David Hawker (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have received a letter from the honourable Leader of the Opposition proposing that a definite matter of public importance be submitted to the House for discussion, namely:

The Government’s arrogant approach to the Parliament, and the Australian people, with its own political self interest now being given absolute priority over the national interest.

I call upon those members who approve of the proposed discussion to rise in their places.

More than the number of members required by the standing orders having risen in their places—

Kim Beazley (Brand, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This is an arrogant government with total control of this parliament. It is an arrogant government out of control in its behaviour. It is drunk on its own power and its own self-satisfied arrogance. It is governing now in its own political interests. It is not governing in the national interest. Democracy is under threat from this arrogant, out-of-touch government, drunk with power, as I said, and using that total power now to attack democracy. Accountability, fairness and honesty: they are the casualties of this government’s 10 long years, and its victims are the hardworking families of Australia.

When I say 10 long years, it has been in office now for a very long period of time, and it is not unusual for a government that has been in power for this long to develop a shorthand way of dealing with the democratic processes, a shorthand way of dealing with the truth and a propensity to utilise the public funds of this nation in its own political interests and to assume that there is nothing wrong with what it is doing. That is when a government needs a very big wake-up call.

Generally speaking, and in the case of this government, it will get it from the electorate. However, what it will not get it from—unlike most governments in the country in the political lives of most of these members of parliament—are the checks and balances which the Senate has from time to time managed to provide. There was always a situation when we were in office where the Senate would hold us accountable, and now the capacity to do that is no more. It is not possible for the Senate to do that at precisely the point of time the government feels free to give free rein to the worst of its ideological prejudices and obsessions—we see that in industrial relations—at a point of time when the government is most conscienceless about the way in which it handles public funds—and we see that in the utilisation of government advertising, which I will get onto—and at the point of time when the government is most haphazard with the truth and its willingness to mislead, confuse or, as Laurie Oakes would say, obfuscate as it seeks to evade any form of accountability for the actions it has taken and as it puts in place legislation which is manifestly against the interests of the Australian people.

A bulldozer has been put through the industrial relations system. Absolutely nothing of what has been done in industrial relations was foreshadowed by this government during the last election campaign: not the removal of penalty rates, not the removal of leave loadings, not the removal of shift allowances, not the removal of the no disadvantage test from the AWAs, not the determination to deprive workers in companies of up to 100 employees the provisions of unfair dismissal—nothing. Absolutely none of this was indicated to the Australian people during the course of the last election campaign. Indeed, when he was questioned on the possibility of this, Howard, the Prime Minister, was absolutely certain to make sure that anyone with whom he spoke got the view that the opposite applied.

These were parts of the settled elements of the way in which Australians were remunerated in this country—the settled elements of the way in which Australians were rewarded—but a bulldozer was put through that in a state of maximum deceit from this government of the Australian people. It was a complete collapse of any form of accountability, and now in this place the government seek to mislead repeatedly, as we raise these issues with them, as to the real consequences of the actions that they have taken. They use the fact that, in question time, they get the last word to produce grossly misleading information as they seek to explain away the various contracts and events described here in question time. That is the only place where this unaccountable Australian Prime Minister appears to argue the case for what he has done on industrial relations. Twenty-one debates in this chamber in the aftermath of the introduction of that bill, and not a single word from the Prime Minister in any one of them. Question time, where you have the right of reply, where you can say anything you like and you have the numbers behind you, is not accountability.

That bulldozer which went through the industrial conditions of the Australian people has now gone through the parliamentary process. The government that hid its punishing, divisive IR agenda from the Australian people in the last election is now driving that same bulldozer through democratic principles. It manipulates the electoral regulations to stop kids from voting. It did not get much commentary in this place. There are many elements of our society, I am afraid, that are loath to hold the government accountable in these things, and often it seems too hard to sit down and properly analyse the consequences of what government does. A certain ennui, a certain boredom with politics, has well suited the agenda of John Howard over the course of the last 10 years.

What happened when that legislation went through was as close to a political crime as you could conceivably find. Recollect this: the government, with its propositions on AWAs, has basically hit first and hardest at new employees joining the labour market. They are the youngsters coming out of training. Just as the youngsters come out of training to work, so the youngsters come out of their teenage years to vote. What happens to them now, under the changes that are being put in place? The government has determined that the rolls will close the day the writs are issued. Four hundred thousand people at the last election enrolled or re-enrolled between the day the writs were issued and a week later when the rolls were closed. The vast bulk of those 400,000 were young people. Note the cynicism of this government: as it attacks their wages, it attacks their capacity to vote!

In addition to that, the government determined that the origin of political donations up to the amount of $10,000 could be concealed and that those $10,000 could be arranged in a multiplicity of donations in a way that would permit a great deal more than $10,000 to be concealed. This is corrupt. There is no other way of describing it. You know that, when you are in office, you have a special opportunity to sit down and have conversations with people about their interests, and this government does that frequently. Now it has an opportunity to accompany those discussions with an implicit assumption that very large sums of money can pass across into the hands of that political party and help it secure a propaganda effort during the course of an election. These are large sums of money and, when they are capable of being dealt with in multiple ways, they sit at the heart of a very great set of potential acts of corruption.

