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

I do not know whether Senator George Campbell is on the speakers list but I am sure he can get on it if he wants to. The changes that were made to the committee system in 1994 also reflected the numbers in this place. All that we are proposing is returning to the pre-1994 situation where the make-up of committees from the Senate will reflect the numbers in this place. The government majority in this chamber will be reflected in the proposal to have eight committees in which the government has four members, the Labor opposition three and the minor parties one.

I listened with interest to Senator Ray’s contribution because I respect his contributions. He has had a long period of time in this place and he has seen many changes. I was not enamoured by his opening remark that this was the ‘execution of the committee system’. If we are to believe that this is the execution of the committee system, does that mean that the committee system that was in place for all of the Hawke Labor government and for a portion of the Keating Labor government did not work? We are only reverting to the numbers that were in existence throughout the whole of the Hawke Labor government. Yet Senator Ray says that this is the ‘execution of the committee system’.

He also said we should wait and see whether the chairs would be taken away from the government should the numbers change in the future. The opposition did not take away the chairs of committees when it changed the system in 1994. As a matter of fact, part of the agreement was that it would ensure that the government chaired all legislation and estimates committees, even though the government was in a minority. We ensured that that would happen. My recollection of those days is somewhat different from Senator Ray’s. I remember the proposal being explained in our party room, and one of the things that was explained to us at that time—whether it was a misapprehension, I am not sure; Senator Ray may think it was—was that legislation committees would deal with legislation, and all other matters would be referred to the references committees, which had taken over the place of the general purpose committees. I do not believe, certainly from my own recollection, that it was ever mentioned to us that legislation, if it was on a broad range of matters, could go to a references committee, as was the case in the last parliament and the parliament before it where matters, particularly of contention or of a political nature, were sent to references committees where the opposition always had the majority.

He talked about select committees. I am trying to recollect how many chairs of select committees went to the government, to reflect the numbers in this place. To the best of my knowledge, in the last six or seven years there has not been one select committee where a government member has been appointed to the chair. It was always either a Labor member who chaired the committee, with equal numbers to the government of the day, or, on one or two occasions, there were minor party chairs of select committees. Certainly, if we are talking about sharing select committee chairs around, to the best of my knowledge no select committee since we came into government has been chaired by a government member. So we talk about a reflection of the numbers in this place.

I do not intend to debate the issue of question time. That is a debate for a separate day. I have some personal views on question time which do not necessarily reflect the views of my party. I have always believed that for parliaments of both political persuasions question times are a farce. The best question time system I have seen is that which takes place in both the British parliament and the New Zealand parliament where you do not have the opposition asking questions they hope the government cannot answer and the government asking questions the ministers know the answers to. I do not think that is a very sensible way to conduct question time and never have, but that is a debate for another time and another place.

I do agree with the comments of Senator Ray when he said that once we got to the situation where we knew that the opposition was opposed to the change of committees per se, and once it was recognised that the changes would be made, the Procedure Committee got together to come up with the best outcome possible under the arrangements that had been proposed. I believe that eight on a committee is the best number for this place to be able to service, with four government members, three opposition members and one minor party member. Hopefully with eight people on a committee we will never get to the stage where committees, when they are looking at references, will visit other states of Australia with only two or three members of that committee. I think if people take the trouble to make submissions it is the responsibility of committee members to do their utmost to be there. So I think the fact that we are going to have eight on a committee is a step in the right direction.

The other significant change, which for want of a better term one might call the substitutes bench, was raised—and I am sure my colleague will not mind me saying this—by Senator Parry in our party room. Senator Parry said, ‘In order to solve this problem of substitute members, why don’t you run a substitute bench?’ Although we have not done quite that, I think the change of membership where we will be allowed to substitute members by way of letter offers much more flexibility, and I look forward with interest to see how well this works. I think it could be one of the very positive changes to come out of this procedure report, and it should ensure that we do not get a situation where there are only one or two people attending a committee hearing. There will be other people who will be prepared to take their places.

I agree with Senator Ray that our estimates system is one of the best in the world, and there is no proposal whatsoever to change that. I think the estimates system has worked well. At times I hear questions being put by the other side, saying that we are reducing the time of estimates. The estimates committees that I was on in May never went their full times because there were not enough questions to keep the relevant departmental people and ministers there. So all of this talk about cutting down on estimates time is a furphy, because if you cannot use all of the available time that is there at present then there is no need for extra days. I agree with Senator Ray—I believe that the way the estimates system works and will continue to work is one of the most transparent systems in the world, and I hope that it stays that way for all the foreseeable future.

It has been raised that the government has not allowed some references to be sent to reference committees in the past 12 months or so. I would pose the rhetorical question as to why any government would allow a political reference to go to a committee where a minority opposition can write a majority report. Why on earth would any government do that? I know that if the Labor Party were in our position they would not let it happen. They have cried foul about some references which could be deemed political, rather than information seeking, not going to a Labor-controlled committee so that a minority of people in this place can write a majority report. I do not believe that is democracy. We looked at it at length when we discussed which references should go to committees.

Senator Bartlett raised the issue of the chairs of the House of Commons committees, and I notice that Senator George Campbell by way of interjection raised it as well. It is like comparing chalk and cheese, because they are lower house committees. In the House of Commons, when they do have chairs of committees from both parties, the government always has a substantial majority on each of those committees. The only thing that is rotated is the chair, and the last time I looked something like 65 per cent of the members were from the governing Labour Party, even when there was an opposition chair.