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

You all know it is nonsense. Apart from something to do with giving the government more chairs, there was nothing at all in the proposal that was designed to improve the functioning of the Senate, nothing at all that was designed to improve accountability and nothing at all that was designed in the interests of the Senate or the parliamentary process in this country. What we are down to after we strip away all the nonsense is that the government by this measure will enshrine its control of the committee system. We will have one committee rather than the paired sets we had previously. But the key change is that the government will have a majority on all committees. The government will have a majority in both the inquiries into legislation and the inquiries into references.

Senator Ferguson and others have made a bit of a thing about how they do not want a minority writing the majority report. I am actually not terribly fussed about the majority and minority report. It is the process that gives us the benefits. It is the process that allows accountability to work. The key issue for us is not necessarily the majority report. The key issues go to what, how, when and who: what issues we inquire into, how we inquire into them, when we inquire into them and who we get to hear from. Those are the key functions that define the committee system and that allow us to hold the executive accountable. What the government has done is to seize control of who will determine what we inquire into, how we inquire, when we inquire and who we hear from. That is what this is about—it is about the government seizing control of those processes. Senators will make those reports, but under the non-government references committee majority the Senate committees were able to go where government did not want them to go. They were able to go to those issues that the government did not want examined. They were able to go to those issues that held the government accountable, and that function will go. It has gone in two stages: one, because the government knocks off the references—it will not allow them to be asked.