This act moves away from two decades worth of improving and enhancing the accountability of political parties in electoral acts. It also has to be seen alongside other acts of shutting down accountability in this place or of using power to enhance personal interests. $1 billion has been spent on advertising this government’s position. When the industrial relations act was introduced, $55 million was spent in three weeks—more than all political parties spent in the entire last election period and campaign. That is simply theft. There has been $1 billion worth of such instances. We also find in the way other forms of accountability are handled that laziness that comes with 10 years in office and the sloth and determination to avoid proper scrutiny. We see that, of course, in the terms of the commission of inquiry into the weapons for wheat scandal, which effectively excludes any judgment on the role of ministers, the involvement of ministers or the ability of ministers to uphold their obligations under their terms of office. Those judgments have been removed from the commission of inquiry and any questioning associated with the detail of the issues before that commission of inquiry has been removed from consideration by the estimates committee process in the Senate, which is necessary to take in the way in which these accountability mechanisms have been undermined at each level.

All these things are interrelated; they are not events that need to be seen in singular terms. The commission of inquiry does not have the appropriate powers. The estimates committee process in the Senate, which previously has been the most effective mechanism of accountability in this place, is not permitted to handle those issues. The single greatest instance of corruption in federal politics and the ministerial turning of a blind eye to it at a minimum—culpable neglect by ministers—is not subject to analysis in any place. That was an ad hoc act against the authority of the Senate estimates committee process, and the ad hoc act has now been joined by a systematic attack. The mechanisms of accountability through which governments are placed under scrutiny—put in place when we were in office, with the strong support of the Liberal Party at that point in time—are now removed and the Senate is gutted at precisely the right point in time, a year before the next election.

That laziness which goes to an unwillingness to render themselves accountable also goes to the way in which they conduct themselves in areas of much greater importance in many ways to the national honour and interest. I think of their performance in reclassifying the mission of the Army in Iraq. Yesterday we witnessed here in question time a minister in government prepared to change the mission and place our forces in arguably much greater danger with simply a dorothy dixer in the House as the statement. The Prime Minister in the end was shamed into agreeing to make a public statement on this, but he had no intention of doing so. We know he had no intention of doing so because the Minister for Defence sat there red with embarrassment. He looked like a bottlebrush planted on the front bench of the Liberal Party as he recognised he had been humiliated by the Prime Minister. But how extraordinary it is that when they place in danger the armed forces—which are utilised for so many photo opportunities by the Prime Minister and his minister—there is no explanation, no parliamentary statement, no answers to questions about the capacity of those troops to be supported properly in country and a dismissal of any form of revelation in broad detail of the intelligence estimates associated with the position in which they placed them.

For me, as a former Minister for Defence of this country—I suppose we all have our own prisms by which we assess growing arrogance, sense of entitlement and determination to avoid accountability—I guess I look at a lot of that through the prism of the handling of the defence forces, and that prism presents a very ugly refraction indeed. It is time this arrogant government had its comeuppance. (Time expired)

Tony Abbott (Warringah, Liberal Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I certainly would be the last person to say that this government never makes mistakes and I would be the last person to say that this government does not occasionally do things that, in the cold light of day, it might wish it had not done. But to be accused by this Leader of the Opposition of attacking democracy, and of arrogantly approaching the parliament, is pretty rich given that he was Deputy Prime Minister in a government whose Prime Minister and half the ministry did not front this parliament two days out of four. He was Deputy Prime Minister in a government which in 1993 answered on average just 10 questions in question time.

Laurie Ferguson (Reid, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Consumer Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Laurie Ferguson interjecting

Ian Causley (Page, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Reid has already been warned. He is in a precarious position.

Tony Abbott (Warringah, Liberal Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

He was Deputy Prime Minister in a government which went to the Australian people in 1993 saying that tax cuts were not just a policy, they were l-a-w law, and then ripped them up shortly after being re-elected.

By all means, if this government makes mistakes, if this government gets it wrong, hold us to account, but do not engage in the high-pitched hyperbole and in the completely over-the-top bluster that we have seen today from the Leader of the Opposition. If I could dwell briefly on some of the specific points that he made, he claimed that there has been some kind of abuse of democracy going on in the Senate. For the benefit of members opposite, let me simply remind them that all that has happened is that a system that was good enough for Labor between 1983 and 1994 has been restored—that is all. What is so outrageous about having government members chair Senate committees? Between 1983 and 1994, government members chaired Senate committees and that government did not even have a majority in the Senate. There is no reason whatsoever that this democratically elected government, this government with a democratically elected majority in the Senate, should not chair those committees.

It was alleged that there was some kind of vicious deception going on in workplace relations prior to the last election. I think that this government ought to be judged on what it does. So far, we have delivered 1.8 million new jobs. There has been a 17 per cent real increase in basic award earnings under this government. Strikes are at the lowest level since records were first kept. The government is convinced that the further industrial relations changes that we have made will build on that record. We could be wrong. It may be that doom and disaster will follow these changes, as it was predicted to follow the previous changes that we made. If doom and disaster follows, we will be judged by the Australian people and they will be entitled to judge us harshly. But let us judge this government by results and we are perfectly prepared to be judged by those results.

Another of the accusations hurled at us by the Leader of the Opposition was the ludicrous suggestion that we are in some way stripping young people of their right to vote. We are doing our best to tighten up the conditions under which people go on the electoral roll. It has been said in this House before but let me say again that, under the rules as they did pertain, it was harder to take out a video than it was to go on the electoral roll. There is nothing antidemocratic about trying to ensure that you cannot rort the electoral roll.

It is an old furphy—oppositions raise it all the time—that this government, or any government for that matter, is rorting the system every time it advertises a government service. I suppose, if I am going to be absolutely honest, when we were in opposition we may even have made similar accusations about the government, but let us be fair dinkum about this: governments do advertise; governments have to advertise. The state Labor governments between them massively outspend the advertising budget of this government. There are some things which are illegitimate—there is no doubt about that—in the kinds of ads that governments might be tempted to run, but let all of the advertising of this government be judged on the particular merits of the campaign. The fact that it happens is really a simple function of government.

