Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for the Murray Darling Basin) Share this | Hansard source

This is, once again, an outrageous abuse of Senate process by a government that, frankly, is addicted to gagging debate in this place, is addicted to curtailing the proper scrutiny of its reforms and just cannot help itself but to mismanage the affairs of this chamber and ram through laws that this country should not have without proper debate.

In the life of this parliament we have seen 158 bills guillotined through this chamber and, if this motion is successful, another seven will be added to that list and 165 bills will have been guillotined under the watch of this government. Senator Fifield already outlined the fact that this move to guillotine debate on the National Disability Insurance Scheme is an astounding step by the government. Everyone in this chamber, especially people on this side, wants to see that legislation passed. The opposition is more than willing to work cooperatively with the government to do so but, instead, in an attack on the spirit of bipartisanship and cooperation that exists around the NDIS, this government, addicted to guillotining it, addicted to the guillotine, had to guillotine this measure as well.

Equally, they are guillotining the six media reform bills, four of them highly controversial. The hypocrisy of all this is astounding, especially from the Leader of the Government in the Senate, Senator Conroy. Let me reflect on what Senator Conroy had to say, back in 2006, about media reforms then. At that stage he put out a press release, in which he said:

Government senators have used their numbers to turn the communications committee inquiry into the media law bills into an absolute farce …

And further:

It is clear that the Government does not want its legislation subjected to proper scrutiny by the senate committee …

Senator Conroy went on:

The committee will be forced to cram more than 30 witnesses into just two days of hearings …

In a complete abuse of the Senate committee process, the minister nominated the reporting date before the committee had even met. The public are entitled to wonder what the government is trying to hide. The government is clearly determined to ram this legislation through the parliament and is arrogantly prepared to sacrifice proper Senate scrutiny to achieve this objective.

Those were Senator Conroy's words in 2006. In 2006 there were four media bills under consideration. Today there are six bills under consideration. In 2006 the government of the day allowed 34 days for consideration of the bills between the houses. This year, the government of the day is allowing just seven days worth of consideration. In 2006 the government of the day allowed 17 days for the committee to report. This year, the government has allowed barely two days for the committee to conduct hearings and report.

This is an amazing situation, where this government wants to push through the most far-reaching, first-ever peacetime regulation of media in this country, and it is doing it under guillotine. This reform process is shambolic, it is too rushed and it is half baked. And do not take my word for it, Mr President, because they are not my words; they are the words of Mr Wilkie, the member for Denison, who just a short while ago described the media reform process of this government as 'shambolic, too rushed and half baked'. I could not agree more. That is why this motion should be defeated and that is why there is no way these six media reform bills should be guillotined.

We all know that this government's desire to ram this media legislation through this Senate and through this parliament is driven purely by vengeance; purely by their vengeance to get back at those who have criticised the many, many failures of this government. They have thin skins over there on the government benches and on the cross benches; they want to get back at the people who have been their chief critics and they want to do it by the end of this week.

Although the Prime Minister has completely sidelined Senator Conroy from this process and made a mockery of his take-it-or-leave-it stance in terms of no amendments to the bills, the government remains determined to exact its revenge. This Senate should reject this motion and reject the government's desire to have that revenge.