Nick Xenophon (SA, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I will be supporting the Greens motion to suspend standing orders in relation to the government advertising legislation. It is the appropriate thing to do in the circumstances. I know that the Special Minister of State has said that this process is flawed. I think it would be fair to say—and I do not think Senator Brown would mind me saying this—that the process is not perfect but it is still very much preferable to what we have in place now: a series of government advertising campaigns that have thrown out appropriate process, that have thrown out the whole issue of appropriate scrutiny and have removed the role of the Auditor-General as the independent watchdog to do this.

I think it is important that we look at what the key public policy issue is here—that we actually have some integrity in government advertising. I think that has been lost, unfortunately, as a result of what has occurred, and therefore it is important to support this particular bill to support the suspension of standing orders, because a consequence of not supporting this is that this will continue on right up until election day, in effect. We will continue to see ads that should not be aired because they contravene the government’s own policies prior to the 2007 election. It is important that we do have integrity in this process. Obviously it would have been better if we had a longer lead time, and it would have been better if we had greater consultation, but I think the public opinion on this is very clear: people are quite mortified that the government has gone down this path to break a key promise that they made at the last election in relation to government advertising. I note that the Prime Minister said in opposition that this was a cancer on democracy, or words to that effect—it was very strong language. I agree that it is a serious issue that needs to be dealt with. If we want to deal with the problem, if we want to fix it, we can start now by suspending standing orders and debating this piece of legislation that effectively puts into effect Labor Party policy that was put to the people at the last election.