Robert Ray (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is not just about proportionality. It is about scrutiny and roles. If you do not understand that then you do not understand much about the traditions of a parliamentary system. We have this parliamentary system not just for our benefit but also for yours. With scrutiny, examination and an adversarial form of politics, you perform better. You can see that in countries overseas which have what they call a cooperative system of politics. That is where corruption flourishes. That is where they are all mates together and they are all on the take together. We do not have that tradition and history here. We have a tradition where actions of the executive are highly scrutinised and where public servants do not take the risk of trying to be wide boys because they know they will probably get caught. All of this has evolved in the Senate. It is as though they think that we set up the committee system that they inherited. They say that in the Hawke days all chairmen were from government. That is true. We inherited that from Fraser. We did not set it up that way.