Andrew Bartlett (Queensland, Australian Democrats) Share this | Hansard source

The Democrats support the reference of this matter to the Senate Standing Committee on Procedure. We certainly do not support the government’s amendment. Even on a simple, clear-cut procedural matter like this—such a fundamental matter—they show their colours by once again trying to restrict the opportunity for proper consideration by reducing the reporting date to an earlier period. The government are quite extraordinary. I suppose by now people should have learned not to take any truth in anything that the Prime Minister says, but there was some faint hope I think amongst many people when the Prime Minister did say after he unexpectedly managed to get control of the Senate after the last election that the government would use that power humbly and responsibly, they would not let it go to their heads and they would not use it arrogantly. Of course, every single action of the government since then in the Senate over the last 12 months has given the lie to the Prime Minister’s statement.

There has been a clear indication time after time of a willingness by the government to deliberately and calculatedly use their majority in and their control of this Senate to slowly strangle and asphyxiate the ability of the Senate to do its job as a house of review. Whatever else you might ask the public of Australia on the role of the Senate—and there are a lot of people, of course, that do not know an enormous amount of detail about how our parliamentary system works and how politics works—if it is one thing they know that the Senate is there for, it is as a house of review and a check and balance on the government. That is the one thing that this government has set about, in a very calculated way and slowly but surely, trying to eliminate.

It is interesting, though, to hear Senator Ellison’s pledge. He said it a number of times. He said that the government’s proposal will increase the amount of Senate estimates scrutiny. I hope that does not just become yet another misleading statement to add to the enormous pile of dishonest statements that we have had from senior members of this government over many years and particularly over the last 12 months, when they seek to falsely describe what they are doing in regard to the Senate. Up until the last Senate estimates hearings, you had the total number of Senate committees that have Senate hearings—and there are eight committees—