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

I deliberately did not attend and I asked Senator Ludwig to be my proxy. At the heart of this there are two issues. One is the question of whether we ought to be moving to a single committee system with a government chair, and there is a set of issues that flows from that in terms of numbers of committees, numbers of participants et cetera. The Procedure Committee dealt with those detailed questions, but the government made it very clear that the fundamental issue would not be debated at the Procedure Committee. I do not want to disparage what the Procedure Committee did, because I think they did the best job they could with what was given to them in terms of the underlying principle.

My beef, my argument, my serious concern is with the underlying principle. I made that clear when Senator Minchin announced he would be making those changes and I make it clear again today. What we have now is, if you like, the emperor with no clothes. The clothes have been removed. We had, when Senator Minchin sought to bring these changes on, a pretence of some intellectual support for the changes. A whole rash of claims was made about what these changes would bring for the efficiency of the Senate’s operation. All that is gone—all that is long past.

When the Procedure Committee got down to the discussion and the detail, I think it became obvious to all there that Senator Coonan’s suggestions were unworkable and we went back to, fundamentally, the system that we had but with one major change—the change that the government was going to insist upon: a government majority in all of the committees of the Senate. That is what this is about. Forget all the other rubbish, forget all the other contributions about numbers of committees, how many senators are on them and that stuff, which is of interest to a few in this chamber, but that is all. People listening to the debate, people who are interested in the future of the Senate and the future of parliamentary democracy in this country, only need to understand one thing: this is a change by the government for the government. This is the government taking control of the Senate and entrenching its power to control what the Senate does. That is all this is about.

To be fair to Senator Ferguson, towards the end of his remarks he was fairly honest about that. It is purely about power, purely about the government saying, ‘We have the numbers, we intend to use them and we intend to change the system to enshrine that power.’ Whatever happened to having 10 committees rather than eight because that would provide more committees et cetera? That is all gone. What happened to the claims that we would have more hours of estimates committees? That is all gone. What happened to dealing with the fact that we have to strengthen the committee system? That is all gone.

It is all gone because it was all nonsense—it was all window-dressing. It was all designed to try and give Senator Minchin something to hang on to when he tried to justify what was really going on. All those fig leaves have gone and we are down to the tintacks. We are down to what this is all about. What this is all about is power. It is all about the government seizing control of the Senate committee system. Anyone who knows anything about it knows that.

The other beauty was the claim that this was an evolution. It is an evolution and therefore we are going back to the system we had in 1994. Am I the only one who notices that there is some sort of inconsistency in that? We are going to have an evolution and we are going to go back to where we were. It is complete nonsense.