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

What a failure that was to respond to the submissions from the two earlier senators from the Democrats and the opposition. The government is simply dictating, through its numbers, which bills it will allow to go to committee and which it will not and which topics it decides it wants to have analysed by Senate committees and which it does not. It is a policy-driven decision made by an arrogant government which has taken over the committee system, which has the majority in the Senate and is dictating which topics affecting the Australian populace will get Senate scrutiny and which will not. This is a breach of the promise by the Prime Minister himself that he would not allow hubris to interfere when the government got the numbers to control this place. If ever there was an argument for the government to be stripped of seats in this Senate and put back into a minority, where it deserves to be, we are seeing it here this morning. Senator Abetz has fostered that argument and put it beautifully by his presentation—that sheer arrogance to deny oxygen to topics which should go to the Senate committee, such as the Migration Legislation Amendment (Restoration of Rights and Procedural Fairness) Bill 2007 and theSame-Sex: Same Entitlements Bill 2007. The government says: ‘No, we don’t want to see those scrutinised. We don’t want to see how they might best be implemented. They’re complex pieces of legislation and we, in particular, don’t want to see our government’s failure in these areas under scrutiny.’

Senator Abetz has by his reverse argument, his negative presentation, really stated for us all how out of control the arrogance of the government is now that it has the numbers in this Senate and how we are going to see this Senate continue to be sidelined and its role under the Constitution put on the sideboard if this government continues to have a majority in this place.