Julian McGauran (Victoria, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

No, I am not. But I have absolutely no doubt that in government there will be a rush for the chairs, as there will be for the deputy chairs. I suspect the Labor Party will hold all 10 of the deputy chair positions.

In essence, it would be odd not to take up the chair positions. It would be like rejecting your own mandate—how absurd! Now we have been given the majority, we ought to take up the mandate that people have given us. What each speaker from the other side—one after another, be it from the Labor opposition or the minor parties—is really crying about here is the fact that we have a majority. They still will not accept the people’s choice. They will not accept this government’s mandate. They seek to frustrate, to filibuster and to use the procedures. They use every single tactic, including no less than the Senate committee system. It is a wreck. You have abused it. It ought to be changed and streamlined, and the government ought to hold the chairs.

The system that we are proposing is really one that, as you know, combines the legislation and the references committees. It might surprise some of those listening, but currently the legislation committees and the references committees have the same policy portfolios, the same secretariats and quite often the same members. You get this absurd situation, as I know from the rural and regional affairs committee, to which I have belonged, where, when the legislation committee changes to the references committee, there is a new chairman, who was the deputy of the legislation committee. So the deputy and the chairman switch places, and it is an absurdity. It is an efficiency to simply combine the two and just have one. It is in disarray. The duplication ought to be rectified. It is in disarray because you have abused the reference system, as has been outlined here by Senator Ellison.

The abuse of the reference system in here is mostly by the minor parties, who bring spurious references onto the floor, trying to get their political points up to a committee to which the opposition hold the majority. They have already made up their minds how they are going to bring down their recommendations. One of the best examples that I was involved in was the moving of a motion by one of the Greens—Senator Siewert, I believe—in relation to the AWB and the Iraqi trade situation. In the middle of the Cole royal commission, they wanted to set up a reference committee inquiry—by a committee that she chaired, I believe—to bring down their own points of view and political slant on the whole matter. The government had set up a royal commission headed by the respectable chairman and Chief Justice Mr Cole, with all its openness, accountability and scrutiny. But they wanted to take it a step further, simply because they controlled a Senate committee.

It is true to say that since 2004 the government has controlled the referral of references on the floor of the Senate. So all we are discussing is the chairmanships of these committees. The government already controls the references, so do not come in here and say that there are going to be fewer references being referred to the Senate committees now that they have been combined. We already control the number of references that go to the committees, on the floor of the Senate. So all we are debating is chairmanships. I think what you are really upset about is the loss of the chairmanships, and the loss of the payments that goes with them. Equally, the legislation committees have been very free flowing. You need not fear the level of scrutiny that will come out of the new legislative committees, given the vigour and the rigour with which they already undertake inquiries.

You only need to look at two reports—both from committee inquiries chaired by the government—that have been handed down in the last week or two. One was from an inquiry by a legislation committee chaired by Senator Heffernan and it handed down the citrus canker report. It is a very strong, rigorous report that is quite critical of AQIS and government departments. That was chaired by a government chairman. Also, as you all know—as it has been a source of debate—the Legal and Constitutional Legislation Committee has inquired into the provisions of the migration amendment bill. This is another rigorous report from a legislation committee, chaired by a government member. This side of the house has the freedom to scrutinise and to bring the government to account if it sees fit. And it has, and the evidence is there. When was the last time a Labor Party member—or a minor party member, for that matter—stood out and wrote a dissenting report against his own party’s position? There has been no such thing. When was the last time a Labor Party member crossed the floor? You never see it. They are the ones who cannot scrutinise. They are the ones who act in uniformity. They are the ones without the freedom that this side of the house has to bring the government to account or to improve the legislation. As I say, we have had two reports in the last couple of weeks that prove that.

Let us go through the absurdity of the previous speaker, who raised the matters of a lack of debate, with the use of the guillotine, and the reduction of questions in question time. On question time: the government—now holding the majority, with its numbers increased by two—simply went from four questions to five questions. The Democrats, who lost numbers, lost the question that the government picked up. That is pretty fair. The Labor Party did not lose any questions at all; it had six questions prior to the government holding the majority and it still holds six questions post 2004.

Where is the injustice in that? It is just ranting and raving. And we have the two biggest ranters and ravers in the chamber now; watch the decibels go up when Senators Faulkner and Ray stand up. They will be putting on all the feigned complaint and expressions that they can. There are no two people that would act more on a majority, should they be lucky enough to get one, than those two over there. Watch all the feigned anger and disgust, as we saw with the last piece of legislation. It is becoming tiresome, if nothing else, Senator Faulkner. You only have one gear. We saw you stand up yesterday in relation to the electoral bill and heard the same thing: damnation. You will get up soon and do the same thing again. The truth of the matter is that these changes are both efficient and necessary. This is simply the government carrying out its mandate, as it ought to.

When it comes to guillotines, according to the record I have in front of me, Senator Ray has 52 times enacted the guillotine—the so-called stifler of debate. I might agree with Senator Ray and say that it was simply time management, that it was necessary for his government to carry out its mandate and that there may have been a little bit of filibustering going on by our opposition. It may well have been the case. But the point is that you did not hesitate to bring in the guillotine. Of course, Senator Bob McMullan held the record of 57 times. So do not come in here and say we have used the guillotine to stifle debate when, when you were in government, you did exactly the same thing.

One of the reasons we are moving to change the system—and I made this point before—is efficiency. And the change is efficient: 10 legislative committees to match 10 portfolios, instead of 16 committees. We currently have the same secretariat and, basically, the same members representing two committees—what an absurdity! I think anyone would agree that that ought to be concertinaed into one. We wish to hold the chairs because we are not going to be party to the opposition and minor parties’ abuse as chairs and majority holders in the references committees. Legislation has been shunted off to those committees. Senator Ellison listed an array of legislation shunted off to references committees—