Joe Ludwig (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Manager of Opposition Business in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

I wish to speak to the motion. Again we see this government move a guillotine. Why? Because of this government’s incompetence to manage the legislative program and the incompetence of the Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts herself to handle the passage of the legislation through this house. The government has to rescue the minister from scrutiny and so this guillotine ensures that there will not be further scrutiny during the committee stage of this legislation and that the Senate will not be able to hold the government to account on these bills. But it is not the first time this government has done this.

This legislation is four broadcasting bills in a package. A total of 25 bills have now been guillotined by this government to push legislation through the Senate to ensure that it will not get scrutiny, that it will not get the proper attention it deserves. We now have an outrageous use of both the guillotine and the gag to make sure that the legislation will not get proper scrutiny.

It is worth mentioning some of the highlights—one could almost say the lowlights—of these bills because what this package of bills represents is one of the most significant changes to media ownership in this country in the last 20 years. It is likely—in fact, more likely—to lead to an increased concentration of media ownership, a rationalisation of news and production services, a loss of diversity of media content and the boosting of the power and influence of a small number of media owners. That in itself deserves scrutiny in the Senate, to ensure that those things can be properly looked at and properly seen.

Not only did these bills suffer at the hands of this government but, instead of ensuring scrutiny in the debate, the government’s handling of the legislation has been a complete shambles, culminating in the government today guillotining the debate, rushing the bills through, giving them the bum’s rush, because the government could not get its act together earlier in the week. The Senate Standing Committee on Environment, Communications, Information Technology and the Arts was not given sufficient time to have a look at this legislation. What you now have, though, are echoes from the government’s own backbench about this bill. Senator Ian Macdonald, during the committee stage in here, expressed disappointment at the very rushed nature of the inquiry. So we now have even the backbench starting to get a little bit nervous about how this government is dealing with its legislative program.

The report by the Senate committee was not tabled until Friday afternoon, and senators were expected, on the government’s original program, to arrive here and debate the legislation on Monday morning without having had time to properly digest the report, without having had time to properly go through it and to contact people who might have an interest and look at issues. But it did not happen on Monday. Why? Because the government was not ready again. On Tuesday it was on again, off again. The way this government runs this place is a complete shambles.

Senator Coonan insisted on the importance of the legislation and that it had to be passed in this sitting, while she scratched around trying to win over senators on her own side, playing to the National Party, playing to the Liberal backbenchers, playing to anyone she could. When the Prime Minister himself sensed that support for this legislation might be flagging, his tune changed. You could see that. He distanced himself from Senator Coonan and distanced himself from the bill. He was letting her hang out to dry. And you could see then, when he said, ‘It’s a second-order issue,’ that he was sidestepping the blast that might have been coming his way and putting Senator Coonan in its path.

But The Nationals came to the rescue. They rescued the Prime Minister, to ensure that the legislation would be passed. It was not only Senator Fielding but also The Nationals who ensured that this bill would be passed.

Since the Howard government has had a majority in the Senate, the committees—the proper forum for scrutiny, where proper debate should happen—have been ground down by this government, ground under its heel. Instead, we now find the government makes shabby and shady backroom deals with coalition senators, with the minister conducting individual negotiations.

That surprised me, really—allowing the backbenchers, the National Party members, to be split up and picked off, one by one. When you look at it, though, it is what the Liberals are doing to you Nationals anyway in each seat—they are picking you off one by one. So it is not surprising that the minister, when she wants to talk to the National Party, talks to them one at a time.

Instead of this, we should have proper process, we should have proper review and we should have proper scrutiny and debate. But this government has abandoned that. If the Prime Minister thinks that that is the appropriate process, that is not what he said when he first got an inkling that he might have control of the Senate. What he said back then was:

But I want to assure the Australian people that the Government will use its majority in the new Senate very carefully, very wisely and not provocatively. We intend to do the things we’ve promised the Australian people we would do but we don’t intend to allow this unexpected but welcome majority in the Senate to go to our heads.

How surprising! I am sure he is now distancing himself from those words as well. He went on to say:

We certainly won’t be abusing our newfound position, we’ll continue to listen to the people and we’ll continue to stay in touch ...

