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

Perhaps you might get my point here, Senator—the notion that, occasionally, in a minority of cases, having a policy matter sent to a legislation committee is no more out of order or a deliberate distortion of the Senate than occasionally having legislation sent to a references committee. It has happened both ways. It happened again with a committee that reported just yesterday. I am not saying it should not have happened. There are occasionally reasons why it happens. The point is that it has happened more than once with the legislation committees, particularly with the rural affairs legislation committee, and that is fine. The key aspect is that the broader purpose of having wider committees that are able to take comprehensive inquiries that are not controlled by any one party is something that has been widely accepted by all sides of politics ever since those changes were brought in in 1994. The only thing that has changed now is that the government sees an opportunity for a power grab to try and entrench its power and try to further restrict the opportunity for proper scrutiny.

Let me say that this is not just a matter of contempt for the Senate—although it is certainly that. Of much greater concern to me is the fact that it is a contempt for the public. We all know that there is a growing disillusionment amongst the community about their inability to connect with the political process. They are feeling that they cannot make a difference, that politics is just a bunch of politicians who come to Parliament House and do what they want and the community can get stuffed. One of the key areas where the public has felt that they have been able to make a clear difference, one of the key areas that still retains credibility as a viable mechanism for public consultation in the political and parliamentary process has been Senate committees. That is why this government want to destroy and discredit them. They want to discredit them because it suits this government to have the public alienated and disconnected from the political process. It suits this government to have the Senate discredited. It suits this government to have the parliament seen as an irrelevancy, because then they can do whatever they want. Everybody will feel that there is nothing they can do about it to change it, so they will just sit there and leave it alone, and maybe they will vote differently come the next election, but in between elections the government can just get on with doing whatever it feels like. That is the definition of an elected dictatorship, and that is clearly what this government most desires to achieve. I believe it is a serious degrading of the credibility of our democracy with the public.

We all know from Senate committee inquiries we have been involved in that many of the public do make an enormous effort to get involved in them. People spend a lot of time putting together submissions. Community organisations that are often overstretched nonetheless still put in the effort to put in submissions. We would all know that, even when we do go to hearings outside of Canberra, to other capital cities, people from regional areas will still drive four or five hours each way just so they can come and have half an hour before our Senate committees to tell us what they think. For them to feel and to realise that that process is going to be further restricted, that we will have fewer hearings outside of Canberra, that we will have fewer hearings at all, that we will have shorter inquiries with fewer opportunities for submissions and that we will have more reports that pay less attention to what people say when they do get the opportunity to have a say will degrade the credibility of the political process as a whole.

If there is one other thing that this government have done that quite clearly discredits the inquiry process and which they are continuing to do regardless of these changes—they are already doing it—it is their lack of interest in responding to committee reports. We have all of these processes and even government members who are genuinely involving themselves in the committee process, putting a lot of work in and genuinely trying to reach common ground to pull together all of the evidence from people across the community, and putting forward a comprehensive report with solid, non-partisan, unanimous recommendations with guidance for government and others in the community, and there is no government response.

I could use the example of the Senate Environment, Communications, Information Technology and the Arts References Committee, which I currently chair. Prior to my taking on the chair, the committee did a unanimous report in to the very important area of invasive species and made very substantial recommendations, based on a lot of input from people, including of course people in regional areas, where it is a major problem. More than two years later, even though it was a unanimous and non-partisan inquiry and report, there has been no response. It does not mean that nothing has happened. Things have happened that reflect what the committee has recommended, but there has been no response from the government.

It is important to emphasise that, whilst I do not say every committee inquiry has been perfect or even of enormous value, a very large number of significant and important reports have been brought down by these committees which have had non-government chairs, as there have been important reports brought down by committees with government chairs. I am not saying that government members should never chair committees, but I am saying that if you have Senate committees that, in every single case, are simply another vehicle for channelling the desire of the executive arm of government then you will inevitably have fewer and fewer occasions when those inquiries are of genuine value and are actually open-minded attempts to try and explore the full range of possibilities in the community.

We have had a large number of unanimous, constructive, non-partisan reports from committees that have been chaired by non-government senators—and I will not just point to my own committee, although I could use another example, that of the salinity inquiry report that was just tabled by the Senate environment committee that I chair. I could use the example of Senator Moore from the Senate Community Affairs References Committee, who, just yesterday, tabled a very important report into petrol sniffing. It had unanimous recommendations not just from Labor and Liberal senators but from Democrats and Greens senators as well.

We had the Senate Select Committee on Mental Health, chaired by my colleague Senator Allison. Again, that was a very important and very influential committee which produced a number of unanimous recommendations. We had the inquiry of the Senate Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade References Committee—which I think was chaired by you, Acting Deputy President Hutchins—into the military justice system. It produced a very important, very influential and unanimous report.

In saying this, I am reflecting positively on the role that government members play in that context. This is not a reflection on all Liberal Party members of the Senate back bench. What it is saying is that the inevitable consequence of all Senate committees simply being another mechanism through which the executive arm of government can control proceedings is a strangling and a suffocating of what is happening. We all know that, unfortunately, not always for the best, Senate committee chairs are prizes to be handed out. They are another mechanism for controlling people, where people can get a prize if they behave in the right way and do not get that prize if they do not.

This is another mechanism for further restricting the opportunity, I would suggest, even for government senators to more fully be able to independently express their own views. It will further restrict the ability of government members to have freedom because they will have less excuse, if you like. If they are in a committee that is chaired by other people and where nobody has control of the numbers, there is much more of an understanding that they have to try to find common ground and find a way through. If a government member is seen as controlling that committee then there is much greater pressure on them to act and deliver in accordance with what the government wants. There is much greater interest in any potential minor shift from the government line. That, I suggest, leads to further constraints in the ability of the Senate as a whole—all of us, from all parties—to do our job in a much more constructive way. This is a very serious move. Let us not underestimate how significant this can be if it is done in a way that further allows government control. (Time expired)