Joel Fitzgibbon (Hunter, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to express my disappointment with the government's behaviour in the Senate. As we speak, the government leadership in the Senate is tearing up the rule book on longstanding pairing arrangements. It is a long held bipartisan view that voting in the Senate should reflect the will of the Senate, and that each state is entitled to have the 12 votes in the Senate that it's entitled to and in a way which reflects recent elections. The government is at the moment walking away from those principles. This is deeply distressing to me. As a member of this parliament for some 22 years, and as a former Chief Government Whip, I understand the importance of adhering to these longstanding principles and how important they are to the effective operation of the Westminster model. They are not principles that either major party should walk away from lightly.

But there's another reason I'm very concerned about the Mexican stand-off now playing out in the Senate. The reason is a boondoggle known as the Regional Investment Corporation: a very bad proposed law, a very badly constructed piece of legislation. It is a bad idea, and one which is no more than a pork-barrelling exercise in a town where the Nationals recently suffered a major defeat in a state by-election.

The opposition is opposed to this shocking waste of taxpayers' money. I am sure we will be unsuccessful in defeating the bill, but along the way we have at least been trying to improve the bill, to improve transparency, to improve accountability and to improve the governance arrangements within the bill or, more importantly, the lack thereof. Our amendments in large part reflect the recommendations of the Senate Standing Committee for the Scrutiny of Bills, which gave one of most damning reports on a bill that I have seen in my 22 years in this place.

Most of those amendments were defeated in the Senate, unfortunately, but each of them was defeated by the barest of margins. Indeed, one of them was lost on a tie vote. When those votes were taken—there were more yesterday; one of which we won, by the way, I'm happy to say—Jacqui Lambie was voting in the Senate. At that time the opposition, the Labor Party, was granting pairs to both Senators Canavan and Nash. If we had not done so those amendments would be part of the ongoing debate as we speak. But of course we did allow those senators to be paired in adherence to those longstanding principles. We cost ourselves the opportunity to win those very important amendments. But now with Jacqui Lambie not in this place, they are denying her a pair. They are, by the way, providing a pair to the Nick Xenophon party—another minor party. So the pairing arrangements seem to still be in place for everyone but the Jacqui Lambie Network. I ask the parliament: what is the difference?

I heard Senator Cormann say in the Senate yesterday: 'We don't know what Jacqui Lambie would be thinking about this bill. We don't know what she would do in the context of the debate if she were here.' Well, I thought that was not that bad a point, and he made it notwithstanding that, in her last speech, she made it very, very clear that her party would be voting against this bill. So, I rang Jacqui Lambie yesterday. In addition to reinforcing her view on the phone, she decided that she needed to send me a text. I will quote it verbatim: 'As the leader of the Jacqui Lambie Network, I want to make it clear we do not support the RIC in its current form.' I say to the government in the Senate: 'Don't push us. Don't walk away from the pairing arrangements. We will stand our ground and the pairing arrangements will be dead.' My advice to government members in the Senate is to defer the consideration on the Regional Investment Corporation bill until next year so we can all take a chill, discuss the bill and further reflect on pairing arrangements. I say to Mathias Cormann and others in the Senate: 'We are very serious about this. We will not wear this. We will not allow it. Have a think. Defer this bill.' (Time expired)