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

On behalf of Senator Arbib, I move:

That, pursuant to standing order 25(9), the Senate determines:

  (a)   that the chair of the Legal and Constitutional Affairs References Committee shall be elected by that committee from members nominated by minor parties or independent senators; and

  (b)   that this order remain in effect until the President is duly notified of an agreement that meets the terms of standing order 25(9)(c).

I do not want to take up too much of the Senate's time since we have the continuation of the second reading debate on the clean energy package this morning. So I will be brief. This motion should not take up too much time as it is straightforward. It increases the number of chairs the Greens will hold on references committees. This is in line with previous practice of the Senate.

With the Greens having nine senators from July this year, it is appropriate to adjust their chairing role accordingly. I understand that the Greens raised this adjustment both informally and formally with the opposition—the opposition's response has not been positive—and finally the Greens raised it with the President, who in turn has brought it to the chamber to be resolved, hence the motion we are dealing with this morning. It would have been preferable for the committee itself to sort this matter out. Unfortunately, the committee was unable to settle it without reference to the chamber. That is why the motion is now before us.

Obviously there are differing interpretations of how Senate committee chairs should be allocated. I am certain the opposition will have an interesting interpretation to detail to the Senate, but let me outline the government's position on this, which is broadly in line with how the Senate committee system operated between 1994 and 2005. The Senate should have both legislation and references committees. The two sets of committees perform complementary and valuable roles for the Senate. By convention, the government should chair all the Senate legislation committees and that continues. Chairing of the references committees is for the opposition and minor parties, with the opposition having the majority of these chairs, usually around six, and minor parties sometimes sharing and sometimes taking—depending on their proportion of representation in the Senate—both of the other two chairs. That is similar to the arrangement we had when the Australian Democrats were in this place and had similar numbers—nine seats. They were given the opportunity to chair two references committees. This motion reinstates this well-tested and successful allocation of chairs of Senate committees and I commend it to the chamber.

As I said, it would have been preferable had the committee itself sorted this matter out, but unfortunately they were unable to and so it has been brought before the chamber for resolution. What we are now proposing is in line with the proportional representation of this chamber and such procedure has been in place for a very long time.