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

I want to place a couple of things clearly on the record in relation to the specific matter that we are dealing with here. It is a proposal, through Senator Brown, for a private senator’s bill of his to be considered by a Senate committee. I am not going to go to the merits or otherwise of what is in the bill; others have done that. That is what Senate committees are actually for.

Once upon a time there used to be a convention in this place whereby, if anybody wanted a bill referred to a committee for examination, unless there were extraordinarily pressing reasons, the Senate would agree to it and the Selection of Bills Committee would agree to it. There might have been a difference of opinion over reporting dates, but if somebody wanted to refer a bill—if even one senator wanted to refer a bill—because they thought it merited examination then the Senate would agree to it. I do not know how many times you have to destroy a convention before it no longer applies at all. I suspect we are already at that point. That is one of the problems with the government’s approach as they have got control of the Senate: they have degraded and debauched and besmirched the Senate process and the whole nature of the Senate’s activities so thoroughly that you have to wonder—even if they do lose control of the Senate at the coming election, and whoever ends up in government—whether the Senate will go back to having some of the more thorough and more independent accountability and examination processes that it had in the past. That to me is a real concern, and that is why I am pleased that Labor have taken a position of being prepared to support this. It does not mean they think it is a great idea. They are not convinced that the timing is right. But, with respect to appropriate recognition of the role of the Senate, if somebody wants to put a bill forward, unless there is a really strong reason not to do so, you do it.

That goes to the second point I wanted to make. The Senate is not a house of government. The Senate should be an independent chamber examining legislation and private senators’ bills. This even goes to the point that Senator Ludwig was making about time frames. Particularly with private senators’ bills, we bring them back at a certain time; that does not mean we bring them back at a certain time so we can bring them on for debate straightaway.

As we all know, in many cases we put forward private senators’ bills not because we are expecting them to come on for debate, much as we might like them to, but to try to get issues considered, to try and inform the Senate more fully about the sorts of matters that are contained in the legislation and to try and get all of us to think about the possibilities of inserting those sorts of legislative principles in laws, perhaps in other contexts, including in government legislation that comes through. That is why it is totally valid for a Senate committee to examine something—even, I might say, in the lead-up to an election.

We know there will be an election sometime before the end of the year, and I would assume that has significantly influenced Senator Brown’s choice of date. But, given that this legislation that is proposed to be referred to the committee is not going to be brought on for a vote before the election, even that becomes somewhat academic. The level of interest from those on the committee who are focused on the election may be less than 100 per cent. But there is more to Senate committees than the senators who sit on the committees. There are the people in the wider community who have the expertise and the views, and there is the opportunity for those things to go on the public record through submissions.

I would point to my experience in referring one of my own private senators’ bills, relating to animal welfare. That had massive public interest. I think we had over 200 submissions. The rest of the committee were so uninterested they did not even bother to hold a public hearing and brought down what I thought was a derisory, perfunctory report. That is fine, in one sense: that is their view and that is the process they decided to take. But the opportunity to have all of that material, all those views, collated in one place on the public record for everybody to make use of in formulating public policy in a particular area down the track is important. So it is not all about the government. It is not even all about us. It is not all about just pushing legislation through. It is about getting a more informed public policy debate and a wider range of ideas about potential legislative reform in a much broader and ongoing context. That is why, unless there are very good reasons, we should not be opposing references of private senators’ bills to committees. It does not get in the way of the government’s program in the chamber at all. It does not even necessarily distract senators on committees. They do not have to hold public hearings if they do not want to. What it does do, by blocking it, is prevent the issue from being examined more thoroughly by the people in the wider community. The government might be happy to silence the rest of us in this chamber regularly, but they should not be so readily silencing people in the wider community.

Question put:

That the amendment (Senator Bob Brown’s) be agreed to.