Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Corporate Governance and Responsibility) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of answers given by ministers to questions without notice asked by Opposition senators today.

What we are seeing with this arrogant, complacent and out-of-touch government are the cracks starting to appear inside it. We are starting to see disunity and disagreement made more and more public, on a range of issues, day by day. In recent times we have seen a dispute over immigration and dissent within the government on its independent contractors legislation. We have ministers indicating a different view on managed investment schemes. There is a completely opposite view held by two ministers in similar portfolio areas. They come on top of the disallowance motion in which Senator Joyce crossed the floor against the government.

I want to start with the issue of immigration. Senator Vanstone answered questions today in relation to the current fiasco within the government where they are, frankly, seeking to impose a completely outrageous piece of legislation and ram it through this parliament in an effort to appease the foreign policy concerns of the Indonesian government. Senator Vanstone has previously said that she is bending over backwards to listen to her backbench. But what we know from things that people in the Liberal Party have clearly told a range of national newspapers is that the bending over backwards and listening to the backbench occurring does not appear to extend to the way in which the party room has conducted debate in this regard.

We know from both the Australian and the Sydney Morning Herald, and a range of other papers, that it appears that the Prime Minister had to intervene in the party room discussion in order to gag Mr Georgiou, who was amongst a number of members of the government who have previously expressed concern about the treatment of asylum seekers in this country. According to the Sydney Morning Herald, the meeting was described by those attending as ‘really nasty’ and as an ‘acrimonious Coalition party meeting’. We also have, in the Herald Sun, a description of the discussion as being ‘a spiteful exchange amongst government MPs’. That demonstrates a number of things. It demonstrates that clearly there is division within the government. But, in the context of the immigration proposal that Senator Vanstone and the Prime Minister are floating, it is pretty instructive to note that this is such an extreme piece of legislation that even the Liberal Party’s own party room cannot stomach it.

On top of that, we have the position on the independent contractors legislation. This is a very interesting one, because it appears that the divisions within the government come from the left and from the right. There are criticisms one way that it is not tough enough, and criticisms the other way that it is going to be bad for workers. We have Senator Joyce, who on Tuesday was quoted in the Financial Review as expressing real concern about the impact on workers. He is quoted as saying that the legislation went too far and would encourage employers to turn everybody into a contractor. We also know, from other reports, that there is a concern that the legislation does not go far enough, so obviously some aspects of the hard right wing of the Liberal Party think it does not go far enough and are critical of the government for the position it has arrived at. So we have the government being criticised internally from both sides in relation to the independent contractors legislation.

Then today in question time I also asked Senator Minchin some questions about the managed investment scheme. As has been extensively reported in a range of newspapers around the country, there are real concerns in the backbench about the effects that these tax breaks are having on traditional agriculture and on rural industries. It seems extraordinary—and it was interesting to watch Senator Minchin attempt to answer this—that you had Senator Abetz saying one thing and Minister McGauran and a whole range of backbenchers saying another. You have Minister Abetz, who appears to be the lone voice, defending these managed investment schemes, coming out in the Age on 14 June saying that changing these arrangements could prompt an investment collapse in key agricultural sectors, when you have the member for Forrest and the member for Moore and, most importantly, Minister McGauran expressing real concern about the market-distorting effect of these things and their negative effect on traditional agriculture. So you have two Howard government ministers running positions which are 180 degrees opposite. Senator Minchin managed to keep a straight face, which I suppose is a credit to him, but it is quite clear in his answer that they are completely opposite positions.