Cory Bernardi (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary Assisting the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

I recognise that there is a great deal of interest in this debate. It goes to the very core of what we, as members of parliament, are doing here. I understand that there are very different motivations for why people come to the Senate—it is a very important house, as has been pointed out—and how they actually get here. I recognise that some get installed in the Senate because they are being pensioned off from the union movement or because they can no longer see the fulfilment of their dreams in other aspects of their lives. I recognise that for some this is just a retirement plan. But for many of us the decision to come to the Senate, and the opportunity to do so, is driven by a real desire to review legislation and to consider the implications for the Australian people of the direction of our nation and the direction of our economy.

I take that responsibility very seriously. I am not from some fringe group that has stumbled into it, as have members of the Greens party. I am someone who came here to make a difference. And I know that many of my colleagues on this side of the chamber actually take this very seriously. In accordance with that it is appropriate that there are times when 'time management', as it is euphemistically called, or the 'guillotine', as it has been referred to in this instance, can be applied, in the interests of the Australian nation. That is something that governments have to use on occasions. They have to use it wisely.

But where this motion put forward by the government rankles—it contradicts the common sense that should be with us all—is in the simple fact that we have scheduled three sitting days for next week in which we could fully explore the plethora of legislation or bills that has been put before this Senate and has been cut off without a single word of debate or discussion. That has effectively neutered the role of all of us in this parliament to critically examine and assess what is going on. We have had an example of some of this with the family law bills, which are very contentious. I know that there are many people in this place who have received numerous emails and communications about problems with the family law bills and how they could be amended. But we did not even have a debate in the committee stage on the legislation. This is an outrage; it is a travesty. The people in this place have a democratic right to critically examine legislation.

So I am not against time management but I am against the abuse of what I believe is our democratic process. I am against the government being held hostage by a group of fringe dwellers—the fairies at the bottom of the garden known as the Greens party. That is exactly what is happening here. We know that the Greens leader, Senator Bob Brown—who is currently before the Privileges Committee for allegations of misconduct in pursuit of his duties—has basically said to the government, 'My team and I are going to Durban to crow about this great green tax that we have placed upon the Australian people, that we have forced upon the Gillard government, and we are going to trumpet it around the world,' notwithstanding the fact that the rest of the world has said that this is a joke. Just today, and yesterday, there was a release of a stack of emails which highlighted, once again, the folly of the climate change movement and the zealots within it. In the emails they overstate their case—it has been reported by the IPCC—about the climatic effects of carbon dioxide, if any, and also celebrate the deceit they have played out upon people around the world. It is a monumental hoax and a monumental fraud that will be exposed.

But, notwithstanding the facts and the evidence, the Greens movement are going to triumph about their re-engineering of the Australian economy in Durban. They are going to fly there first class, I am sure. I am not sure which one of their sponsors will be paying the way but I will look forward to reading their declarations of interest.

As a result of that, we have to truncate and remove three days of debate in this place. Senator Fifield accurately described why that is a misuse of the parliamentary numbers in this place. Let's not pretend that these three days were annexed last week or earlier this week in case we needed them; they were part of the sitting calendar. We have all prepared for them. We have managed our ability to discuss bills and to deal with the government's requirements according to the parliamentary calendar. But what happens today? Senator Ludwig is told by Senator Bob Brown to come in here and guillotine those three days of the sitting period. This is not time management. This is a government held hostage and playing right into the hands of their greatest enemy and their greatest threat—that is, the great threat to Australia: the radical green movement. Yesterday was the four-year anniversary of perhaps the most belligerent, backbiting, nasty, incompetent and just generally hopeless government that this country has ever seen. We have seen butchery of a scale unprecedented. We saw, of course, the knifing of the first-term Prime Minister, Mr Rudd. He was not a particularly good Prime Minister, but certainly the annals of history now reflect very well upon him given the fact that Ms Gillard is proving to be even worse. So after four years not only are they butchering their own, not only are they now controlled by the Greens party, but they are butchering our right and the right of every Australian to have a critical examination of the bills that are facing us.

Next week is a lost opportunity to examine the 20 or so bills that have been chopped off in this place without any debate or discussion. Can we believe that? I just put that to the Australian people: does it pass the probity test? Does it pass the commonsense test? Does it sit well with you that 20 or so bills in this parliament that affect the future of our nation, that direct our laws and our conduct and behaviour have gone through this place without a single word of debate, without a single word of examination, without a committee period in which we could ask questions of the government to determine whether this is in the best interests of the Australian nation? I would put to you, Acting Deputy President Stephens—and to the people of Australia—that this sits so uncomfortably with our freedoms and our democracy, which people have fought and lost their lives to defend. And what is happening now? The legacy, the message, the traditions, the conventions of this place have been killed just as surely as the Speaker of the House of Representatives was politically killed yesterday.

This is a time in which the world is facing a number of critical challenges, and Australia is not immune from those challenges. Australians want from their parliamentarians not just a cursory tick and flick, which is the process which has infected Europe and caused such a devastating impact on so many economies there. It has seen the bureaucrats taking control of the legislative agenda and the parliamentarians merely sidelined as puppets on the stage to the bureaucratic bungling. We cannot afford to have that in this country, and yet that is the path we are going down when we have legislation brought into this place and passed through this place without a single word of debate or discussion. Is that the future we see for our nation, where parliamentarians are ineffective, where the brutal numbers of a government are used in deciding what is going to come in and what is not, and what can be talked about and what cannot?

It is the new style totalitarianism on display. It is the social democratic movement which is stifling freedom of speech, stifling the democratic process in this country—all in the name of appeasing a very, very dangerous political movement, and that is the Greens party. We know they have a radical social agenda. By Senator Bob Brown's own admission he would like to see global government and the centralising of bureaucracy, where everyone in the world has one vote and one voice—and, of course, only some voices are allowed to be heard. This is the tragedy of what we experiencing. It is the very first stage of this. Three scheduled parliamentary sitting days are being removed from the calendar by the government's representative, by the mover of this motion, Senator Ludwig.

Ultimately the Australian people will decide whether the conduct of this government is appropriate or not. They will decide whether having a government that is held hostage to a tiny minority extremist movement is in the interests of this country. But in the meantime, before the next election, the very least we should expect is some probity and prudence in our policy making. The problem with this is that, if the government had a track record which was enviable, a track record in which their decisions, their implementation of their policy agenda, had a modicum of success—if they could even highlight three successes—we might give them the benefit of the doubt, but, unfortunately, they have a legacy of waste, a legacy of betrayal, a legacy of butchery, a legacy of failure.

It can be characterised in so many different ways. At the last election, for example, we had the cash-for-clunkers scheme brought in by Minister Carr. That was his suggestion. What a dud that was. It did not even survive the election period. Of course we had, 'There will be no carbon tax under the government I lead,' from a deceptive Prime Minister who did mislead the Australian people, because the carbon tax has been passed—at the insistence of the radical Greens.