Andrew Bartlett (Queensland, Australian Democrats) Share this | Hansard source

If Senator Ian Macdonald wants to genuinely explore these issues—I agree there are genuine issues to explore—then there is a simple course of action: do not vote for this gag. He can explore them completely and fully to his total satisfaction, and the same goes for Senate Joyce, who, I know, also has legitimate concerns. This is the absurdity of the situation: people on the coalition side who express genuine concerns, whether it is about the shortness of the committee process or a lack of opportunity to examine very detailed amendments which only appeared yesterday, then go and vote in favour of motions that restrict their own opportunity to do so. That is the great tragedy here.

I fully understand that we are all in parties. To some extent, we all have to operate within the wider collective good, as it is perceived, for our various parties. But if we are to have any hope at all for democracy—and Senator Joyce was referring to this, I think, yesterday in his second reading contribution—there must be a greater ability for individual senators to vote on issues in a way that reflects the public interest. That is what this is about, when it all boils down to it. I will not go on for long, either, because I recognise that the perverse impact of what the government are doing—even taking up time pointing out the perverse aspect of what they are doing and the travesty of process that they are inflicting on us—takes away time from debating and examining the legislation. So I will be brief.

The absolutely atrocious perversion of democracy that occurs and is occurring consistently with this process, with these most fundamental and crucial pieces of legislation, in a whole range of areas for the last 12 months or more since the coalition government got control of the Senate, simply cannot pass without comment. Senator Ludwig went into those in detail, so I will not repeat them. This simply cannot pass without comment. This motion here will restrict to less than three hours the opportunity for all senators to simply get on the record what the impact of these wide-ranging and complex amendments will be, to put the minister under scrutiny as to what the impact will be and to ask questions and clarify what the impact will be.

It also has to be said that this is not just a matter of gagging ourselves and the Senate by passing motions like this; it actually gags the general public. It seriously restricts the ability of journalists, reporters and independent experts to examine what is before us. This stuff is going to become the law. It is not just some debating tactic or a technique to win the day to get a tick on some political point-scoring board. This is going to become the law for years and years to come. It is simply impossible for people, whether they are in the press gallery or in the wider community and have expertise in this area, to properly and adequately go through the detail of the changes that have been tabled in this place just in the last 24 hours—let alone during the ridiculously short time frame for the legislation as it was initially presented—and examine, highlight and make others aware of what the consequences will be. It is as much a problem of gagging and putting a blindfold on the wider community and people with expertise as it is about the Senate itself. It is a serious undermining of democracy, and it only occurs because every single individual coalition senator votes for it time after time. If they have concerns about the legislation, as I know many of them do, and if they want to explore the impacts then they should not vote for this motion and they will have ample opportunity to explore the legislation fully.