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

I will take that interjection, Acting Deputy President. If you look at the ministers that have been dealing with these issues, you will find again that there is plenty of opportunity for the standing committee processes that are in place to deal with these matters. But instead, right at the last, at the death knock again, the Liberals are throwing up two additional committees. On average, one select committee every six months. Are they going to continue with this one every six months? At that rate, they are going to exhaust the staff in this place that support the select committees. But they do not care about that because, if you look at the endgame, it is about ensuring that they have got an outcome for themselves. It is a well-disguised attempt to consolidate their power further and replace the existing system which has worked.

The previous system had devolved power between the parties in the Senate, providing much greater scrutiny by non-government senators, including the minority parties. Now that the Liberals are out of power, they have unilaterally decided that they do not like the set-up of the Senate committee structure. But, of course, they feel a little bit wedded to it given that it was their invention when they were in government. They cannot cut it down; instead, as I have described, they will set up a parallel committee process so that they can maintain control, so that they can maintain chairs and so that they can maintain the outcomes from those select committees. But the challenge for them is to also make sure that they maintain quorums in those committees. The proposals today before us are ludicrous. They should own up to it. It is clear that they are only doing it for the stated reasons of looking after their mates in this place as we head into the winter break.

They are setting up a parallel system of reference committees, which is essentially having a roving mandate to act as a standing committee and to investigate anything they want as long as it is a related matter. If the Liberals really have an issue which they wish to investigate then they should propose a proper reference in this place and advance the matter through the standing committees that they supported and which they set up in government. If you look at the number of inquiries that have been dealt with in this place and then look at how the workload is structured, they have added another layer of talkfest for select committees, which is unnecessary, using that process. They are restricting the excellent work that standing committees do in this place to ensure outcomes that go to scrutiny and to review. They are going to dilute the Senate process. They run the risk of treating it badly. If you treat it badly, you will trivialise it. If you trivialise it, we will all wear the outcome in this place because it will be taken to mean that the committee work has been downgraded.

If you look at the current workload, there is significant work by the Liberal opposition of referring budget bills off to committees in the winter recess that standing committees are dealing with already. There is important work to be done although, in argument, there is a range of bills that should not have gone off to committees. They know they should not have gone. They know they should have been dealt with in the usual way on the last sitting Friday before now so that we could have had them available before the winter recess.

They have not argued about how they are going to ensure that staffing and that type of issue will be dealt with. They have not outlined how they are going to continue to ensure that they will meet the outcomes of those committees. If you look at the last select committee that reported, quite frankly, the government has that issue in hand. Look at the issue of housing affordability. Look at how this government is acting. We are taking action. If you look at the 11½ years of the Liberals when they were in government, they sat on their hands—and the Senate Select Committee on Housing Affordability in Australia really underlines that.

You now have a clear attack by the Liberals on Senate procedure, the role of the Senate and its ability to function as a house of review. They chipped away at Senate procedure when they were in government. In opposition, the Liberals are again chipping away at it because they do not like scrutiny. They like mates’ rates; that is what they like. They do not like the system that they set up, so they want to set up a parallel system of committees without any justification or argument about what is wrong with the standing committees they have set up. Maybe they are too shy to admit that the standing committees that they set up in opposition and pushed through were not right. Maybe they were not effective enough for them. Maybe they did not understand the committee system sufficiently to ensure that it worked. That is an aside, because they now want to use the select committee effectively as a standing committee, like the previous references committees. It is a pity that they did not look at the history in this place to ensure that the principles were respected. (Time expired)