Finally, there is this hysterical campaign that the Leader of the Opposition has been embarked on for the large part of this year about the AWB. I would be the first to admit that, on the face of the evidence that has been presented to the Cole Commission of Inquiry, things that should never have been done were done and the whole point of the Cole Commission of Inquiry is to get to the bottom of these matters. To be honest, I think that what we have seen consistently from the Leader of the Opposition over the last six months is virtually in contempt of the Cole Commission of Inquiry. Nothing will satisfy the Leader of the Opposition but a judgment from Commissioner Cole that every single government frontbencher who has ever had any dealing with the AWB should be, if not hung, drawn and quartered, certainly expelled from this parliament for dishonesty. Let us not have the hyperbole from members opposite. Let us have the dispassionate judgment of Commissioner Cole, and certainly the Australian public will decide this matter based on his judgment.

One of the things I have found a little interesting in the formal wording of this MPI is the government’s alleged ‘arrogant approach’ to the parliament. Let us consider just who is and who is not trying to uphold the best standards of this parliament. Disrupting the House is not a sign of a disciplined opposition; disrupting the House is a sign of a desperate opposition. What we have seen from members opposite consistently in the course of this year but particularly over the last few weeks is consistent, deliberate, planned and premeditated conduct to disrupt this House. Let me give you just a few examples, Mr Speaker. There were 36 opposition suspension motions in the entire year of 2005. There were just seven opposition suspension motions in the last six months of 1995 and there have been no fewer than 16 opposition suspension motions in the first six months of this year. In 1995 the then opposition leader, John Howard, took 18 points of order in his last six months as opposition leader. So far, since January, the Leader of the Opposition has taken at least 55 points of order.

There have been all sorts of complaints from members opposite about bad language, abusive language, in this chamber from the government. Let me for the record remind members opposite of the language of the Leader of the Opposition that has been recorded in Hansard. He referred to a government minister as ‘a sleazy, dummy-spitting little git’. He referred to a minister—

Ian Causley (Page, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Leader of the House cannot read into Hansard, even from a quote, unparliamentary language.

Tony Abbott (Warringah, Liberal Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Let me simply remind the House of the poor language, the entirely unworthy language, that the Leader of the Opposition has been using consistently across the table over the last six months. In fact, as any fair-minded observer of this House would know, the Leader of the Opposition maintains a constant barrage of schoolyard chatter across the ministerial table. Some of it is picked up in Hansard, but much of it is not. Yesterday, for instance, he even said of the Prime Minister, ‘Turn your hearing aids up, you old man.’ Frankly, this is completely unworthy of someone who is the alternative Prime Minister of this country.

I have been a student of the Leader of the Opposition for much of his long and not undistinguished public life. I would say of the Leader of the Opposition that he is intelligent and articulate. He was, in some respects, one of the more competent ministers in the former government. But he has badly let himself down in the 18 months since he has resumed the leadership of the opposition. He has sold out his intellectual principles with things like the AWA rollover. AWAs were good enough for him in his previous incarnation but, because the unions said no, he sold out his intellectual principles in the last fortnight. He has sold out his personal principles for much of the 18 months that he has been Leader of the Opposition in this second coming. The kind of childish, juvenile interjections that we are consistently getting from the Leader of the Opposition are the strongest possible proof of that.

Even many of the Leader of the Opposition’s own supporters realise that he is far from his best self at this time. The Australian people used to regard the Leader of the Opposition as decent but indecisive. After watching him over the last 18 months, they are entitled to conclude that the Leader of the Opposition is both shrill and easily bullied. He is a lesser man today than he was 18 months ago. The very worst thing about it is that he is not only a lesser man but a man who has been less true to himself—his real self—in the last 18 months than in previous parts of his career. He has let himself down. He has tried to be what he is not because he has been told by the pollsters that there has to be more ‘muscle-up’. He has been told by the union heavies that he has to ‘show more mongrel’. That is what he is trying to do. In the process, he is disillusioning the Australian people about himself and not doing his political prospects any real good.

Members opposite often get upset when I quote back at them the words of their former leader, the former member for Werriwa. But it is interesting, isn’t it, that the only time members opposite had to judge between the member for Brand, their current leader, and the former member for Werriwa, their former leader, they chose the former member for Werriwa? We all know that the former member for Werriwa had many grave faults. There must even be many members opposite who privately breathed an enormous sigh of relief that the former member for Werriwa never became Prime Minister of this country. He might have been rough, he might have been wrong in many respects, but he had a few clues about the Leader of the Opposition. The longer the Leader of the Opposition lasts in his current incarnation, the more the judgment of the former Leader of the Opposition about him seems right. Listen to this about the current Leader of the Opposition, from page 112 of The Latham Diaries:

... putting a tough surface on a blancmange is bound to backfire. What they should do is pick an issue ... A big, bellowing cow in Parliament will never fool the public.

Another quote, from page 87:

People think Beazley is a big angel, but behind the scenes, he’s in the gutter. He and his allies reflect the worst instincts of the Labor movement: all gossip and muck.

We have seen far too much gossip and muck from the Leader of the Opposition over the last six months across this ministerial table. We have seen the Leader of the Opposition attempting to give his political persona some definition with his frantic and hysterical campaign against AWAs. All we can say is that we might know a few of the things he is against, but we certainly do not know anything that he is actually for. Stop acting like a big bellowing cow in the parliament. Tell us what you believe in and stop all this prating about democracy. (Time expired)

Craig Emerson (Rankin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We’ve settled this parliamentary language issue, have we?

