Chris Evans (WA, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

You are not at a Labor Lawyers meeting now, Senator Coonan. You ratted then; we understand that. This is clearly about the argument that government control is good. That is the central proposition of the government. They say, ‘We should be able to control everything because we have the numbers of the Senate.’ That is what this is about. If you are to support the government contention, you have to support the contention that government control of the Senate committee system is a good thing.

We say it is not a good thing. We say there ought to be a check, there ought to be a balance on absolute government control. That is at the core of this. All the other arguments are completely disingenuous and fail to address the key issue: do you accept that the Senate should be controlled by the government? There are two points to that. The government has a majority on the floor of the Senate and, therefore, it can use its numbers to pass legislation. That is absolutely accepted by Labor. The balance of power in the Senate is the result of a democratic election, a decision by the Australian people, and we absolutely accept the result. We must accept some fault for the fact that it occurred, but we absolutely respect the result.

If the government could control its backbench, if it were not so racked by division and so unable to respect the Prime Minister that he cannot even get a resolution through his party meetings anymore—he is fearful of his backbench and that the unity of the government is dissolving and the decay of the government has set in—then the reality is that the government could pass any legislation in this place that it wants. Whatever our view about that is, that is the reality. But now it wants to go another step.

What is the Senate best at? What is it best known for? It is known for its ability to review legislation, to review government action, to scrutinise and to hold government accountable. None of that overturns the numbers in this place. None of that undermines the government’s ability at the end of the day to pass what it wants to in the Senate, provided it can control its own people—and I can see that that is proving to be an increasing problem for it. But none of that goes to the question of the government’s capacity to control the Senate. It goes to what the Senate does best: its capacity to review, to hold government accountable and to scrutinise government actions which otherwise would not receive scrutiny and would not have the light of day shone upon them. What does that? The Senate committees do. The Senate committees provide that scrutiny, that accountability and that review.

What we and the minor parties argue is that that capacity ought to survive against the government’s majority. They still have the power in the Senate. They have the power to argue their case, to participate on the committees, to examine and review, to argue their intellectual case and to present their evidence, knowing that at the end of the day they will win inside this chamber. But what this does is to prevent that process. They will decide which matters are inquired into, what process occurs, when the committees meet and who can appear to give evidence. They will control everything, so the committees will be effectively emasculated. Their power to inquire into things that the government do not want to see examined will ensure that they are not examined.

Government senators who were then in opposition made that very point in 1994. Senator Kemp eloquently made the point that governments do not like to be held accountable. Whether Labor governments or Liberal governments, they do not like being held accountable. As leader of Labor in the Senate, I am prepared to concede that. All governments are guilty of that. The great strength of the Senate is that it has been able to hold governments accountable because they have not controlled the Senate’s committee process. The government, as I said, can pass its legislation and it can implement its will, but this measure prevents it from being scrutinised in doing that. It does not in any way undermine its legislative capabilities or its capacity to proceed as it wants to through the parliament, but it does force it to be accountable, to be reviewed and to be scrutinised.

I ask all thinking Australians to apply their minds to this. If you voted for the government in the last election, fine. If you support the government having a Senate majority, fine. I have no argument with that. That is a perfectly legitimate political view, and it was expressed by many at the ballot box in the last election. But I do not believe those people expressed the view that the government should not be scrutinised. I do not think they expressed the view that the government should be unaccountable. I do not think they expressed the view that the government’s actions should not be reviewed. And that is what is at stake today.

A lot of people who voted for the government in both the House of Representatives and the Senate are and should be worried about holding government accountable, because all governments, particularly when they are dying and in decay like this government, seek to entrench their power. They seek to isolate themselves from critique, they seek to isolate themselves from review and they seek to impose secrecy to prevent the basis of their actions being made public. That is what this is about. So it is important for democracy. This change is fundamental.

We have been dying in the Senate from a death of a thousand cuts: restrictions on questions, restrictions on inquiries, restrictions on returns to order and restrictions on all our accountability measures. But this is a fundamental attack. This is the big one, because it seeks to stop us inquiring into the things that make government accountable. People have to ask themselves: is democracy best served by government being held accountable or by government being able to hide its actions, prevent review and operate in secret? That is what this, at its heart, is about. It is not about all these other issues about numbers on committees. It is about power, it is about control and it is about the government preventing review, scrutiny and accountability. So it is important.

I do not know why the government has been driven to this, other than the sense of decay. It might well be that it fears losing one senator at the next election and, knowing that it will not be able to implement these sorts of changes in the future, is trying to enshrine this in the rules. But, whatever its motive, when the government seeks to abuse its mandate or its functions by using taxpayers’ money on outrageous advertising campaigns, when it seeks to misuse grants and to use them politically rather than according to the needs of the Australian population, and when it seeks to hide donations to its parties by introducing secrecy provisions, or when it wants to appoint its mates to boards like the ABC or the Reserve Bank, those sorts of issues will never be scrutinised because the government will not allow it. We would not have had the ‘children overboard’ inquiry, the regional rorts inquiry or the inquiry into the GST on food.

Whatever your view about those matters—whatever your view on the outcome—the ability of the community to participate in that debate, the ability to have those issues reviewed, the ability to have those issues examined to the discomfort of the government was good for our democracy. That is the role the Senate has played; that is the role that has evolved. That is when the Senate is at its best. To turn back the clock to abandon that development, that evolution, that improvement in the Australian democratic institution of the Senate is a retrograde step driven by power, the need to protect power and the need to protect the government from review, accountability and scrutiny.

This resolution merely seeks to deal with the details. We know the government has made its decision. This seeks to work through some of the details that Senator Faulkner and Senator Ray have raised, which are important issues. But the fundamental issue is government control. At the heart of this is the decision of the government to further exert its control over the Senate by looking to emasculate the Senate references committees. It is a retrograde step. It is against everything that has been good about the development of the Senate’s role. People of all political persuasions ought to be fearful of this development, ought to regret this development and ought to support the reversal of this decision to provide for greater strength of the Senate in exercising its contribution to the democratic process in this country.

No government should be allowed to avoid accountability. It is not good for our democracy. It is essential that the role of the Senate is protected. As I say, whatever one’s political views, this is important for accountability and for the political process in Australia, and we ought to hold this government to account. So Labor supports this resolution. We will fight the government’s attempt all the way. We will fight this when it returns to the Senate next session. This is a classic case of power corrupting and absolute power corrupting absolutely. It is an abuse of the power of the government, and it ought to be opposed by all thinking Australians.

Question agreed to.

Original question, as amended, agreed to.