Michael Forshaw (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

In your introduction you mentioned the bill and then you completely forgot about it for the next 19 minutes and 45 seconds. What Senator Joyce has just done is to make absolutely clear what we all know is the real purpose behind this legislation—that is, to give the coalition parties in Queensland an opportunity to conduct a Senate inquiry, a three-day public inquiry, and go around and try to drum up support for their candidates in the next federal election. Senator Joyce has just admitted what he was constantly doing in the inquiry: trying to make this an issue at the next federal election. He did not run away from that, and I applaud you, Senator Joyce, for acknowledging it.

But the real duplicity here occurred only a few moments ago whilst Senator Faulkner was making a speech on this bill and on the Electoral Act. When he tried to place this government’s legislation in context in relation to the Electoral Act, it was objected to on a number of occasions by the minister at the table, who said, ‘That is not relevant.’ It was apparently not relevant to the government to talk about the Electoral Act but apparently it is relevant to government senators, such as Senator Joyce, to spend their entire time talking about the next federal election and about how they are going to campaign on this issue. Of course, what actually happened here was that we had a three-day inquiry into a piece of legislation—which I accept is important—that is supported unanimously by senators in this parliament, which we know is going to go through and which could have gone through as non-controversial legislation. But no, the government had to have its three-day inquiry. They took us to Noosa, Emerald and Cairns. I was pleased to go because I was willing to hear the views of the people there. I have never opposed the idea of Senate committees undertaking inquiries and listening to the people, but this government does.

There are five pieces of legislation that we pointed to in our report which are some of the most significant legislation to be dealt with in this parliament in the last year or two. There was the recent legislation affecting Indigenous communities in the Northern Territory, the Northern Territory National Emergency Response Bill; the legislation regarding the excising of the radioactive waste dump, pursuant to the Commonwealth Radioactive Waste Management Legislation Amendment Bill; legislation to amend the Electoral Act, which dealt with all those issues that Senator Faulkner drew attention to; the Telstra (Transition to Full Private Ownership) Bill; and the Commonwealth Radioactive Waste Management Bill. How many days of public hearings were there for each of those five pieces of legislation? One day on each—one single day each for those very significant and complex bills, some of which ran into hundreds of pages and with hundreds of pages of explanatory memoranda. This government allowed a one-day inquiry on each of those bills. The public had virtually no time to put in a submission, they had one day to appear before the inquiry and the hearings were held in Canberra. They did not go to the Northern Territory to hear what the people in the Northern Territory communities thought about this government’s legislation.

But when the electoral amendment bill comes up for Queensland, which we are supporting, the caravan gets on the road, capably led by Senator Fifield as the chair and ably assisted by myself as the deputy chair. We made it possible for those hearings to go ahead because we cooperated with the facilitation of those inquiries, and I pay tribute to the secretariat for the excellent work they did in a short space of time. So let us not have all this hypocrisy about denial of democratic rights and so on. This was a political exercise. Let me go to the Hansard. Senator Joyce was there on the first day, but I am reminded that Senator Ian Macdonald did not attend on that day. I understand that in his earlier speech he tried to have a go at some Labor senators apparently because they may have left 10 minutes before the finish of the last hearing in Cairns to catch a plane. That is the sort of cheap shot that you get from Senator Macdonald—a person who did not even bother to attend a whole day’s hearing at the start. But I digress. Let us go back to the Hansard.

Senator Joyce started off with the very first witnesses, the Friends of Noosa, by saying:

Some have suggested that it is an infringement on a state’s rights for the federal government to insist on local governments having a plebiscite.

And then he went on to say:

My final question is this: if Mr Beattie and Mr Fraser—

the state minister—

do not listen to the views of Noosa, do not listen to the views of a demonstration of 10,000 people—which, I read in your submission, went to Brisbane—and do not listen to the views expressed in a plebiscite that is held in the Noosa shire, do you know of any other pressure points on the Australian Labor Party that you can use to try to get them to listen?

So Senator Joyce started off by asking witnesses about what possible political pressure points might be coming up in the near future that might have some influence on this debate.

We all know what he had in mind: it was the federal election—and he has now acknowledged that. But the witnesses did not take the bait. They were not going to be dragged into a political point-scoring exercise by Senator Joyce, but Senator Joyce kept trying. He asked the next witness:

What would be the likelihood of the current position being maintained if there was a strong belief or, in fact, if it was proven that it was going to affect a federal election? Do you reckon that that could be the impetus for Mr Beattie to change his mind?

Again, the witness declined to take the bait. That was the tone in which Senator Joyce went on all through the hearing. Every witness was asked a question about what sort of political pressure point might exist that could influence the Queensland government. So let us not have all this palaver about this being a big debate about democratic rights in Queensland. This is all about the last desperate attempt by National Party senators and members and Liberal Party members and senators to find an issue in Queensland to help them hang on to a few seats at the next federal election.

At one point during the committee’s hearing, Councillor Brown, the Mayor of Peak Downs Shire Council, was asked a question about this political pressure point, and his response was something like: ‘What do you want me to say? You want me to say that this is going to have an impact on the federal election.’ Senator Joyce had the lead carriage for the coalition at the committee’s inquiry—with no disrespect to either Senator Fifield or Senator Ian Macdonald—and right through the inquiry he talked about issues like the possibility of changing state boundaries and having referendums and plebiscites for that. He talked about the relationship between the state branch of the Labor Party in Queensland and the federal Labor Party—and we have had all that again today. He talked about the internal rules of the ALP. He did not go to this legislation at all.

Senator Joyce is trying to attack the Labor Party because we actually happen to have a position at the federal level which is different to the position at the state level. We have never tried to hide that. It is a fact. It is something that the Prime Minister encourages. He thinks it is healthy for democracy that state governments, federal governments, federal parties and state parties have healthy disagreements. I am sure that it is something that occurs occasionally in the National Party. I have some recollection of Senator Joyce disagreeing with Mr Scott—the President of the Queensland Nationals—over Telstra, or at least he said he disagreed. Senator Joyce did not want to sell Telstra, or he said that he was not going to sell Telstra. He said that he would not support it but, in the end, he rolled over and gave in.

Senator Joyce has made a virtue of trying to make a name for himself as being different to his colleagues—of being an independent maverick and not always following the party line. Yet he stands up here in the parliament today attacking members of the Labor Party—and he did this right through the inquiry—because they actually have a disagreement at the state and federal level on what the party’s position should be on this issue. We have made it very clear that we support plebiscites for local government in Queensland.

The issue of constitutional recognition of local government came up during the inquiry. It has been pointed out by earlier speakers that the Labor Party has had a long history of supporting federal constitutional recognition of local government—and the coalition parties have had a long history of opposing it. Indeed, Mr Howard was on the record during debate on the referendum amendment bill saying that he did not support changing the Constitution. The report says at page 40:

1.33 Launching the ‘no’ case on 23 June 1988, Mr Howard said his opposition to constitutional recognition was based on ‘a strongly held view that it will distort the natural order and Constitutional balance of our federal structure’.

1.34 Mr Howard said ‘Australians will not take a leap in the dark by giving Canberra a chance to interfere in local government and to by-pass state governments’.

That was Mr Howard’s position then but apparently that has not quite filtered down to the members of his coalition. During the inquiry, both Senator Joyce and Mr Scott told the witnesses and the inquiry that they fully supported constitutional recognition of local government—despite the fact that they had voted against it only 12 months ago, and that is on the Hansard record. We pointed that out to them during the inquiry, and they were stumped. They actually did not know that that was their position.

Debate interrupted.