George Brandis (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Attorney-General) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to close the debate on behalf of the opposition. I know that these decisions about committee allocations do not necessarily or even largely depend upon the merits of individual senators. I mean no disrespect to Senator Wright in what I am about to say, but if one considers the outcome of what is proposed to displace Senator Gary Humphries as the chair of the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee with Senator Penny Wright, it is a travesty. It is preposterous. I have nothing against Senator Wright—I do not particularly know Senator Wright—but she has been a member of the Senate for four months. She has no experience as a senator to speak of in any respect. The fact that she was reduced to reading her CV onto the record earlier on was a humiliation for her.

I mean no personal disrespect to Senator Wright, but we are being asked to elect her as the chair of the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs References Committee, one of the most prestigious committees in this chamber, at the expense of Senator Gary Humphries, the only person in this Senate who has been a head of government in this country. He is a former Chief Minister of the Australian Capital Territory. He is the only person in this chamber who has ever been an attorney-general; Senator Humphries was for several years the Attorney-General of the Australian Capital Territory. With all due respect to Senator Wright—and this is not meant as a personal slight—to suggest that she is a more appropriate person to chair the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs References Committee with no experience as a senator and no experience in government, than former attorney-general and former chief minister Senator Gary Humphries, whose discharge of that role has commanded respect on both sides of this chamber, is ludicrous. There are very few people in this Senate, on either side or on the crossbench, who enjoy the respect that Senator Gary Humphries enjoys.

As I said at the start, these decisions do not turn largely upon the identities of individual senators. We need to see this for what it is: an attempt by the Greens, supported by a slavish government, to take over the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs References Committee. It is nothing short of a naked power play, and Senator Wright is being used as a pawn in that naked power play.