Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for the Arts) Share this | Hansard source

It's rare that you get a debate on a committee referral that in fact brings together the differences across this chamber in such a cohesive way. Effectively what we're dealing with here today are two different approaches as to what should happen for the same parliamentary committee. Those two different approaches are saying, 'Let's look at two different issues.' Both issues involve victims. The first deals with victims of the banking industry. The second deals with victims from a range of different circumstances where were it not for litigation funding arrangements they would never get access to justice. It just wouldn't happen for them. We're dealing with those two areas and they're both about victims. In both areas reports have already been done and in both areas the government doesn't want to implement the recommendations of those reports.

This afternoon—through two votes that will come up before we finish tonight—the government is effectively going to try to bury two reports. They're going to try and bury the banking royal commission report and they're going to try and bury the Law Reform Commission's report into litigation funding. Given that that's what they're going to do isn't it interesting the way the Leader of the House, in his capacity as Attorney-General, commenced this debate? His words were: 'We're about to find out how real that commitment to parliamentary scrutiny is.' You bet he's right. Never have truer words been spoken and it's not that often that true words have been spoken by this bloke of late. You'll think there'll always be a whole lot of members of parliament here who don't really like the chamber much. Ordinarily one of those people who really hates the parliament is not made Leader of the House. That's new ground. To vote against the House sitting, in additional sittings, and to vote against giving us a new sitting calendar, which should've happened this morning—in that vote, okay, the government had a position. In making the case against my amendment the Leader of the House couldn't come up with an argument against the House sitting without abusing the forms of the House and misrepresenting me and misrepresenting a meeting that his own Prime Minister was present at.

I'm not precious about it because I was the one speaking, but in terms of the forms of the House there are protocols that have been around for a long time and I've always observed them. If I'm going to get stuck into a member of the other side in a speech and they're not likely to be in the chamber—it's an adjournment speech or something like that—I always pick up the phone and let them know. It's a longstanding tradition in this place. You don't hold back. Often they don't want to come into the chamber for it but you let them know it's happening. The exception, of course, is whatever happens in question time or immediately after question time, because there's an expectation that all members will be here. That's why that's when we normally raise issues of misrepresentation.

In terms of the disrespect to the importance of the democracy of this place, I thought it was breathtaking today that, as the Leader of the House was being called out for misleading the House, he walked out of the chamber. In terms of how this place is meant to run, that's just extraordinary. I thought that would have been his peak moment of hypocrisy for the day, but I'd underestimated him. I'd underestimated him badly because we were told, at the beginning of his speech, that we were about to find out how real the commitment to parliamentary scrutiny is. How true those words are. The Law Reform Commission has already reported. Let's not forget that, when the government wanted to set up that Law Reform Commission inquiry, when George Brandis was doing it, they were doing it with an eye to, 'How can we clamp down on litigation funding?' But they didn't get the report that they wanted. So this reference is not about scrutiny; it's about burying scrutiny. It's not a reference to find out what's going on; it's that they got a report they didn't like so they now want a report they can control, and a House of Representatives committee is a committee they can control. So the whole purpose of the inquiry and the reference that's been moved today by the Attorney-General is that the government, some years ago, asked for scrutiny, they got it and they didn't like it and so now they want this reference to get rid of the scrutiny that happened so that they can have a different committee report to refer to. This is where the real test is that we need to apply to this government and the job that they have. All these reports mean nothing if you don't implement them. The government's reference is entirely to prevent the Law Reform Commission recommendations from ever being implemented. That's why they are making it. It's to get rid of the Law Reform Commission and to make sure those recommendations are never implemented.

Similarly, they are going as slowly as they can on implementing the recommendations of the banking royal commission. The member for Whitlam has already referred to this—of the 76 recommendations, six have now been fully implemented. In terms of the job of this parliament, if the test is scrutiny, what should we be doing? Should we be making sure that recommendations, once given, are implemented, or should we be burying recommendations?

The Labor amendment moved by the member for Whitlam and seconded by the member for Kingsford Smith aims to do one very simple thing. There is a report from the banking royal commission, a commission that the government resisted. I remember being here on that one night when we took control of the floor. I remember the different members of parliament, including the now Prime Minister back when he was ambitious for the then Prime Minister, making sure that they kept the debate going as long as possible while they tried to get back the members who'd gone home early. Incidentally, one of them was the Leader of the House. They did everything they could to stop the royal commission from happening, and now, when asked about it, the Prime Minister says, 'Oh, well, I initiated it.' Well, it's not much good if you don't want to implement it.

The other job that this parliament could be doing is to take the Law Reform Commission recommendations and have a mechanism to try to make sure that they never happen. So we have a choice. Do we believe any of these reports matter? Do we believe we should ever be adopting and implementing recommendations that are given to us, or should the government, effectively, be able to control what recommendations are given to it and, if it doesn't like what comes to it, it can go out advice shopping?

If the Labor amendment is carried, there will be scrutiny in this parliament. If it is defeated and the government motion is carried in its original form then the scrutiny that was done by the Law Reform Commission will be buried. So, at a time when the government have been trying to stop parliament from sitting, when it does sit, they have made sure that on any occasion when the Leader of the Opposition seeks leave to move a motion that leave is not given—unprecedented already. Then, if he moves that standing orders be suspended, they immediately move that he be no further heard. This parliament at the moment is less than it's ever been. It really is. And that's through an active decision of the Prime Minister of this country and the Leader of the House. We're about to decide whether we want to make it even worse. Do we now want to use our committees for scrutiny or for burying scrutiny? That's the decision the parliament's about to make.

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