Roger Price (Chifley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The honourable member for Hinkler is in the chamber. I welcome that but he is replacing the Chair of the Procedure Committee, Margaret May, the member for McPherson. I have never made a secret of how much I appreciate and value the way in which she conducts the committee. This is not a new matter—encouraging an interactive chamber. I suppose we had an example already of how interventions can work in the Main Committee. I think we have probably got a Wednesday morning record up, but it is good. I think it is valuable and I think it encourages people to be able to talk extemporaneously, as Paul Keating would say. When I say it is not a new matter, this was a proposal initiated by former Speaker Andrew for two reasons: one, he was concerned about the fact that other than at question time or when the leader and Prime Minister may be speaking in the House, we are bereft of members in the chambers—in the House or in this Main Committee chamber.

I hasten to put it on the public record, Mr Deputy Speaker, as you would know only too well, that members are very, very busy when parliament is sitting. They are doing a whole host of things other than just making a speaking contribution in either chamber. In fact, with fewer sitting days we seem to have expanded what we do here, whether it be parliamentary or party business, and we are all trying to cram it into fewer hours and fewer sitting days. But it is a legitimate concern and one remarked upon by the public. The former Speaker’s idea of having more people in the chamber was that, if it were interactive, more people might come in to listen to speeches and genuinely want to ask questions.

That proposal by the former Speaker and endorsed by the Procedure Committee was in the event blocked by the now minister for roads and local government in his capacity as Chief Government Whip. I am not trying to verbal the member or minister, but he obviously must have had some very deep reservations about the proposal that members should, in second reading speeches, give a 15-minute speech and then take questions at the end of it. I have always been in favour of it. I am always in favour of a more free-flowing chamber, the ability for cross-chamber engagement, can I say. It will be interesting to see whether this proposal will be endorsed—whether or not we will see the leader of the government coming in and making a change to the standing orders that would facilitate such a change in the House. There is some irony of course that we are talking in the Main Committee about changes in the House. That is going to offend some traditionalists.

Whilst I am supportive of this report, I have come to the very strong view that more significant reform would produce much better public debate in the House and in the Main Committee. The one thing that we, as members of the House, fail to achieve is proper scrutiny of bills. I do not mean that there are not some very motivated and interested members who get right into the detail of a particular bill but that it is not our way to scrutinise legislation in detail—that is, the clauses, the paragraphs and the schedules. We are not set up to do that. There are some committees—and the legal and constitutional affairs committee is one example—where a bill will be referred for detailed consideration. But the norm is that bills are not referred to committees. That is the norm, not the exception. I believe that, if we want better debating in the chambers, we need to bolster the committee system so that it will be the exception for a bill not to be referred to a committee. In referring a bill to a committee, it should not be for the committee to produce a report with a number of recommendations but rather that its consideration of a bill is in such detail that it proposes amendments to the legislation that reflect its views.

The most important aspect of this system is that it gives the public an opportunity to make submissions to the committee. Members who are not on the committee can also make suggestions or even submit amendments, should they so desire. A bill would be introduced into the House, there would be the second reading speech, the shadow minister would speak in reply to it and then the bill would be referred to a committee. In my view, we cannot do that at the moment because the budgets and staffing of the committees have changed radically over the last 11 years. The staffing and budgets of our House committees have not been subjected to any review whatsoever by the House. This seems to be somewhat of an anomaly. Whatever the cost, it would be an investment in better democracy. I think it is something that we should be encouraging.

If a bill has been properly digested and altered and then debated in the House, we would have what I think former Speaker Andrew might have wanted originally—that is, a less formalised debate about a bill, with members having the knowledge and satisfaction that a committee has consulted with the public, experts and those who will be directly or indirectly affected by the legislation and that the committee has done its homework. This would encourage a far more bipartisan approach in the parliament.

We all know that there are occasions when the parliament works very well in the national interest—and I think that should be encouraged—but it mostly occurs in things like committee work. However, I regret to say that, like anything, there can be exceptions with committees being very partisan. I do not think we should get hung up about that. Wherever we can ask members of the House—whether they are in the Liberal Party, the Labor Party or the National Party or whether they are Independents—to work cooperatively together in the national interest, it is good for the people of Australia.

The government should ignore these recommendations at its peril. We are, as an institution, like any other institution, in need of hanging on to our core values but also of changing and adapting to the needs of our time. I think members of the public have high aspirations of how they want their members of parliament to act; but, unfortunately, they also have low expectations sometimes of how their members need to act. It is a safer and better democracy when some of the power of the executive is tempered. We have a robust parliamentary system that is able to absorb and accommodate a government’s agenda, especially when we do it in a way that gives people confidence that the legislation we are offering is, in fact, sound legislation.

I do not think I am on my own when I admit that all too often in the House we have voted for and passed legislation on the basis that there may be some Senate committee that will properly examine what the precise and perhaps unexpected impacts of a bill might be. I do not want to diminish the work of the other place but I do want to reiterate that the most fundamental duty of any member of parliament is to hold a government accountable for its legislation, for the bills that it is putting through. That is a responsibility that members of a government backbench have, as well as an opposition. Clearly that is not being done now and we need to change.

This is a unanimous committee recommendation by the Procedure Committee. I believe it ought to be picked up by the government as another enhancement of the way we do business in the parliament. There are safety mechanisms in it. The safety mechanisms are that at the beginning of their speech members, if they are of a mind, can indicate that they will not take a question, and at the end of their 15 minutes, at the beginning of their five minutes of question time, they can indicate there that they will not take questions. It is important that we do develop parliamentary skills such that all members at some point in time will feel confident about responding to questions from another member.

The reservations people had about interventions in this Main Committee were overcome by the provision under the standing orders of the powers of your good self, Mr Deputy Speaker Adams, so that if I were intervening and abusing that privilege or that procedure, you could take appropriate action, not least of which is declining to accept any more questions from me or any other further action you deem fit. So there are some protections in the scheme under interventions. Those same protections are replicated in the procedures proposed for the House. It puts more onus on deputy speakers, but I have confidence—and it has been the case in the Main Committee—that they have judiciously used that power when they have thought it appropriate to protect or to uphold the dignity of the place and protect the interests of a member.

I strongly support it. I am hopeful that government members might indicate if and when this will be picked up, but we will just have to wait and see. We are very close to a federal election, some seven months away, so perhaps any inclination to want to accept the recommendation may in fact fall upon that looming battle.

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