Ian Causley (Page, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The member for Rankin.

Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Health and Manager of Opposition Business in the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We saw at the start of that performance from the Leader of the House his trying to exhibit a demeanour of a reasonable man. It was interesting to see that it could not last a full 15 minutes. He struggled with reasonable man mode for the first seven or eight minutes and, of course, degenerated into the normal, wild-eyed mode where he was just throwing accusations against the opposition.

Craig Emerson (Rankin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mad monk!

Ian Causley (Page, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Rankin will be dealt with if he does not abide by the standing orders.

Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Health and Manager of Opposition Business in the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would give the Leader of the House some advice. He took the liberty of trying to psychoanalyse the Leader of the Opposition. I would say to the Leader of the House: if he wants to go into the business of psychoanalysis, he should start a lot closer to home than that. He might want to apply some of that ability in psychoanalysis to himself before he tries to apply it to anybody else. You could see—as the man stood at the dispatch box—through the man to the small boy who in school would have engaged in some act of naughtiness, some act of misbehaviour, and when called to account by the nuns would have gone with the defence, ‘But I’m not the worst boy in the world.’ That was the quality of the defence of the Howard government that he gave at the dispatch box today. ‘We’re not the worst government in the world,’ was about as high as the defence got. This government should be judged against the standards that it has set for itself. We do not ask for anything more or less than for this government to be judged by the standards it set for itself.

Mr Deputy Speaker, I did something unusual today: I got the Federal Platform of the Liberal Party of Australia off its website. That is not something that I ordinarily do, but it is a very interesting document. Of the 22 pages of the document, five are blank and then there are two title pages. So, if you take those out, basically a third of the document is blank. But in the bits of the document that actually have some writing on them the government says, in its own Liberal Party platform:

The Commonwealth Parliament has an important role as a balance to the Executive, and the Senate should operate as a House of Review without obstructing the will of the elected Government.

It talks about safeguarding the public interest and says:

To safeguard these goals, Liberals support governments open to public scrutiny and with effective mechanisms of accountability.

That is in the Liberal Party Platform. The Prime Minister has also had cause to pontificate on these questions. On 2 April 2005, in respect of the government winning a majority in the Senate, the Prime Minister said:

And I make the simple promise to all of you that we will not let you down. We will not squander the mandate. We will not dishonour the loyal support that Liberals have given to this Government over the last nine years by wasting the opportunity of control of the Senate. But I make another promise to you—that we won’t use that authority in a reckless and arrogant fashion.

How has the government gone, against these lofty standards? We know that, against these lofty standards, the government’s track record is one of failure. In this House—and you, Mr Deputy Speaker, would be well aware of this—we have seen the rights of members to speak on bills just thrown out of the window, with 15 gags on bills moved in the last sitting fortnight. And we had the amazing spectacle of a government that had come in and moved a gag motion on a bill having to lift the gag motion because it could not get agreement in its own party room. It was going to guillotine itself, and then it had to get the blade off its neck because it was about to chop its head off and it did not even have a bill ready to go. But we have seen the rights of members of this parliament trashed by this government. It does not want members to be able to speak to bills that come before the House.

I turn to question time under this government—one of the key accountability mechanisms of this parliament, a mechanism to hold executive government in control. We all know that question time has degenerated into being questions without answers and answers without content. In terms of questions without answers, we now have a stage where government ministers get up and, if they are anywhere near the subject matter of the question asked by the opposition, that is deemed to be good enough. Under the current regime—and this is a hypothetical example—if I got to this dispatch box and asked the Minister for Transport and Regional Services: ‘Did you take a million-dollar bribe from a shipping company?’ it would be ruled as a relevant answer if the minister talked about shipping. That is where we have got to with standards in this place in terms of getting answers to questions that have been asked.

And then, when the government asks itself questions, what we get is answers without content, because the questions are largely a thinly disguised attempt to be able to bash the opposition. In this budget sitting of parliament since we came back from the Easter break, there have been 32 questions from government backbench members which were really all about bashing the opposition and there were three occasions on which government ministers were allowed to bash the opposition even though the question had not asked them to. So we have got to the absurd situation where we have questions from this side that never get an answer and we get questions from that side that are not about anything the government is doing—they are just about bashing the opposition. And it is no wonder that when standards are like that one of the few things that members of the opposition can do is interject. We are not alone in that; every day the government sends a barrage the other way. But, when we look across the House this year and ask what has happened, we see that 24 members of the opposition have been ejected from the House for interjecting and only one government member has been ejected from the House. I do not think that on any standard that could be seen to be fair.

On top of all that, we have a government that is now closing down Senate committees—one of the few remaining avenues of accountability in this place. I ask members to consider for themselves whether we would ever have got to the bottom of the ‘children overboard’ incident—we did not get all the way to the bottom but would we ever have got as far as we did—if it had not been for the Senate inquiry. The Senate inquiry is very important as an accountability mechanism. It is also very important as a public policy mechanism and, even though the government treats many of the outcomes of the public policy inquiries of the Senate with contempt, they are still important to the public debate. It was still worth while for Senator Peter Cook to have his cancer inquiry whilst he was dying of cancer, even if the current Minister for Health and Ageing does not have the simple courtesy, the simple competence, to respond to it. It was worth the Senate committee looking into petrol sniffing in Indigenous communities even if this minister for health is out pontificating about what Indigenous communities should do but not responding to the recommendations of that bipartisan committee. But it is that kind of work that this government now wants to shut down.

