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

You could mount that argument about transport, as Senator Brandis said. But we have an education committee. I can imagine vice-chancellors tuning into the Senate education estimates committee. I am sure they often do, Senator Mason. They will be waiting, waiting, waiting, and they will not get to see Senator Mason. They will be bereft! They will be very disappointed.

I made that point with some humour but there is a serious point there: we have an education committee and it really defies logic why you would not have the tertiary and VET components of that portfolio in the education committee. The economics committee has a very heavy workload. And you may not have noticed but Senator Cormann and Senator Bushby in particular have no shortage of questions to ask in that committee. They do a sensational job of holding the government to account in the best Westminster traditions. They are truly forensic in their working through of the portfolio outcomes.

That committee has some very important public policy matters before it. There is the carbon tax and the MRRT, and then there is that little old issue of the budget surplus—whether we are going to get back into budget surplus. That is just a very minor issue of public policy that the economics committee looks after! Those very important areas of consideration are going to be squeezed out by tertiary education and VET. No offence to tertiary education and VET; they should have their place, but their place is in the education estimates committee.

Senator Brandis touched on something which I think is a factor in the government's consideration—that is, seeking to deny time and space for the consideration of the effects of the carbon tax on the Australian economy and the effects of the MRRT on the Australian economy, particularly in Western Australia. If there is one thing that this government wants to provide the absolute minimum of time for it is examining the likelihood of the budget going into surplus in the next financial year. That is an examination which this government is terrified of. And I think that what we see before us today is an indication of that.

There is, unfortunately, a growing tendency by this government to abuse the Senate estimates process. You may recall that once upon a time Senate estimates committees would meet through the night. They would sometimes sit until 3 am in the morning.