Adam Bandt (Melbourne, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

You've always got to be careful when this parliament heads towards Christmas, because that's when Labor and Liberal try and put a lump of coal in the democracy stocking. Their rushed legislation is very often bad legislation. We just heard the minister say that this was—I think I'm quoting him correctly—the largest reform in 40 years of the foundations of the way that our democracy works. The motion that we're debating right now—it's important for people who are listening to understand this—is not about whether we're voting for or against that bill or whether there are good provisions, bad provisions or provisions that need to be improved in it; it's about whether there should be any inquiry into whether the bill does what it says on the tin.

Now, it is the usual practice in this place that, when bills are brought here, a committee of one house or another, or in this instance both, scrutinises that legislation. That's the normal course. It's especially the normal course when very significant pieces of legislation are brought here. What we've seen, in the way that this chamber has worked in the past, is that, when bills are allowed to go through that process of scrutiny, they are very often improved. Not only that but you often find flaws in the bill that were unintended. That is why we have this process that has worked this way for a very long time.

That is even more important when you're passing legislation that, on the government's own admission, has no need for urgency because it won't affect this coming election but will affect the one after that. That's what the government has said. So there's absolutely no justification for not doing the thing that we do with pretty much every other piece of legislation in this place, which is to have an inquiry into it.

For a very, very long time the Greens in this place, together with others, including others who have spoken here today and others who have come before, have been arguing strongly that the rules around who gets to fund and, in many instances, 'own' politicians in this place need to change—that we need greater transparency and we need greater disclosure. We have argued that for a very long time. As others, including here on the crossbench, have said, there are some good measures in what the government is proposing, in many instances because they've picked up measures that we've all been advocating for a very long time. But there's a lot more in the bill.

As the point was made, one of the other things that I think most people would expect should exist in our laws, truth in advertising, is not part of this rush. It's not part of the rush. So the onus is really on the government to explain why, in what they are calling the largest reform in 40 years, they want to bypass the standard practice of this parliament and not have any scrutiny of the bills whatsoever. One of the things they might say—and I saw the minister shaking his head at the table before, saying, 'No, there is an urgency.' Let's just take that for a moment. Let's assume that the government is right. Something else—and it's critical that people listening understand this—is that, when the government has brought legislation to parliament before and said that they need to get this through in, say, a week, even then they've had inquiries into it. Now, sometimes those inquiries have run for just a couple of days. In one of those instances—we saw it here this year in parliament—the government brought a piece of legislation in. We in the Senate managed to secure an inquiry into it. Through that inquiry, so many problems were found in the bill that the government pulled it altogether and hasn't even brought it back, if I recall correctly.

Inquiries into legislation can do their job and often find problems in it that even the government and this parliament have used to say, 'Okay, we may not progress the bill,' or, 'We're going to fix it.' In the context where people are raising some very serious concerns about what it means for democracy to entrench a two-party system, to use this to try to effectively tilt the playing field so a certain outcome is more likely than a different outcome in a way that affects the will of the people—given the seriousness of that, that is all the more reason for there to be an inquiry into this legislation. I think the test that most people in this country now will have for every piece of legislation that comes past here, especially legislation that's about changing the rules of the game, is: does this legislation allow for more voices in parliament or not? They'll also be asking: does this piece of legislation make the parliament work in a way where different voices have to come together, fix the problems that we're facing as a country and get outcomes that make my life better? That's the test. That's the test that most people increasingly have for the laws that pass this parliament. That is a fair test and it is a right test.

We are in a situation at the moment—and I've said it several times before—where less than a third of the country voted for this government. A bit more than a third voted for the opposition and about a third is voting for someone else. There are two ways you can deal with that. You can deal with that by saying, 'We'd better have a listen to what that third of the country that's voting for someone else is saying and maybe lift our game and put forward some policies that might actually make people's lives better,' or you can say, 'We'll just try and change the rules of the game.' If this legislation is as good as the government says it is then they will have nothing to hide from an inquiry. If it's that good then let people run the ruler over it. This practice that we're getting into where we're saying that we can't even scrutinise legislation in this place anymore is very concerning.

I've got views about this bill. It's been tabled now, but there will be other people who will have views about this bill, and they should be given a chance to be heard. Ordinarily, when any other bill comes up, there's a chance for people such as the experts, the people who've had lived experience of something or people that are going to be affected by the bill to have their say in an inquiry. That's the usual process. As I've said, people can often find flaws in the bill that no-one even knew were there. You get a chance to fix that by having scrutiny. Critically, it gives people a chance to have their say. Nothing I've heard from the government so far can put forward any legitimate reason as to why we should be denying people a chance to have their say and some scrutiny into this legislation. Yes, we have a view, as the Greens, about what the rules of the game here should be to ensure that this parliament starts to reflect the will of the Australian people accurately and does not distort it, but, even if you don't agree with me and take the government's view at face value, that's still no reason for excluding people from the right to have scrutiny of a bill and their right to have a say, and that's what this motion is about. This motion is not actually about the merits of this bill or about whether or not it props up a two-party system. That's not what this motion is about.

This motion is about: whether or not the usual practice, which applies to just about every other bill in this place, should apply to this one as well; whether there should be an inquiry into it, to find the flaws that the government didn't even know were there; and hearing arguments that may force a bit of a rethink—when you think, 'I didn't think about that,' or, 'Maybe we do need to fix that.' Nothing put forward by this minister today makes one single case for removing people's rights to have a look at this bill which, as the minister himself has said, is the largest reform in 40 years. It won't affect what happens at this election, only the one after that. So I support this motion.

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