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

I am waiting for a response as well. The Democrats support this reference, not because we do or do not support the legislation but because we operate on the principle that, frankly, if any senator wants to refer legislation to a committee then, unless there is an extremely good reason not to, they should be able to. My understanding, going back quite a long way now, is that that has been the general convention. If there is a clear reason, like it has already been referred once before or it has already been passed through the chamber, then you do not refer it, but otherwise you do. I should emphasise that this is one of those practices which is very important, because it is a mechanism that ensures that the whole place does not become just a number-crunching tyranny of the majority. It is one of those circumstances where an individual can make a request. I am sure it has just been at the request of an individual senator that we have in the past sent legislation to a committee, including, sometimes, private senator’s bills.

To start putting in place a practice of refusing reasonable requests for legislation to be referred to a committee is, firstly, quite a dangerous precedent, in my view, and, secondly, yet another mechanism, and another example, of the Senate being slowly strangled. If any alternative views, any variances of opinion or, frankly, any different ideas are put forward that do not come from the government side, they are just dismissed as being of no significance at all. I think that is a very dangerous practice and it is a very dangerous direction that we are going in. Of course this is not the first example of it. It is just the latest example in what is becoming a very long list of treating the Senate with contempt, treating senators with contempt and treating anybody out in the wider community who is not part of the government with contempt.

It is also an unfortunate precedent. Of course, politics being politics—and I for one would love it to change dramatically in some of its fundamental aspects, but I do not hold out a lot of hope that that is going to happen quickly—the day will come when the current mob will not be in government and the other mob will be, and they will point to things like this and say, ‘You’ve done it; it’s now established practice,’ and everything moves one little notch lower. That is what we are doing here on a whole range of things: we are moving democracy down one little notch each time. Each notch lower that things are moved to, the harder it is to get them back up again and the more difficult things are to reverse. This is another example of that, and I think it is a very unfortunate example—and completely unnecessary.

What possible damage and harm could it do to the government to allow this sort of issue to be examined? We are supposed to be rethinking Federation at the moment. We are supposed to be rethinking the whole power structure between the states and the federal government. The powers and the role of the Australian Capital Territory and how it relates to the federal government are also important issues. Let us start looking at these things. Just because the bill itself is not going to pass does not mean that it is futile to examine the issues it raises. All these things contribute to the public debate—or they would, except for the actions of the government, which are basically to try and minimise public debate through the parliamentary arena, unless it is an area that they control.