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

I said ‘in the far distant past’. Senators tended to all have one point of view. But, under the proportional system, we have a spectrum of views in the Senate, representing, perhaps better than the House of Representatives, a broader spectrum of points of view in Australian politics. Because of that, that broader view will be reflected in the composition of the Senate committees. I am sure that they will continue to conduct inquiries in the manner they have in the nine-odd years that I have been here.

Then there is the question of reports. Senator Evans seems to think that, because the government would chair those committees, the reports would be radically different from the reports produced by Senate committees now. I must say that I find that very hard to comprehend, because Senator Evans knows as well as I and Senators Moore, Abetz and Faulkner that all parties in the Senate will be represented on the committees. Of course, in writing their reports, the senators will again form opinions and no doubt they will fall into party groups. At times there will be unanimous reports and perhaps on many other occasions there will be majority reports and minority reports. If you thumb through the reports that have been presented to the Senate over the last 10 years you will find, surprise, surprise, that that is the way things usually go: you get majority reports, dissenting opinions or minority reports and, every so often, unanimous reports. In terms of the content of the reports and their recommendations, I do not think anything is going to change greatly under this system.

I happen to know that Senator Evans has written a letter to all chambers of commerce in Western Australia, and no doubt to many other bodies around the state, telling them that the government is about to emasculate the Senate committee system, that the Senate will no longer be a house of review—