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

We have before us a motion to refer the Lobbying and Ministerial Accountability Bill 2007 to the Standing Committee on Finance and Public Administration. In the Selection of Bills Committee, individual senators seek to have matters or private members’ bills referred to a particular Senate committee for an inquiry and its report. Under the previous system—before we combined the two Senate committees—it may have been a more general reference that would have been referred, and it would have come here. The usual answer that the opposition gives to these things is that references by individual senators should generally be referred to committees. Those committees then are able to inquire into them within reasonable time frames to look at the particular issues. That is the general principle that Labor has supported.

Since the government’s changes to the committee system, we now have one committee that deals with both legislation and references. With the matters that go to the Selection of Bills Committee for determination, if the committee cannot come to a reasoned conclusion or agreement on these matters—as clearly it did not do, because the government was not able to agree, it seems from Senator Abetz’s statements today—then we have to have the argument here. That does not always reflect all the matters that should be taken into account in dealing with the issue.

To Senator Brown, through you, Mr President: one of the matters that concern me is that the time frame is a little bit short. Firstly, there is the workload of the particular committee. Also, the committee usually advertises these matters once they have been referred and, depending on the committee’s workload, there may be a return date of four to six weeks for people to make reasonable submissions. That is what happens in the usual course of events where someone wants a proper inquiry; we are not so much talking about the situation where the government wants a short inquiry.

The committee’s time frame before reporting back is particularly short. In this instance, I am not sure whether an October return date will actually end up happening. We may end up in a position where we have been prorogued at that point. It is, of course, in the government’s hands when that is likely to occur, but we have heard that there is going to be an election some time at the end of this year—most likely in November. The government are obviously not going to confirm that—although it would be helpful if they did—but that seems to be the broad suggestion. It concerns me that, if you have an October date, we may not be back here to be able to deal with the matter in any sense. Then the committee itself will have to make a general consideration as to what resources it will put into these things and how the submissions will then be dealt with. After the election, it is a question of whether the committee will pull that report back up again and continue on. Having said all that and hopefully explained the matter to Senator Brown, I emphasise that this underlines the difficulty that the committee might have in dealing with this particular reference.

We will not take a position of opposing it, but we do note all of those problems that might arise. I think that Senator Brown should consider these matters if he really wants these things to be proceeded with in a sensible way and to be dealt with. We are not going to take the government’s view about these things. The government provides for short committee inquiries. In our view, it does not allow the time to have these inquiries dealt with in a proper way and we are not going to buy into its argument. We make the point with regard to Senator Brown’s particular inquiry that he might be falling into the same trap that the government falls into when it makes these types of committee arrangements.