When it comes to standards, we all know you lead from the top and the Leader of the House is not a man who knows how to lead standards from the top. Mr Deputy Speaker, in deference to you, I would not want to take you through the ‘snivelling grub’ incident, but you know the one to which I refer. This is also the same Leader of the House who, in answer to a question on illicit drugs, said:

This is typical of the Leader of the Opposition. He surrendered to the Islamists over Iraq ...

That is as much an insult to the peaceful Islamic community of this nation as it is an insult to the Leader of the Opposition. That was an extraordinary remark to make in this place, and it is not apologised for to this day. We remember that the Leader of the House was the only minister to have been ejected from this place in 39 years on the day that he lost control and started marching over to the opposition benches with a view to having a physical confrontation with the then member for Braddon.

These are the standards of this government. The arrogant face that is shown by this government in this House is shown to the community. It is shown when it breaks its word over the Medicare safety net. It is shown through the extreme industrial relations legislation. It is shown when the government says, ‘We just don’t care what the Australian people think.’ I would like to end by echoing the words of the Prime Minister and asking him whether his government has acquitted this standard. The Prime Minister said about the Australian people:

They don’t like arrogant governments, they don’t like governments that take their support for granted but I am very conscious that in the past when governments of my persuasion have had the capacity to do so, they have sometimes disappointed their supporters in their failure to implement the programs that they took to the Australian public.

This is a government that by the Prime Minister’s own standards is acting with arrogance and contempt. (Time expired)

David Jull (Fadden, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

When I saw the title of today’s matter of public importance I thought it could be a very interesting debate indeed and that we may have an opportunity to speak at some length about what goes on in this parliament. However, it has degenerated into something of a vicious personal attack on some of the personnel here.

Looking back over my 30 years in this place I think I have probably seen it all before. I have served under a number of Prime Ministers and I have served under a number of governments, and I think one of the most frustrating and dreadful things I had to contend with was almost 13 years sitting on the opposition benches. There is nothing worse than being in opposition in this place. I can understand that the present opposition are totally frustrated and why they lean towards MPIs such as this to try to get rid of some of that frustration.

I suppose I could stand here and quote chapter and verse some of the great moments of my period in this House and some of the great frustrations and dreadful things that went on from various governments of all political persuasions. I was fascinated to hear the comments made on the AWAs and how the whole world of industrial relations is about to fall down. I sat in here for month after month after month during 1989 and 1990, while the worst industrial relations dispute that Australia has ever faced, the pilot’s dispute, was under way. We had the then Prime Minister, Mr Hawke, standing at the table and threatening to destroy people, who had the capacity to destroy lives, and who did destroy lives. He sat at the table there looking at the faxes coming through, all headed ‘Ansett Transport Industries’, completely directed from Swanson Street, Melbourne. What a dreadful way that was to conduct industrial relations in this country.

When you look at the damage that was done then to people whose lives were ruined, to the companies that went to the wall, to the people who went broke, you think to yourself, ‘Isn’t it marvellous that, for the last 10 years, we have had the lowest rate of industrial disputation in our history?’ You think, ‘If we’re destroying the place, isn’t it marvellous that in my electorate’—which admittedly is based on the Gold Coast—‘the unemployment rate is just under four per cent?’ It is sad that we do not have enough trained personnel to take up those jobs that are demanded in my electorate but this government, a government of great action, said to itself that it is not going to allow the Queensland government to take this over. We have said that we are going to build our own technical college and that we are going to train people for industries such as boat-building and food preparation.

Isn’t it marvellous when you look at the trade results and the way in which our export markets have blown out to such tremendous proportions? Isn’t it marvellous about this chamber? That is an interesting thing, Mr Deputy Speaker. The additional chamber for this place has allowed the whole process of democracy to be expanded tremendously. If we are talking about how dreadful this parliament is, it is interesting to note that members of parliament have the capacity to speak on just about anything they like because of the extra time we are given in that additional chamber. But none of that has been mentioned. The fact that we have extended the hours comprehensively to allow private members to bring up all sorts of issues about all sorts of problems their electorates might have and to have additional debate on bills and some of the reports of this place has of course not been mentioned during today’s MPI.

Isn’t it marvellous, as I say, when you look at how exports from this country have gone through the roof? In the other chamber the other day I mentioned a couple of industries in my electorate. The fact that Australia is exporting pate to France really is quite amazing, but that is happening. All of this has happened in the last 10 years. I would think that it is a bit of a long bow to draw that this government is so bad and that the parliamentary processes have been abused to such an extent when we have these record earnings from exports, when we have record employment and the lowest unemployment rate since the early 1970s, when we have this huge demand for young people to go into industry and when we have more people going through tertiary education than ever before. If we are so bad, why the devil do people vote for us? It is interesting that we are sitting here in government with the biggest majority we have ever had—I think this majority is slightly larger than in 1975, or about the same as in 1975—and that the two record majorities to have been held in this parliament since World War II have both been held by a Liberal-National Party coalition.

I think of the expansion of the committee system that has happened under this government, yet the opposition talks about not enough scrutiny of what goes on. Look at the work that is now done by our parliamentary committees and at the fact that we have been able to get into areas that were once virtually taboo. It is my great privilege to be the Chairman of the Joint Statutory Committee on Intelligence and Security, one of the most vital committees that this parliament has ever established, especially in this time of terrorism alerts since September 11 2001. The fact that we have oversight of what is a very important part of our security infrastructure speaks volumes for this government and for the fact that we have now had our parliamentary oversight expanded to cover all our security organisations and various divisions.

