Patrick Gorman (Perth, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

We should have seen the Leader of the House come in and move to have a clear plan for sitting days for the rest of this year. That is, clearly, the No. 1 priority that he should be fulfilling in his role as Leader of the House. Instead, we got a referral for an inquiry that it's clear that a number of members of the government have already prejudged. We have read in the paper that they already have a very firm view on this matter. This is not a matter that the government actually need to hold any form of inquiry into. They're simply prosecuting their own view about denying certain members of our community access to justice.

As the member for Dunkley said, we should be having a discussion about more support for legal aid. We should be having a discussion about more support for organisations like the Consumer Credit Legal Service based in my electorate of Perth which services all Western Australia, making sure that Western Australians can assert their legal rights. As the Manager of Opposition Business just pointed out, there is already a 339-page report on a number of the matters which the government is seeking to engage the committee on which I serve to inquire into. That is a committee that already has a large schedule of work ahead of it. Indeed, it is a schedule of work the committee has been delayed in completing, and it has had to seek extensions from the Senate on occasion. The government would seek to never respond to the work of professionals, the work of lawyers, the work of people who submit to inquiries—the government would never even bother to respond to those inquiries. It is disrespectful of our entire parliamentary process. People who put their submissions in to an inquiry that the government initiates and says, 'We want to know what you think,' expect that, ultimately, they would also find out what the government thinks about those issues. If you've got a report from 2017—339 pages where there was never a proper government response—that is incredibly disrespectful not just to this parliament and not just to the processes that we ask people to participate in but to people who give their time. For most people who submit to parliamentary inquires—or to the Law Reform Commission, in this case—it's something they do on top of their existing work. They find the time to write submissions and to appear before committees.

As we've also seen with the delay for the banking royal commission, any excuse is a good excuse for this government, when it comes to delaying action on the banking royal commission. It would be a shame to see this motion, if the amendments that are before us are defeated, be used as another form of excuse for delaying the banking royal commission.

The Manager of Opposition Business talked about the Leader of the House. It is probably timely to remind people and, indeed, remind some of the Leader of the House's coalition colleagues, of his record as Treasurer in Western Australia when he served in the state parliament. He was the one who set Western Australia on the course to a $39 billion to $40 billion debt, the largest debt in Western Australia's history. Although, maybe looking at the government's financial management here, that might not be as surprising as it was for many Western Australians, who couldn't believe that someone who would often tell us all how smart he was would make such terrible judgements betting—not predicting, but betting—that somehow Western Australia's share of GST would increase. Of course, we know that didn't happen for another seven years from when he made that very ill-informed bet. I remember the now Leader of the House, when he was the member for Bateman many, many years ago, used to put out letters criticising the then Western Australian Labor Treasurer, Eric Ripper, a lovely gentleman, for having too big a surplus.

That was a long time ago, but the form of some of the Western Australian Liberals—the stock from which the Leader of the House comes—has also been on show in recent days. We saw the WA Liberal leader, Liza Harvey, trying to attack the WA Labor government but, in fact, she ended up issuing an attack on the federal Liberal government when she said, on foreign affairs and trade matters, 'Don't leave it up to the federal government.' I'd be the first to say don't leave it up to the federal government on many things. Indeed, I wouldn't leave it up to the federal government on this matter we're debating today. But to say don't leave it up to them on foreign affairs and trade matters, which are definitely within the powers of the Commonwealth,. was an extraordinary attack—a huge vote of no confidence in the foreign minister and a huge vote of no confidence in the trade minister. I hoped that someone, one of the Western Australian Liberals, might have picked up the phone to her and said, 'This was an incredibly inappropriate intervention.'

Returning to this matter that we're discussing now, litigation funding is a vital part of the paths to justice for many people. People don't go out there saying, 'I really want to be part of some litigation funding exercise.' They do it because it's the only path, for many, to quality legal representation and a fair chance of success through our legal system. Again, if this government has already prejudged the outcome of this inquiry, as I read in some media the other day, then maybe it is just wasting time with this referral. When we get to this sort of ideology, we are seeing a snapback to this government leading through ideology rather than leading through purpose and the national interest.

This government has always hated collective action. They've always had a problem with working people banding together—or, indeed, people of little means banding together—to assert their interests. That's what this is an attack on again today. In my electorate of Perth, we still have queues at Morley Centrelink of people waiting to get onto the job seeker payment. Businesses have been told that the government is going to look at recasting when and how—the rules that these businesses have just complied with—to access JobKeeper. It is hugely concerning that this is the sort of tactic and stunt that the government would seek to pull.

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