Ross Lightfoot (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Time and time again since I have been here I have said to remind myself, lest I forget, what a great honour it is to be in this place, the Australian Senate, where I try to represent the conservative views of decent, hardworking, mainstream Australians. Today, I have looked at the Australian Capital Territory (Self-Government) Amendment (Disallowance Power of the Commonwealth) Bill 2006, brought to the Senate by Tasmanian Senator Bob Brown and wondered, ‘Who is right—Senator Brown with his distinctly different lifestyle or me?’

This bill of Senator Brown’s for an act to abolish the power of the Commonwealth executive government to have the constitutional power to disallow any act of the Legislative Assembly of the Australian Capital Territory, and for related purposes—I look forward to returning to that phrase ‘and for related purposes’ in a moment—this bill by the different Greens, calls for the disallowance of the self government act’s provision for the parliament or the executive, in this case the Governor-General of Australia, to disallow any act of the ACT’s Legislative Assembly. Everyone knows that. This bill of Senator Brown’s seeks to remove that fundamental power of the executive of the federal government, a power integral to a Westminster system involving federal, state and territory systems. Section 122 of the Australian Constitution provides the Commonwealth with law-making powers over the territories. Specifically, section 122 reads:

The Parliament may make laws for the government of any territory surrendered by any State to and accepted by the Commonwealth, or of any territory placed by the Queen under the authority of and accepted by the Commonwealth, or otherwise acquired by the Commonwealth, and may allow the representation of such territory in either House of the Parliament to the extent and on the terms which it thinks fit.

What does this section of the Australian Constitution mean in terms of this bill? It means, without any ambiguity, that the Australian government or its executive, the Governor-General in this case, as I have said, has the power to override any legislation made by that territory that is not in the national interest.

The power to override, or disallow, legislation enacted by territory governments is subject to approval by the Governor-General and may also be disallowed by the Australian parliament which was alluded to by my colleague Senator Humphries. Also, I would point out that Section 35 of the Australian Capital Territory (Self-Government) Act 1988, which was also alluded to by Senator Lundy—an act with its genesis in this place—provides that the Governor-General may, within six months of an ACT enactment being made, disallow ACT enactments in whole or in part or recommend amendments to the relevant act to the ACT Legislative Assembly.

The Australian government does not generally intervene in the process of our democratic, self-governing, albeit limited, territories. In fact, this disallowance power has been exercised only once. I think Senator Lundy may have mentioned that also. It was disallowed by the executive concerning the Australian Capital Territory’s short history, and it is the single instance of the enactment of this disallowance power that has apparently so incensed Senator Brown that he wishes to have these powers completely removed from the executive.

What is this bee in the senator’s bonnet and to what exactly does ‘and related purposes’ refer? It was the disallowance of the Australian Capital Territory’s controversial civil unions legislation that was to give statutory recognition to same sex couples. The disallowance power that was used in respect of this legislation occurred on 13 June this year. Senator Brown did not agree with the exercise of these constitutionally supported disallowance powers, so this bill seeks to remove those powers as bestowed on the Governor-General by both the Australian Constitution and the ACT (Self-Government) Act 1998. Senator Brown’s bill would therefore require that the Australian government draft legislation to override inappropriate ACT law, the bill would then be debated through the parliament and it would be subjected to the normal parliamentary processes. The subsequent development of such a bill could take well in excess of the current six-month period that is currently available under the time limitation to disallow ACT enacted legislation.

The use of the section 35 powers of the ACT (Self-Government) Act is quick and relatively simple, particularly when compared to the process of passing a bill through this parliament, and disallowance must take place within six months as mandated in section 35. It is clear that the existing process of disallowance is more rapid, but Senator Brown wants to chuck out the existing workable laws that permit disallowance by the executive of unacceptable territory laws. He wants the Australian government to make new laws to override unacceptable territory laws. The appropriate laws already exist; Senator Brown just does not seem to like them. This afternoon we are in this chamber debating yet another Greens bill about introducing new laws to repeal other new laws, all because Senator Brown supports same-sex marriages. What a waste of the parliament’s time. Would it proceed to the lower house? I doubt it—there are too many decent people in this chamber for it to do so. I have no doubt about that. I have to wonder what this has to do with representing and upholding the values of hard-working, mainstream, decent Australians.

