Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

The government is proposing to have us sit on Friday and to have extended sittings again next week but, as you know, Mr President, we are not sitting at all in April. The position of the Greens on this matter is that we ought to be sitting more weeks. That would cover all the matters that Senator Abetz just referred to. It would provide proper debating opportunity. It would give the public proper opportunity to feed into legislation, instead of it being dumped on the Senate and expedited through this extraordinary mechanism we have just seen and us now having to sit on Friday and sit extended hours, as we will tonight and next Tuesday. Of course, the Greens would have no objection to that if there were unforeseen circumstances which confronted the nation. But that is not the circumstance here. The foreseen circumstance is the government moving to an election in disarray and in great disfavour with the Australian public and wanting to get out of the parliament as fast as it can without the proper use of the Senate to enable it to adequately scrutinise the legislation and scrutinise the government’s performance.

Instead of sitting fewer hours, fewer days in recent decades, if there is an extended workload the government needs to deal with then we should be sitting extra weeks. With that comes the ability of the opposition parties to question the government each day and move motions challenging the government and, through public consultation, to adequately tackle the government on its legislative schedule as well as its performance in an election year. We are dealing here with a government majority, who are simply abusing the normal forms of the Senate and saying, ‘Let’s get out of here. We can’t stand it in the Senate. We want to get away from the parliament.’ The Prime Minister, his ministers and his members always do better if they are not under the force of scrutiny that the Senate sittings can bring.

This is a crash and run project by the government—and the minister knows that—to get out of this place but to get its legislation through by sitting extra hours at night and by sitting on Friday, for goodness sake, when there is no emergency here. There is no emergency legislation here whatsoever. When it comes to drought relief and other matters that the minister just spoke about, it is absolutely his own fault that legislation has not been brought in here with the usual forms of the Senate. I remind the senator that the drought has affected this great country of ours over the last 10 years, not only over the last 10 days. If the government is not able or competent enough to bring in legislation to give relief to farmers within the usual sitting hours of the parliament, that shows incompetence by the government and a failure to understand the role of government.

What is demonstrated here, of course, is the absolute arrogance of this Prime Minister and this government’s failure to connect with the Australian people. Decisions are now made in the Prime Minister’s office and in cabinet, and the House of Representatives as well as the Senate are being used simply as a rubber stamp because the government has the numbers. This is the hubris that the Prime Minister said he would not use when, after the last election, it was found that the government had a majority in the Senate. If there is ever a reason for the Australian voters to remove that majority at the forthcoming federal election, we are seeing it exemplified here today as the government uses its numbers to get rid of the proper scrutiny that the Senate can bring.

Sure, the government is running scared. Sure, the government wants to get out of here. Certainly, the Prime Minister will instruct Senator Abetz to bring in motions like this to cut short proper Senate sittings. Let me put on the record that the Greens are quite prepared to support a motion from the government to bring us back to sit in April, when there are zero sittings listed, so that the Senate can properly function and do its job. We do not support this proposal to have an extra sitting on Friday and to sit late into the night so that the government can get out of here without being presented with more question times and more debates on its failure to deliver good governance to this country. It is time this government went.