Alan Eggleston (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

No, you should have listened a little longer, Senator Faulkner. We have dealt with estimates. We are now talking about references to committees. When the committees hold their hearings is very much determined by the membership of the committees.

The other heading Senator Evans had was the ‘who’—that is, who comes to the committee hearings. Again, that is determined by the committees. The committees select the witnesses who will appear before them on the basis of their knowledge, expertise and point of view. We all know, having been on lots of committees—all senators do serve on lots of committees—that after a while there is a pattern. There are people with one point of view and people with a different point of view, but they tend to fall into little groups. That pattern, I am sure, will continue. There will be witnesses invited to appear before these committees who will have a broad spectrum of points of view.

So, in fact and in practical reality, there will be very little change to the way the committees work and the Australian Senate will continue its grand tradition as a house of review. The Senate, I must say, has not always done that as well as it has done it in recent years. The Senate committee system was only established in 1970, I am told. It is a bit hard to know what senators did with their time before that. Certainly in the far distant future, when the electoral system was very different to that which exists now, the proportional system, there tended to be an all-or-nothing principle in the Senate, so that you would get—