Kerry Bartlett (Macquarie, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There’s the Treaties Committee too.

David Jull (Fadden, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Chief Government Whip reminds me of the Treaties Committee, which is a new one. We were always hearing great tales about how dreadful it was that Australia was going into all these strange treaties with overseas countries on all sorts of things. Now this parliament has oversight of those treaties and determines which particular areas we are going to go into—and it just goes on and on.

I was absolutely staggered to hear the Leader of the Opposition make reference to the change to the Commonwealth Electoral Act, saying what a dreadful thing it was that this government was going to tighten up the registration process for new enrolees and for changing people’s names on the roll. The reality is that at the last election 400,000 people had defied the act and had not registered or changed their address, and this is what is going to be done to make sure that people who have the legitimate right to vote are on the roll in time. It is interesting that, when he was talking about the early closure of the roll, the Leader of the Opposition really did not tell us all that is involved in this new legislation. It is true that the roll will close at 8 pm on the day the writ is issued for people not already on the roll. But he did not say that it will close at 8 pm on the third working day after the issue of the writs for people updating their address details and he did not say that people that turn 18 or are due to be granted citizenship during the campaign will also have three working days to update their enrolment. I thought that would have been regarded as sensible and responsible and as being far from anyone trying to corrupt the electoral system.

There are checks and balances in this place. The Senate is performing its role. Yes, it is the first time in many years that the government has a majority in the Senate but that is not being abused. Goodness gracious me, all you have to do is listen to the ABC every night of the week—it is almost as though it is a national disaster—to find out that the Senate is in revolt and that there are government senators challenging government legislation. But at least we on this side of the parliament have the right to challenge legislation and those decisions, and it is something that every member of my particular party is proud of. This MPI has really been a bit of a joke and I am sorry that it came up in this form, because what I was hoping to be debated—the predominance of this parliament—could have been aired today. Unfortunately, it has not. I proudly believe that this is one of the greatest political democracies in the world and that this parliament itself is one of the great institutions of the world.

Peter Andren (Calare, Independent) Share this | Link to 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.

Michael Johnson (Ryan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As a member of the federal parliament and as the member for Ryan, which I have the great privilege of representing in the national parliament of Australia, I simply cannot let some of the remarks of the Independent member for Calare pass without their being totally rejected and repudiated. I do not know how the member for Calare can come into this chamber and say that this country is not a democracy when he has come to this parliament by virtue of the votes of his constituents. What is the member for Calare saying? That Australia is akin to North Korea? That Australia is akin to Cuba? That Australia is akin to Myanmar? It is outrageous of him to make that sort of inference. He should hang his head in shame as an Independent member of the federal parliament of Australia for making that kind of inference. His constituents should give him a big whack at the next election. I hope that his fellow Independent, Mr Windsor, the member for New England, will not go into such ridiculous, absurd and preposterous language. I hope that the member for Calare has not got too much of the Labor Party bug because, if he does, he will be a very sick man.

Anyway, it is very disappointing that the Leader of the Opposition, in his remarks here in the parliament in this MPI debate, tries to condemn the government for its democratically elected responsibilities. Of course, we were elected by the people of Australia in an overwhelming fashion. The people of Australia spoke. They spoke with one strong, loud, clear voice. They very kindly and very generously returned me as the federal member for Ryan with a very strong two-party preferred outcome, and I want to thank them for their confidence in me. I will continue to represent them in the right spirit and with great commitment. I am sure I speak on behalf of all my colleagues in the coalition when I say that they will continue to uphold the confidence that their respective constituents gave to them.

But this matter of public importance raised by the Leader of the Opposition really does smack of intense desperation to become the Prime Minister of this country. The Leader of the Opposition cannot stand here in the parliament of his own volition as a man with a very good education—in fact, I think he graduated from the University of Oxford, much like the British Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair, and they may even have spent some time together at Oxford. It is quite unfortunate that the Leader of the Opposition did not acquire some of the very good ideas that the British Prime Minister has, which he has put into policy in his country. I will give one example to the parliament of the people of Australia: the British Prime Minister talks about how it is very important for people in the UK to get the opportunity of a job and about how important job security is—as opposed, of course, to what the Leader of the Opposition in this country is talking about. He is trying to flip-flop all over the place. He has no ideas, no policies of any substance, but he comes into this parliament with this matter of public importance that talks about a government that is supposedly arrogant, that is only concerned about itself.

Let me tell the Leader of the Opposition, the Labor Party and—through you, Mr Deputy Speaker—the people of Australia and of course my constituents in Ryan what this government is really interested in. This government is interested in national prosperity. This government is interested in creating jobs for young people. This government is interested in creating jobs for people throughout the length and breadth of this great country. We have had incredible growth. We have had incredible opportunities for young people, women and disabled Australians to get into the workforce. During the 10 years of the Howard government, the economy has grown by some 3.5 per cent.

Let me just make a comparison with some of the other economies of the region. This is a very good example of the leadership and the stewardship of the Howard government in terms of its focus. Its focus has been on developing policies that will maximise the opportunities of Australians. Let us just compare a country like Japan. It has had four recessions. Singapore has had three recessions. Hong Kong has had three recessions. Taiwan has had two recessions. Korea has had a recession. Our good friend the United States went into recession in 2001. The Asian region of course suffered a financial crisis in 1996-97.

