Rachel Siewert (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I have been in this place for a year. During that time I think it is fairly safe to say that I have been fairly active in the committee process. It may sound a bit strange, but it is some of work that I have enjoyed the most. It is parliament at its best. In most of the committees that I have been on there has been more of a sense of collaboration and congeniality, less of a sense of confrontation. It has been dialogue rather than diatribe.

I may have misheard what Senator Minchin just said about Senator Faulkner making an unacceptable reflection on the coalition. I think I heard him make an unacceptable reflection on the minor parties by saying that one of the good outcomes of the changes concerns the public not taking committees’ involvement with minor parties very seriously, and that we may be attempting to use the committee system. I take that quite a bit to heart. At the moment I am chairing an inquiry into Australia’s future oil supplies. Let me tell you that the community is taking that committee very seriously. We have had over 200 high-quality submissions and a large number of days of public hearings. We have collected a vast amount of information that, if not for this committee, would not be on the public record and would not now be available to members of this chamber and this place and to the broader community.

I suppose I could reflect that the government does not like being confronted with information like this. It is quite confronting for the government that they have been asleep at the wheel on this issue. So it does not surprise me that they may try to get further control of the committees, where they can restrict some of the process and some of the information gathering that goes on.

I would like to take a short time to look at some of the achievements in committees that I have seen in my short time in this place. I will start with the inquiry into petrol sniffing. I was very pleased to be part of a unanimous report that looked at this issue of national significance that governments have known about for some time. This is what I hope is the last ever report on petrol sniffing. It was very pleasing that the government actually responded to at least one of the findings of this report. It rolled out Opal across a broader area of Central Australia. That was one of the very recommendations that the committee made. It is very true to say, I think, that all of the senators on that committee enjoyed that committee and found it very useful, and it was a very collaborative approach. In fact, it would also be fair to say that it was probably very difficult to tell, between the coalition members, the ALP members and the minor party members, who was the strongest on this issue, we were so unanimous in our views on this topic. Look at the salinity inquiry. Again, that was a unanimous report. We canvassed the latest information and science on salinity—information that had not been collected at that stage.

I would like to go back to the oil inquiry, which was initiated by Senator Milne—or the idea was generated by Senator Milne, who is from a minor party. That was accepted in this place and sent to the Senate Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport References Committee. As I was saying, we have generated a vast amount of information. I do not think it has been collected anywhere else in this country. It highlights this extremely important issue. This is at the cutting edge. This information about rising oil prices and the potential scarcity of oil is extremely topical. It also allowed us to gain information from government agencies. ABARE is a classic example. It has actually been shown that this particular agency is in fact not serving our country well with the information that it has been providing. That might also prove to be slightly embarrassing to the government.

There are ongoing inquiries at the moment into national parks and marine protected areas and water. A number of legislative inquiries, I must say, have brought out information that the government in some cases has responded to and in other cases has not. But they actually more fully inform the community. For example, when we were looking at the Welfare to Work legislation it became very obvious that the government had not dealt with the issue of family carers. That is one issue that I have spoken about at length in this place. It is fair to say that the government has taken action on this issue. It has not taken action as fully as I would like it to, but it has taken action. I doubt this information would have come to light if it had not been for the committee inquiry process.

There was the clothing workers issue during the Work Choices inquiry. There were plenty of other issues that came up that the government did not deal with, but it did deal with that one. In the inquiry into carers’ back pay it came out that not enough information was being provided to the community to enable carers to have access to the various benefits that they can have access to. On the land rights inquiry, although the recommendation was not as strong as I thought it should be, the information in that report was provided to the community.

It is also fair to say that the government does not respond to all of the committee inquiries as it should. In fact, I spoke in this place last week on the government’s lack of support for the recommendations in the Senate Community Affairs References Committee poverty report. Again, that information is out there and is used in various forums.

