Chris Evans (WA, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

This is a very important issue today because it is a clear example of how this government intends to abuse its majority in the Senate. This is as clear an example as you will find of the arrogance and contempt with which the government now treats the Senate and the Australian people. This is an absolute abuse of power. The government is using its majority in the Senate to deny Australians the right to understand and debate the introduction of an access card—or national ID card.

This is an issue that is fundamentally important in Australia; it is fundamentally important that Australians have the right to understand and debate the issue. But the government comes in here today having abused the selection of bills process, which is generally operated on the basis of cooperation, and says: ‘No, you can have an inquiry. We can pretend the Senate still works, we will keep up the farce, we will pretend that we respect the institution of the Senate, but we’re going to slip through one of the most contentious bills in the history of the nation by having a quick and dirty inquiry that we will control. In a matter of weeks we will have had the inquiry, we will have had the facade of a democratic process, but the Australian people won’t have seen the bill and they won’t have had a chance to debate the issues. We will have had a couple of days of public hearings, chaired by a government senator with instructions to keep a lid on the proper debate, and then we’ll ram the legislation through the chamber, as has happened with all the previous legislation of significance.’

The government has attempted to put the Senate to sleep by pretending to follow due process and pretending to allow the Senate to continue its function, but, in effect, it has been abusing its majority time and time again. The arrogance of this is breathtaking. The government would have us slip through a process which allows a very cursory examination of a major piece of legislation that no-one has seen yet, that no-one has any understanding of and which the government’s own Liberal backbenchers are deeply concerned about. Their own party room talked about how this was equivalent to giving the Nazis more of an opportunity to exterminate Jews. The Attorney-General himself talked about the dangers of this legislation down the track. This is an issue that is of deep concern to a whole range of people in our community, but the government is saying to us: ‘We’ve got the numbers; we’re going to roll the legislation through and we’re going to give you this facade of the Senate continuing its function in order to be able to defend ourselves against the accusation of abuse of our majority.’

The reality is that the government will have a quick and dirty inquiry. There will be limited hearings and a limited opportunity to debate the legislation and the government will bring the legislation in and ram it through the Senate very quickly. No major bill in the past was treated like this before the change of power that happened when the government got its majority. It is outrageous. I know it concerns a lot of government senators; it certainly concerns all senators on the non-government side. This is an abuse of the Senate. The government goes too far when it prevents senators from doing the job we were elected to do. That government has to be held up to examination for its abuse of the Senate. This proves to people why the government should never have been allowed a majority in the Senate. It proves why this is a dangerous thing for democracy.

Yesterday the government denied us the capacity to inquire into the Qantas sale. The Australian people were denied the ability to examine the issues involving the sale of Qantas, the future of the national icon airline and the future of jobs in the airline industry in Australia because the government did not want the debate. Now they are saying to us that we have no right to have a proper debate about the introduction of an access card. It is a disgrace—