This is now an arrogant, out-of-touch government that is not listening to the people, not ensuring proper scrutiny—and indeed ensuring that the debate will not be aired. What we have is a minister who manages to hide behind the coalition, the backbench, the National Party, Senator Fielding and anyone else she can hide behind to ensure that she does not have to answer questions in respect of this bill. Ultimately this motion will ensure that there will be reduced committee time, so the minister will not have to answer questions. I would not be surprised as well if some of the coalition backbenchers come down to filibuster during that committee debate to take oxygen away from the Senate. I would not be surprised if the minister has already distributed notes for them to come down and ask her some dorothy dixers so that she can filibuster during the committee stage, because she really does not want to take any questions from the opposition about this bill. She can then scurry out of this place and say, ‘I’ve got through another committee process, although reduced.’ We will see if the backbenchers want to participate in that: shame on them if they do.

We saw the same thing happen with the Migration Amendment (Designated Unauthorised Arrivals) Bill 2006. All week the government dillydallied with it. They said that we might deal with it or we might not deal with it. Ultimately the government kept the Senate waiting while they tried to sort out their own internal divisions. Finally they did not bring the legislation on until right at the death knock really. I had come down to give my speech in the second reading debate on that bill and the government told me as I walked in the door that they had pulled it. In this case they have managed to convince the National Party to support them.

The government did not bring this legislation on until Tuesday this week. What we have now is very limited time and very limited debate. When you look at the National Party role in this, you see that they have done nothing short of abandon rural and regional Australia. They have abandoned it in Victoria. The tide is running out on them in New South Wales. And they have now made sure that in Queensland they will also abandon it. This week’s events have been an abuse of the Senate—an absolute abuse of the Senate. They should be ashamed. They should understand that the role of the Senate is to scrutinise and to hold the government to account. They have turned their back on that role. It is an indictment also of the Howard government’s mismanagement and internal division. It shows how ragged and ratty this government is becoming—it really does.

These bills had a very short life, and it is worth considering exactly how these bills went through. The bills were introduced, as I have said, on the last sitting day of the previous session. They were listed for debate on the first day of the sitting session, but the government’s own ineptitude and internal division made sure that they did not come on then. The debate was finally brought on. We had a second reading debate, but we are not going to have scrutiny in the committee stage. You only have to look at the range of amendments that are being proposed and put forward—there are pages and pages of them that are being dealt with in respect of these bills, but we are not going to get proper scrutiny in respect of that. We are not going to find out what all the parts of the deals were that this minister put together because this government is not going to allow a fulsome committee debate to occur. In total what we have had is three short days on the Notice Paper before the government started forcing its changes through parliament.

We had the inquiry referred to the Senate committee on 14 September. You had submissions required by 25 September. So this government is treating with contempt not only this place but also those people who want to make proper submissions to Senate committees when you look at that short turnaround—it was only 11 days. But people did turn their minds to it. There were 71 submissions received. That is because this is a very important matter, and they turned their minds to it in a very short space of time to provide a view. Hearings for the inquiry took place on 28 and 29 September, meaning the committee had only two days to consider all of the submissions in time for the hearing. The committee was then required to finish in just one week, by 6 October 2006. The report was then tabled on 9 October, the same day the debate was meant to commence—but it was available, as I said, on the Friday before. So that is the compressed period we had for debate. That is what the government are now doing in respect of these debates: they are sending them to committees and they are ensuring that the committees do not function properly because of the limited time they have available.

We heard yesterday another complete outrage: the government are now sending bills to committees without the bill. They are simply referring the bill, sight unseen, to a committee. Goodness knows when the committee is actually going to get the bill. Hopefully it will be introduced within that week, but there is no guarantee. So what they have done is say: ‘We have referred the bill to a committee.’ But the committee cannot start the examination because, of course, there is no bill. In any other place it would be a farcical circumstance. I will sell you a Demtel square plastic box with nothing in it as well. That is what the government are doing. They are not setting out the reasons for the referral, what will be in the bill, what the committee should be looking at and what submissions it should be seeking from interested parties. None of that can start because what they did was to send bills off to a committee without the bills themselves.