Senator Brown’s second reading speech refers to the quarter of a million ACT voters, which was actually only 227,000-odd in the 2004 election. Then again, Senator Brown was recently outed as being a little lax on accurate reporting of actual figures; $20,000-odd is neither here nor there, is it, Senator Brown, in your reporting to senators’ interests. Senator Brown’s second reading speech refers to these electors as though they all voted in favour of the civil union legislation, or as if the number of voters in the ACT should somehow exempt its legislators from the constitutions under which they preside. What is the relevance of voter numbers in the ACT 2004 elections? Why not look at the total population of the ACT, which incidentally is 326,700 compared to Western Australia’s more than two million; or the total kilometres of roads in the ACT, which is 2,645 compared to Western Australia’s nearly 150,000; or the number of people using public transport on a daily basis in the ACT, which is 7,500 compared to 25,000 in Western Australia; or the ACT’s 24,800 university students across its four major campuses—and they are good campuses; or something really worthy of the interest of this chamber: the number of hospital beds available in the ACT’s two public hospitals, which are only 1,068, making availability of hospital beds in the ACT the lowest of any state or territory in Australia?

Let us not be side-tracked with figures and issues that are of no interest to Senator Brown. Let us refocus on what is important to Senator Brown—the fact that the ACT’s same-sex marriage legislation was subjected to constitutional disallowance powers. How awful that constitutional powers should have been used in this fashion. What a lot of rubbish. Senator Brown conveniently forgets or totally disregards that, subsequent to the disallowance of the ACT legislation, a bid was made in the Senate on 15 June this year. It was moved, incidentally, by Senator Brown’s colleague Senator Nettle and Senators Stott Despoja and Ludwig. It was a bid to overturn the disallowance and it failed. It failed then and it will fail if and when it is put to the test this afternoon. This failed bid in the Senate is proof that Senator Brown’s proposal to remove certain powers of the Governor-General and site that power within parliament is nothing more than another attempt to grandstand and to waste the time of this chamber and the money of Australian taxpayers. The best thing that could happen is this place is for someone to undertake a survey of the time wasted by the fatuous motions of the Greens.

That aside, Senator Brown already knows what the outcome would have been had the parliament been the sole arbiter of that particular disallowance. There is nothing at all to indicate that any future decision made under the same processes would have a different outcome were it instead subjected to the scrutiny of the parliament. No—the outcome would be the same. Senator Brown would have ample opportunity to procrastinate, posture and pontificate. However, the problems that could be created during the interim—bearing in mind that this process would have to be accomplished within the prescribed six months of enactment of legislation—are immense. Currently, inappropriate legislation can be overridden in a relatively short time simply using constitutionally mandated processes. Why on earth would we want to wait six months?

Really, one would have thought that Senator Brown had better things to do and that the ACT was capable of looking after its own interests, particularly given that the ACT Legislative Assembly, on average, has one elected representative for every 19,000 residents. Presumably Senator Brown feels some sort of empathy with this statistic given that Tasmania is very similar, with one legislative assembly representative for every 19,488 electors. Each of our lower house folk back in Western Australia struggle along representing nearly 36,000 residents. I know you find these statistics riveting, Acting Deputy President Marshall. Presumably those elected representatives are kept busy with matters of greater importance than the failed legislation that brought about this fatuous bill of Senator Brown’s.

The ACT is not Chief Minister Jon Stanhope’s sole bailiwick, nor is it the sole bailiwick of his fellow Labor members. The ACT is not Monaco to France; it is not Lichtenstein to Switzerland. The ACT is an integral part of the Commonwealth of Australia and as such it is subject—and should be—to the Commonwealth laws and the Commonwealth veto.