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

I agree with much of what Senator Cormann has had to say on the Procedure Committee report. If he would like to present the Senate with a request for the clerk to review, after each committee sitting, those cases in which there has been a claim of public interest by ministers or others when not answering questions before Senate committees, we would look at that very favourably. The report indicates that there are de facto or real claims of public interest made quite frequently. That situation is not confined to this government. It was a hallmark of the proceedings of the last government. I think the Senate ought to take a much stronger stand to ensure that it is informed about issues and is not simply fobbed off by claims of public interest. Indeed, I do not know of any contingency whatever in a representative democracy whereby a matter should not be revealed to a Senate committee which, if necessary, goes in camera. If there is such a case which does not flout the principle of democracy representing the people in which the parliament is supreme, I would like a senator to state what it is. We are a long way short of that mark. As Senator Cormann said, we ought to be reviewing this.

When you look at the American committee system, for example, you see there is much more incisive questioning of and answering by witnesses without resort to claims of information needing to be in confidence, which we see in our parliament, and I do not think the American Congress is a paragon when it comes to that. I reiterate that in a representative democracy it is not the government or the executive but the parliament which runs the affairs of the country and the parliament cannot do that if it is denied information. Let me say that once again: it is not the executive or the cabinet but the parliament which, in our representative democracy, has the burden of running the country. Where it is denied information in its deliberations, that ideal is being eroded. Once again, if there is information that is sensitive then let the committee system resort to going in camera so that the representatives can be informed and make up their mind not without the information but while taking into consideration that they have information that should not be divulged in the public arena because it might not be in the public interest. The dividing line as to having information is not across the committee. The dividing line is between the parliament and the public, and the parliament has a very big responsibility in adjudicating where that line should be. It should not be up to a witness or a minister to arbitrate on that matter.

The second matter dealt with by this report is under the heading, ‘Senators caring for an infant’. This matter came out of Senator Hanson-Young bringing her child into a recent sitting of the Senate and being asked by the President to have the child removed. I moved that the committee look at changing paragraph (3) of standing order 175, which says that nobody else other than senators should be in the chamber. Paragraph (3) says:

(3) Paragraph (2) does not apply in respect of a senator breastfeeding an infant.

I moved that it include at the discretion of the President a senator caring for an infant briefly, providing the business of the Senate is not disrupted. We are all human beings and there is not anybody that I know of here that believes children should intrude into the business of the Senate, certainly not in any way that is going to disrupt it. But there are exceptions to every rule. We looked at the record. There are at least a dozen occasions when, with no interruption of and with no hazard to the proceedings of the House of Representatives or the Senate, children have been briefly present.

One of those times was a memorable occasion when a very esteemed and long-serving conservative senator had a grandchild with him as eulogies to his service in this place were read out. It was a very happy occasion. Well, this Procedure Committee report puts an end to that. You cannot deprive the President of an opportunity, brought forward here, which would explicitly codify the President’s right to use his or her common sense in the circumstances that occur in the chamber, to permit such an event happening again. Effectively, the committee’s decision, if it is upheld, will prohibit children being present, under any circumstances, in the chamber.

I again say that we are human beings. I think it is a bad ruling. I have had my opposition to it recorded. I am an absolute defender of the right of the Senate to not have its procedures interrupted by anybody else but that is not the case at point here. The case at point is treating each other as human beings and making sure the Presiding Officer has the facility occasionally to levy common sense, when it is not to the detriment of the Senate at all. That has been ruled down by the majority of this committee. It is a mistake, and I think we will live to regret it. I seek leave to continue my remarks at a later time.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.