By combining the committees in the way that the government have, they are reducing the number of committees but increasing the workload of all the committees. Therefore, the committees cannot possibly cover the same amount of work that two committees used to do. They cannot possibly adequately cover the work of the reference committees on broader inquiries and the work of the legislation committees. With this proposal, the government are reducing the amount of work that committees can do. How can eight committees possibly do the work that 16 used to do? There is no doubt in my mind that the work of committees will be reduced. The number of issues that they can cover and the number of reviews and inquiries that they can carry out will be reduced through this process.

Committees provide forums and avenues that encourage collaboration and a good working environment across parties, which I believe results in good outcomes for this nation. It is a very significant opportunity for senators to contribute to the good of the nation. I believe that unanimous committee reports are an example of this place working at its best. Senators take on difficult issues, very often at the cutting edge. Australia’s future oil supplies, our water resources, petrol sniffing and salinity are but a few that I have been involved with, and there are many others. The system respects that not all senators are yes-men or party hacks; some have a real desire to advance the wellbeing of our nation and our states. The system represents the needs and concerns of our constituents. It is a chance to diversify interests and learn more about areas in which we are not experts and have little knowledge. Probably one of the reasons why the government is moving to contract the committees is that cabinet and caucus increasingly dominate the views and actions of backbenchers. Committees are a way for people to work outside those processes for the good of the country.

I believe that the role of committees in terms of community consultation and developing good public policy is essential. Committees enable committee members—senators—to be more in touch with the community. They also give community members and groups an opportunity to engage in the political process. Very often people feel alienated by the political process, but when committee members get out into the community and take evidence it enables an opening up of the political process. It gives members of the community a chance to have their say and senators a chance to understand issues in much more detail. It provides an opportunity for much more detailed review, analysis and debate. It is a chance to take issues to the people in capitals, towns and remote communities. It is very important that senators get out of Canberra and their home states and look at the rest of Australia. Committees provide an opportunity to do that. Doing that provides a much better opportunity for open governance and independent review. Surely the real purpose of government is to make good laws for the benefit of the nation. Committees help facilitate that process.

Anybody in a position of power or authority faces real issues in getting good information because of what is known in America as the SNAFU principle: situation normal, all ‘fogged’ up. I understand that in America they use a term other than ‘fogged’, but I thought that I should substitute that word for the other. This principle was developed in the process of looking at research into failures of communication and command in the US military. It became apparent that you do not tell those in power things that they do not want to hear when they hold the purse strings or can make your life a misery. Therefore, I believe it is very important that we have an open process where the people in power who hold the strings and have power over us are not solely in control of the process by which they hear the information. Senate committees provide an ideal opportunity to get around the SNAFU principle.

It is also important that we are seen to have an open process and that we increase public awareness and trust of the parliament, which, I think it would be fair to say, has been eroded substantially. We need to have the ability to elicit evidence and testimony. Committee inquiries often result in recommendations or amendments that improve legislation or policy. There are a number of examples. The petrol sniffing issue is a very good example of where government policy has been improved as a result of the committee process. Legislation has also been improved. When this place sees legislation, very often it has been put together hurriedly and, in some cases, with very little attention given to unintended consequences, let alone intended consequences. The land rights legislation is a very good example of where the government has brought in a raft of amendments that deal with unintended consequences. I know that committees will still have legislation referred to them, but with their increased workload I believe they will not be able to carry out the sufficiently detailed examination of legislation that should take place. They need time to be able to scratch the surface and look into the real issues so that committee inquiries are not seen to be a whitewash—which would increase public distrust, not trust, in the parliamentary process. Committee inquiries need to be open and consultative in order to enable the community to access the process and give us their thoughts.

This place, I believe, will be a poorer place as a result of this attack on committees. In fact, we should be supporting the work of committees more broadly in order to increase the collaboration and collegial work that goes on in committees so that they are given the support that they actually need. I do not support the amalgamation of the committees. I think the government should be reconsidering this so that they are not downgrading the role of committees and are not impacting on what I believe is the democratic work of this place.