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

The Democrats also wish to speak to the motion before us. As has been explained, it extends the hours of sitting this week so that we sit late tonight as well as have an open-ended adjournment on Thursday night and it requires the Senate to consider 30 bills, only one of which I think has already been passed. As mentioned by previous speakers, we have pretty much had this treatment of the Senate since we came back in August. Every week has been treated almost like a de facto final sitting week just in case the government wants to call an election. So, even back in that first fortnight in August, we had extended sitting hours to assist the government to push things through. Last week we had extended sitting hours and this week we have even more extended sitting hours. After a three-week break, the Senate is scheduled to sit on 15 October. We could sit that week and indeed the next one and still have an election before the end of the year on 1 December or 8 December—and some people speculate that that may happen. I am one of those who have the view that it will not, but it does not really matter: it is not my decision, and it is not Senator Abetz’s decision or anybody else’s; it will be the Prime Minister’s decision.

That brings up a key point that really should be made far more often: if we had fixed terms, like a number of Australian states and many other democracies around the world have, we would not continually be faced with, ‘Maybe we will; maybe we won’t,’ with how we manage our business, with whether we need to rush through all this stuff now and with whether we have got more time. If we all knew the election date well in advance then we would not have this continual abuse of process, using the possibility of an election down the line as a reason for having to push things through or extend sitting hours or do all those other things. It is a cut and dried example of why it is in the public interest and in the interest of good governance, let alone the Senate’s interest, to have a fixed term so that we know when we are going to have an election, when parliament will be prorogued and how much longer we have got to deal with the business before it.

To some extent, I do not blame the Manager of Government Business in the Senate for wanting to get through all of these pieces of legislation before the end of the week, because it is quite possible that it will be the final sitting week. The Manager of Government Business does not know. Nobody knows in the government, I am sure of that, except possibly Mr Howard—and even he may well not have made up his mind yet. So, in that very narrow construct within which the Manager of Government Business has to operate, it is good practice for him to push us all through, and I am sure that is what he is being directed to do, in any case.

But the key question is of good practice for the public. We are, with these 30 pieces of legislation that are listed here, making laws. We are not just passing through some point-scoring opportunities or some things that the government can tick on their resume, saying, ‘We did this’ to help them with the election, or things for each of the rest of us here on the other side of the chamber to use as positioning opportunities to say: ‘We supported this’, ‘We opposed this’ or ‘We tried to amend this.’ The key thing we are doing is passing and considering laws that affect people’s lives directly, and it is simply bad process and bad governance to be pushing through 30 pieces of legislation in three days. On the Thursday night, under this motion, some of them will be pushed through probably well into the early hours of Friday. That is simply bad practice, and I do not believe that any credible argument can be put to say that that is a good way to make laws.

It is worth noting that putting through 30 bills in the space of a few days is not just a one-off for this week. I draw the public’s attention—if not the Senate’s—to the very useful information and statistics provided by the Department of the Senate on the number of sitting days and pieces of legislation passed each sitting week in each year. According to the most recent edition, going up to the end of last week, 13 September, we had had just 37 sitting days this year so far, not counting this week, and in that time the Senate had passed 154 pieces of legislation. I have not done the maths precisely, but I think that is about four pieces of legislation per day. Of course, not all day every day is spent considering legislation. According to the statistics, 85 hours and 53 minutes was the total amount spent on government business up until the end of last week for 154 pieces of legislation. On top of that, this week we will add another four days to those 37 sitting days—so that will be 41 sitting days—and we will add another 30 pieces of legislation, so the statistics will go up to 184 pieces of legislation in 41 sitting days. That, most probably, will be it for the year. There is an outside chance that we might come back again after the election, if it is held early, or an outside chance that we may come back again in three weeks time if the election is not held until December. We will potentially go through this again. Quite what legislation we will have left to deal with, if we do come back in three weeks time, I am not so sure about, which is why I am not terribly convinced that we will be coming back—but, as I said, that is a bit of an academic debate.

The Democrats’ core objection is not to any specific piece of legislation on the list. We can outline our objections in the debates on the pieces of legislation, and we can move our amendments, as we will do. Our core objection is that it compounds what is already a very poor record in terms of proper governance, due process and good public administration. We will now have 184 pieces of legislation put through this chamber in 41 sitting days, and that is not adequate. Of course, Senate committee inquiries have looked at some of them as well. It is a matter of public record that some of those inquiries have been grotesquely inadequate and, frankly, contemptuous. The simple, core matter of this Senate as a legislature and as a house of review is that its role is being debauched by the politicisation, the political motivation and the abuse of the Senate majority that the coalition now have. It should not be any surprise that they are doing that. It was predicted that they would do it, and it is not a particular slur on the nature of politics for people who follow the conservative parties. It is a natural commentary on human nature and the nature of politics.

Anytime you give a government control of both houses of parliament, they will use it to suit their own interests rather than look at the interests of the community. That is human nature. It is something that history shows us has happened many times before. It will continue to happen again if the government maintain control of the Senate after the election, or if any government down the track, of any political persuasion, do not have a house of parliament such as the Senate that is able to provide some check and balance and some form of review over what they are doing, however imperfect that may be. I certainly do not suggest that it has operated perfectly in that regard in the past, but it has certainly provided some mechanism for improving legislation. I think ‘improving’ is the key word, not just reviewing and holding up and examining it for an intellectual exercise, but improving the laws that we pass, laws that, I once again remind the Senate and the community, affect them directly—and sometimes quite enormously and comprehensively—often for the good, which is why we do it. I hope, in an ideal world, it would always be for the good, but we would improve the positive impacts of the laws we pass if we actually did our job properly and allowed proper time for scrutiny. You do not get that when you pass 184 pieces of legislation in 41 sitting days. You do not get it when you are passing 30 pieces of legislation in a week. And you do not get it when you are doing it at two o’clock in the morning, basically just shovelling through all of the leftovers so that everybody can get the hell out of here and get back to campaigning again.

It is not adequate. It is a compelling argument for restoring the Senate to being independent of the government of the day. Once again, it is also a compelling argument for why we need fixed terms, something the Democrats have called for many years and certainly will continue to do so.