have this motion sitting here—standing order 47—that may be moved to suspend standing orders at any time; it is hanging over our heads. Okay, that means no motions from this side, no amendments and no debate. What is next? No questions? I bet that will be next. No questions from the non-government side. That is where we are heading, with all due regard to the previous speaker, the member for Fadden, who believes that we are on such a wonderful path to democratic heaven.

People are asking today: ‘How do we change all this?’ They are ringing my office and emailing me, asking: ‘How do we change it?’ I say, ‘By osmosis, not necessarily by the vagaries and distortions of the voting systems.’ By osmosis people are looking for alternatives and, at the state level, they are looking more and more at the Independents. They are going to be looking more and more, I warn you, for Independents at a national level in the people’s house.

I ask everybody to visit the ICAN website. Check out how to run a campaign and how to run for parliament and get around all those obstacles that have been put in place. Rather than being the lackeys of the major parties, rather than filling out your dues, serving your time, whether you are a ‘Shorten’ or a ‘big-en’, you do it according to the rules of the game, not according to the wishes of the electorate. I say that the lights of democracy are being switched off all over this nation and, tragically, most people probably will not realise it until they are in the dark.

See this speech in context