Stephen Parry (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you. I was intending to speak to them. If I said ‘move them’ I apologise. This is what we have got down to with Senator Ludwig; we are getting to these very technical issues.

I want to go back to Senator Ludwig’s remarks. He was denigrating senators on his side of politics when he said, ‘They travel around the country sipping coffee.’ I travel around this country doing hard work with Labor senators, with Democrat Senators and with Greens Senators. For Senator Ludwig to insinuate that all we do is travel around the country sipping coffee shows that he is so far removed from the committee process that he needs to go and talk to his backbenchers and find out exactly how hard committee work is, how many hours you spend away from home and the value of committee work to this Senate. Senator Ludwig should know a lot better than that and I hope that he apologises to his backbench senators for belittling the work of committees.

These committees are going to play a valuable role and be a valuable tool in assisting the governing process. The government would have us see $4.7 billion worth of funds for broadband just go through without any scrutiny. We have decided to scrutinise this in such a way that the public can be assured that $4.7 billion worth of taxpayers’ money is going to be adequately and properly spent. We are starting this today, Senator Conroy. I think that the government is afraid of scrutiny. Senator Ludwig says that we are afraid of scrutiny. We are increasing the scrutiny of legislation and we are increasing the scrutiny of the processes of government. We want to make sure that this government works and acts properly.

Senator Ludwig also said that we were ‘governing from opposition’. He thinks that we are governing from opposition. That is what he accused us of. The reason why we need to govern from opposition is that you cannot do it from government. That has been proven. It is absolutely chaotic on your side; you cannot organise things. The Prime Minister has such a tight control that he is dictating to Labor senators how to run this chamber, how to operate, what to do and where to go. Things cannot be done without approval from senior advisers, of a very junior age, in the Prime Minister’s office, so we have to assist. We have been assisting running the government because the government cannot do it. These two committees are going to aid that process.

Senator Ludwig needs to reconsider some of the comments that he made in relation to these committees. He went on to talk about the appointment of chairs and deputy chairs. He wanted to know who we have lined up for appointments, but he must know the process. The committee has not even been established, let alone had members appointed. The Independents and the minor parties may put forward nominees; or they may not. The Labor Party may or may not put forward members for this committee. We have set up this committee so we can have government members, opposition members, Independent members, Family First members and Greens members. All parties can have members on this committee, by appointment from their leader; their leader has to nominate them. We have made it so easy that they can simply nominate a member to be on the committee, in accordance with the numbers and the parameters, and then we will sort out—and the members of that committee have the sole discretion—the value and the depth of experience of each of those particular committee members. They will then say, ‘Okay, would you like to be a deputy chair?’ and they will nominate them. It will be up to the members of each committee. So for Senator Ludwig to suggest that for some reason there will be an appointment made by the opposition or by anyone else is absolutely ludicrous. He needs to understand how the system operates, how the standing orders work and how these committees are established. What he said about deputy chairs is a complete furphy.

Senator Ludwig then talked about the workload of Senate staff. I will place on record—and it will be borne out by the clerk assistant who we spoke to—that Senator Chris Ellison and I spoke to a clerk assistant in relation to this matter. We considered that if we wanted to start scrutinising government properly by establishing a select committee—because this government seems totally incompetent—then we wanted to make sure that there would not be a greater workload for the existing staff. The provisions, we were told, of the Senate provide that, each time a new select committee is established, resources are lifted to match that new select committee. So that was not going to be an issue. Otherwise, if we were going to be burdening existing Senate staff and they had no additional resources, we would not have proceeded down this path. That was a very important thing for us to do and we did that prior to the establishment of the first Senate select committee. We wanted to clearly establish that that was the case. We were assured that this is the case and that the provisions of the Senate provide for that. And so it should. Select committees have probably not been used as much as they should have over the last few years. We have established select committees—