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

Yes, indeed. I think that Senator Evans is guilty of gross misrepresentation, for the reasons that I have already been through in this discussion. The Senate is going to be preserved and protected in its role as a house of review. As I said, we will still have Senate estimates hearings and the Senate committees will still conduct inquiries into various matters. The fact that we are amalgamating the Senate legislation and references committees is really taking the Senate committees back to how they were when they were first introduced in 1970 and as they remained until the mid-nineties.

As I said before dinner, around the world, the concept of having a dual committee system under a single name or heading is something of an aberration. If you go to the United States Senate you will find that there is the United States Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the Committee on Ways and Means, but there are not separate legislation and references committees; there is just one committee. Likewise, the House of Commons in the United Kingdom does not have a dual committee system. There are select committees which cover portfolios—an education committee, a defence committee or a health committee—and it is a unitary system. In Jakarta, at the National Assembly of Indonesia, interestingly enough they have what they call commissions, which are essentially the same as our committees. They do not have a references commission and a legislation commission for health, education or defence; they simply have commissions with numbers—commissions one to nine—and designated purposes. The members of those commissions, who come from all parties, contribute to the deliberations of those commissions.

It is very hard to find anywhere else in the world which has the rather curious dual system that we have in the Australian Senate. Even though the system is unique, it has to be considered something of an aberration. In fact, it must be regarded as a very inefficient way of doing things. Why have two lots of committees covering the same ground when you could have one committee, which would obviously have great efficiencies? It means that it would be easier for the staff. In fact, under our system we will expand the membership of each of the committees so that the senators who are on both committees, the references and the legislation committees, will very largely fit into the new committee system. The fact that we are bringing our committee system into line with those of parliaments around the rest of the world is really a very important point to bear in mind. As I have said, our whole committee system has been something of an aberration. We are simply streamlining it and making the system more efficient.

I find that the whole approach of the Labor Party to this matter does not seem to ring true. After all, from 1970 through the era of the Whitlam government and then through almost the whole era of the Hawke and Keating governments, the Labor Party was content to have a unitary committee system. It was a system which set up the house of review function of this Senate and which was regarded as working very well.

Just to summarise, in my opinion the role of the Senate as a house of review will continue under this new arrangement in a very effective way and the Australian Senate will continue to be respected around the world for the role that its committee system plays, especially in estimates, in examining the executive and in calling to account the expenditure of the government. As I have said, the changes will bring Australia’s legislature into line with other important legislatures, including the United States Senate, the House of Commons and many other legislatures around the world which have unitary systems. It is very interesting: no-one at all in this debate has come up with the name of another parliament which has a duplicate committee system of the kind which the Australian Senate has had up until this legislation was proposed. With that, I conclude: I believe that this committee system will work effectively, well and in the best interests of the Australian people.