Gary Humphries (ACT, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I make a point of asking people what they think about these issues. I have approached plenty of people to ask them what they think about this, but the point I make is that nobody has come to me and said, ‘You ought to support Senator Brown’s legislation.’ I note that the ACT government, which was very happy to lobby me on the disallowance motion, has not bothered to express a view about this one way or the other. No doubt if I ask them they will tell me they support it, but I meet with members of the government regularly and there has been no indication of any view whatsoever on this legislation.

The fact is that I do not think this is a matter that greatly agitates the people of the ACT. Senator Lundy might report that she has had deputations, emails and letters on the subject, but I would be very surprised if she truthfully told us that that was the case. Frankly, I am very wary about adopting anything that the Greens put to me in the first place. I recall during the disallowance debate on the civil unions that I was urged earnestly by Senator Brown in the debate to support him. He particularly pointed me out and said, ‘You should do this, Senator Humphries; you should support this disallowance motion.’ I did and was promptly attacked by the ACT Greens for taking that position. They immediately doubted my sincerity and bona fides in taking the decision. So Senator Brown can understand why I am a bit hesitant to take his advice on this occasion. I wonder what sort of trap I am being led into by the Greens in such circumstances. I look forward to being assured that I am not, but he will understand that I am a little wary of the promises he makes.

Both Senator Brown and Senator Carr have repeatedly referred in this debate to the civil unions episode as justification for this course of action, but I believe that what they are doing is overreacting to that situation and that they are phlegmatically responding to that incident without thinking through the consequences of what they propose. What they propose is to exclude the possibility that in the national interest it might be appropriate for the federal government to exercise a power over a government and a parliament that it itself created through its own enactment. It is the child of the federal parliament, do not forget. I cannot foresee many circumstances where this would happen; I also cannot exclude the possibility that it could. If it were in the national interest, on a national security issue, for example, it could be appropriate in those circumstances. We ought not to exclude the capacity of the executive to act in accordance with section 35, particularly given that we have the safeguard or protection that the decision of the executive can be, and almost certainly would be, reviewed by the federal parliament in a debate of the kind we had not long ago.