Alan Ferguson (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Yes, we are. We are not referring them to the Senate committees, because we know the opposition has the majority on the committees and we are not prepared to send them there because of the political nature the inquiry will have. I hope that we get to the stage where we will be able to send matters.

A number of comments have been made publicly in the last couple of days that I want to comment on. I am particularly disappointed by the public comments of the Clerk of the Senate. I know that some people think that it is unfair to criticise comments made by the Clerk of the Senate, but when he enters the public arena as an official of this place, putting a point of view which cannot be challenged publicly—he is not elected; the public have no say in his tenure—I think I can. He said:

It’s pretty clear legislation won’t get amended unless the Government amends it.

That is logic. We do have the numbers in this place, and that is all there is to it. He also said:

Committees won’t be allowed to inquire into anything embarrassing.

I do not know who the Clerk is to decide what the government does and does not allow. He continued:

Committees are given less time to look at bills.

That is true in some cases, because in the past we have had caravans unnecessarily going all around the country looking into pieces of legislation and getting repetitious evidence. I remember the first industrial relations bill, where we had the same union appear before our committee in six different states saying exactly the same thing off exactly the same prompt sheet from the ACTU. The Clerk also said:

Estimate hearings have been shortened.

The opposition never even used the time that was available during the two weeks of estimates. We had a number of estimates committees that knocked off at seven o’clock at night—they knocked off early.