When this government came to office, it focused very much on policies that would make a difference to the people of Australia, to the families, businesspeople and students of Australia—to the families of Ryan, the businesspeople of Ryan and the students of Ryan, who are studying at the University of Queensland. This government is implementing policies that are making a difference to the men and women of Australia. Our focus is on what counts: the economy, jobs and important issues of employment and national defence; as opposed, of course, to members of the opposition and the Leader of the Opposition. He comes into this parliament, trying to muscle up—as the Leader of the House said—and trying to be someone that he is not. He is not at heart a Lathamesque figure. He is not at heart someone who can muscle up and stand shoulder to shoulder with someone like the former member for Werriwa. He cannot come into this place and pretend he is someone that he is not.

Australian people can see right through this. The Australian people get it right when they go to the polls, and they will see through someone who tries to be someone that they are not. As I said, the people of Australia re-elected the Howard government in October 2004 with a very comprehensive mandate to govern in the national interests of this country. As part of that mandate, they gave the coalition parties a majority in the Senate.

For the life of me, I cannot understand how anyone in the opposition, any members who come to this parliament, including the members who are elected independently and do not belong to any political party, can come into this parliament and say that they have not been legitimately and democratically elected. Of all people in this chamber, the Independent members should acknowledge the democratic voice of the people. The people of Australia have spoken. They have spoken very clearly. They have spoken very comprehensively. They gave the Australian government an opportunity to lead the economy, to make decisions that would make a difference to their lives. Until the opposition get any inkling of this, they are condemned to stay in opposition for many more years to come, because, quite frankly, the people of Ryan and the people of Australia are interested in good governments—strong governments.

I will continue to represent my constituency in this parliament by pointing out how the Leader of the Opposition, the members opposite and indeed the two members of the Independent minor caucus come to this parliament and carry on with all kinds of over the top, extreme language. They say that we are a Cuba; we are a North Korea; we are a Myanmar. They ask: where is the voice of democracy in this country? For goodness sake, get a life. Get a reality check. You of all people come into this chamber, elected by men and women of your constituency, and you talk about this country not being a democracy. That is absolutely absurd.

I want to talk about this matter of public importance. The Leader of the Opposition is someone who—as the Leader of the House has said—has developed a reputation in the country for being a man of probity, a man of goodwill, a man of high regard, a man of popularity. Most regrettably, he is now in this job as the Leader of the Opposition for the second time. With his desperation to become Prime Minister of this country, he has fallen very far short of the high standards that I would like to think he has for himself. He comes into this parliament trying to portray himself as someone with the credibility and the credentials to lead the opposition back into government. I am sorry to say that the Australian people will certainly see through this. No wonder he is quite desperate, with the likes of Bill Shorten and Greg Combet on his heels and other members of the opposition such as the member for Griffith, Mr Rudd, and the member for Lalor, Ms Gillard, snapping away at his heels, believing that they can do a better job than he can.

I am sure that some of them might get that opportunity, but it is the primary interest to the coalition parties to focus on the things that are important to everyday Australians. The Australian economy is one of some $1 trillion. It is imperative that we focus on things that count, such as employment issues. Figures have just been released that show that this country has an unemployment rate of 4.9 per cent—the lowest in three decades. The Leader of the Opposition and the Independents are not focused on how good that is for the people of Australia. They do not comment on the policies that make a difference; they come in here instead with this wishy-washy matter of public importance and talk about things that are of little interest to the Australian people rather than about their families, the economy, education and water. These are top-drawer issues for the people of Australia, and I want to encourage my colleagues in the government to keep their eye on the important matters. (Time expired)

Tony Windsor (New England, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I spent 10 years in the New South Wales parliament. When I have been asked by people over the last four years to compare the two parliaments, I have spoken of this parliament in complimentary terms in respect of the committee processes and the capacity for Independent members to speak on many issues—although from time to time I have been gagged. By comparison I would have to say that, in the four years that I have been here, this has been a better parliament in respect of scrutiny and committee processes than the New South Wales parliament was in the 10 years I was there—which included four years of a hung parliament when, quite obviously, the various systems changed and scrutiny was much closer and better.

What we have seen in recent weeks—and I think the member for Calare hinted at this as well—should serve as a warning to the Prime Minister and to some of the executives within the government. There is no need to go down this road. This parliament does not have to continue down the path it seems to be taking. In the last few weeks the Prime Minister initiated debate on nuclear energy and renewable energy resources, and I applaud him for that. He then brought into this place important pieces of legislation on renewable energy and a whole gamut of issues. On two occasions he used the guillotine to gag debate. There is no need for this parliament to do that. Although the Labor Party did it some years ago, it should not be an excuse for this Prime Minister and the executive to follow suit. Although the numbers provide the capacity to do these sorts of things, it does not mean that they should be done—for example, to guillotine debate and to rearrange Senate committees so they are more favourable to the government of the day.

In my view, one of the great strengths of this parliament compared with the New South Wales parliament is that, under the current government—and I compliment them—there has been scrutiny. No doubt people would say that numbers in the Senate have changed and therefore the government has the capacity to make changes and to stick it into the Labor Party—that the government can stick it into the Labor Party because Bob Hawke or whomever, as the member for Fadden mentioned, did it to them.

I have just spent some time with the William Cowper school—a very good school from my electorate—where I talked about the parliamentary processes. I did not mention the capacity for the government to use the numbers to stick it into the opposition because I do not think the general public, and particularly the children, want this parliament to do that. Just because it happened in the past, I do not think they think it should happen in the future. The mandate that this Prime Minister has been given provides an enormous opportunity to send a different message to the public, for which he would be rewarded at the ballot box. However, if he maintains this path he will not be rewarded at the ballot box. The member for Calare and other members have made some important points. There are messages out there. People are searching for alternatives, and they will eventually find them. It is a great shame that the opposition is not up to the game and that it is allowing the government to pursue this course. But the penny turns—the wheel turns—and there is an opportunity for the government to maintain a degree of integrity by allowing the committee processes to work in such a way that they are not blatantly political, which they were in the New South Wales parliament to the extent that it was just a waste of time being on them.

