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

What we have is a seeking of suspension in relation to the Australian Greens’ Preventing the Misuse of Government Advertising Bill 2010. What the five minutes of speaking time is for is to make a case for why the parliament should suspend to allow this bill to come forward. No case has been made with respect to Senator Brown’s submissions. Senator Brown went to issues of the content of the particular legislation. None of his issues went to why this bill is urgent.

The bill attempts to legislate the Rudd government’s 2008 process for government advertising, which we have now improved. I have to say that it is flattering that the Greens consider that so many aspects of this government’s advertising framework that we introduced in 2008 were so faultless. Another pleasing aspect of the bill is that it is evidence that the Greens agree with many aspects of our current 2010 guidelines, such as the five key principles of the guidelines, the need to be able to advertise before legislation has been passed by parliament and the need to ensure that exemptions can be granted. All of that is contained within the bill.

Of course, the unconstitutional bill was developed and brought forward before this chamber at breakneck speed. Perhaps a little bit more work should have been done on it. It does offend the constitutionality of Australia’s Constitution. It did provide a report a very short time afterwards, less than a week from when it was referred to the Senate committee. The report is surprising. It says the Greens said—I guess you would have to say they had the hide to say—the committee ‘failed to acknowledge the widespread community concerns about this critical issue’. I would like to note that it is very difficult, if not impossible, for members of the community to make submissions to the committee with only two days notice.

If Senator Brown were serious about progressing this bill then you would have expected it to have gone to a committee to allow public input, to allow submissions to be dealt with and to allow the committee to then take its ordinary course of work. But, once again, we see the Greens in this instance unable to live up to the principles that they often espouse. I am sure Senator Brown would concur with me in these remarks when noting that we complained about the short periods in which the previous government pushed legislation through following short committee processes and the inability of the committee to use its committee resources to examine the bill in context and cast its net wide to allow submissions to be made so that a proper report could be produced and recommendations made. It appears Senator Brown has thrown that principle out in bringing on this piece of legislation without providing justified grounds as to why it should now upend the program for this bill.

It does not take away from the seriousness of the bill. I am sure Senator Brown honestly and reasonably believes it is a worthwhile bill to progress. My advice, although uncalled for, is that the proper processes of the Senate would demonstrate that it was unconstitutional—it would allow proper submissions to be made; it would allow proper community engagement in relation to the legislation. You have not chosen to do that and that is a matter for you, but do not complain if I draw it to your attention. This is the last week we have to deal with legislation—that is right. We do have a leaders and whips deliberation and we had one at the beginning of this week to determine what legislation we would deal with before we go home at the end of the week. There are proper processes in this place to ensure that the proper legislative agenda is dealt with in this week.

This bill is unlikely to go forward. It does take up time—I will not take up as much time as I otherwise would like to have committed to this bill, but it is unsupported as it seeks to up-end this parliament for the purposes of what can only be described as selfish motivations of Senator Brown to deal with a very important issue. If Senator Brown wanted to have a debate in relation to this then he could use other forums within this parliament to allow that to occur.