Mitch Fifield (Victoria, Liberal Party, Manager of Opposition Business in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

At first blush, the motion which is before us would appear to be innocuous. We do see from time to time, before estimates committee hearings, motions to rearrange agencies within the various committees and between the various committees. I might say, we have seen that a fair bit under this government. It would be fair to say that they have had more than their fair share of reshuffles—some occasioned by the odd change of Prime Minister, others not. We have seen, I think, a larger than usual number of changes of responsibilities for estimates committees in motions presented to the Senate.

And there has been a bit of sloppiness in that. I do take Senator Brandis's point that there might be some inappropriate motives for some of the changes to these committees but I also think there is a little bit of sloppiness. We have seen some of that sloppiness before in ministerial reshuffles and ministerial arrangements. As Senator Brandis mentioned, there was that, 'Oops, I forgot,' moment when the current Prime Minister forgot to appoint an education minister. That was not the only thing that she forgot to do in that particular reshuffle. In my own portfolio of disabilities she forgot to appointment anyone with responsibility for disabilities, initially. Then there was a change in title for Senator McLucas; she had disabilities added. And in the last reshuffle Minister Macklin had disabilities added to her title, which I think is a good thing. Again, I put that down to sloppiness. I do not put that down to bad intent; I just put it down to good old-fashioned administrative incompetence—nothing more than that; nothing less.

So we have seen a bit of a pattern under this government. I do not want to refer to the area of social inclusion but I will. We have had an occasion where the government have remembered to appoint someone to a portfolio but that person does not actually know what the portfolio means. When asked, 'What does it mean?'' Minister Butler now famously said of his portfolio, social inclusion, 'It means different things to different people.' But that is a separate issue. It is a portfolio. Someone has been appointed but they do not actually know what their job is.

The very significant concern which we have is that of the transfer of responsi­bilities—particularly tertiary education and VET—from the education committee to the economics committee. I know that there would be those in the government who would say VET and the tertiary sector are very economically significant. I know that Senator Mason is always saying how economically significant tertiary education and VET are and how tertiary education is one of Australia's major export industries. There is no greater advocate for the economic significance of the tertiary education sector than Senator Mason. So I would not be surprised at all to hear those on the other side say, 'It is logical, really; these are economically significant portfolios.' But there are a whole heap of economically significant portfolios.