This place should not go down that path of creating an institution where everybody who goes to a meeting knows the outcome before they go through the door; otherwise the participation in the processes becomes degraded and that flows into the general public arena. So there are warning signs for the government. I would suggest to the government that it does not have to go down this path. Two wrongs do not necessarily make a right. It is no wonder that others in the community are looking at various voting options. If this parliament goes down this path, I will do my level best to assist people in the Senate next time.

The government has been given a great opportunity in the Senate. I was involved in a very small way back in the early eighties, when Malcolm Fraser came in and controlled both houses of parliament. That provided a lot of opportunities—some of which did not happen and some did. Here is an opportunity for the government to do good things. It should not develop a wedge agenda to stick into the opposition. There is a real opportunity to do some good things for this nation. Do not waste that time with the stupidity that is going on in this place at the moment. Prime Minister, if you want an energy debate, let us have one. Do not play wedge politics out there in the public arena by saying, ‘It’s all about Kim Beazley and three mines’ and then not allowing the issue to be debated in the parliament. You have that opportunity in the Senate to set up committees to really look at the energy needs of this country.

Just in the last weeks we have had the absurd reaction of the Treasurer talking in this place about the mandating of ethanol and how that will cause the price of petrol to increase. Then the leader of the National Party, Mark Vaile, went to a conference on the coast and said, ‘We’re in there arguing for ethanol and it will lead to a decrease in the price of fuel.’ We are having all these mixed messages. Let us have a debate about energy—one that has some meaningful purpose for the people of Australia.

The other act of dishonesty that occurred in recent months was by the Prime Minister and the then Premier of New South Wales, Bob Carr, saying to water users that there will be a compensation arrangement made for them to adjust their water entitlements to a sustainable level for the environmental, long-term good of the nation. I applauded them for doing that; it is something that I had argued for many years. But now we find that income tax will be placed upon those compensation arrangements.

In conclusion, there will be a test for the Senate as to whether or not the changes have been appropriate. Currently, the Australian Electoral Commissioner is investigating Tamworth businessman Gregory Maguire because of some issues he has with the Electoral Commission, and those findings will be referred to the Senate for determination. I ask members of the media, many of whom are gathered in the gallery today, to examine this issue when it is referred to the Senate to see whether the government uses its numbers to cover up the issue or whether the reconstituted Senate committee uses the appropriate means at its disposal to examine the issue.

My final words are to the Prime Minister. There is no need, Prime Minister, to go down this road; you can do it differently. You do not have to do it the old way because they had the numbers; you do not have to stick it into the opposition. The people of Australia want you to do it differently. If you do, you will be rewarded; if you do not, in my view, you will be punished and you will deserve to be punished.

Harry Jenkins (Scullin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The honourable member for New England was very charitable and optimistic about the Prime Minister’s attitudes to the parliament. I hope that through this matter of public importance some people in government will listen to and take on board some of the criticisms. This is a time when this government is seen to be out of touch and arrogant, and its arrogance is seen very much in the way it treats the parliament.

I want to go to two aspects of the way in which this place operates. I return to a theme I have raised on many occasions, and that is the lack of ministerial statements. The honourable member for O’Connor led with his chin yesterday when he asked a question about the number of ministerial statements issued in the Hawke-Keating years compared with the number of statements issued in the Howard years. During the 13 years of the Hawke-Keating government there were 349 ministerial statements—on average, 27 a year. During the 11 years of the Howard government, there have been 100 ministerial statements—on average, nine a year. But more telling, how many ministerial statements do you think there have been this year—2006—when we have deployed troops to the Solomons, when we still have troops deployed in Iraq and when we have had discussions of great moment about matters to do with immigration and asylum seekers? There have been zero, zip, nil, none—and I think that that is outstandingly despicable. I regret that the Attorney-General is in the chamber, because he has often borne the brunt of my criticism about ministerial statements. Perhaps, because of his long service in this place, I have set the bar of his performance higher than I should have, but when he was minister for immigration and oversaw the great changes that were made in immigration policy I believe that he should have been in here more often than he was, making ministerial statements.

The final matter I want to raise is the issue of responses to committee reports. Another person I respect because of his longevity in this chamber, the member for Fadden, also raised this matter. If you look at the list of the last published government responses—one is due tomorrow; the last was published on 8 December 2005—you will see listed 74 reports that should have had their responses within the time limit, which is six months. Of those, two had been received and 72 had not been received within the time limit. In fact, only another 26 had been responded to. If you look at the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties, which the honourable member for Fadden championed, you will see that the responses there are four out of five. Matters concerning Aboriginal affairs and Indigenous affairs have been raised, and a report by the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island Affairs, tabled on 21 June 2004, Many ways forward: report of the inquiry into capacity building and service delivery in Indigenous communities, has received no response to date. These are examples of things that must be improved.

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

Shame!

Harry Jenkins (Scullin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On the response to reports—for the honourable member for Calare—I gave the same criticism during the Hawke-Keating years as a backbench member of the governing political party. I think that it is important that executive government understands that it should not display arrogance to the parliament and, through that arrogance to the parliament, arrogance to the people of Australia.

Michael Hatton (Blaxland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The discussion is now concluded.