Gary Humphries (ACT, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Defence Materiel) Share this | Hansard source

Well, if you are serious—

The TEMPORARY CHAIRMAN: Minister, Senator Humphries has the right to be heard in silence when he is on his feet, and Senator Humphries you will not respond to interjections.

I acknowledge you admonition, Mr Chairman. I put it to the Senate that there must be a reason that the government is proposing to run a referendum campaign at great expense when it knows that its chances of success are very limited. The reasons are entirely political. I mentioned cost a moment ago. I would be interested if the minister could provide the Senate with any information about the likely cost of this referendum to be held in conjunction with the election in September of this year. I note by way of background that the referendum conducted in 1988 to amend the Constitution was conducted at a cost to the Australian taxpayer of almost $35 million. But a decade or so later, when a referendum—also a freestanding referendum, not in conjunction with an election—was held on whether Australia should become a republic, the cost of the referendum had escalated to almost $67 million. I think it would be fair to assume that the cost of a referendum this year could be approaching $100 million.

But of course the details of how that cost might play out are made more complex by the government's amendments to subsection 11(4) of the act, which apparently provide a capacity for the Commonwealth to spend money in relation to the referendum disproportionately between the yes case and the no case. Some indication of the extent of that disproportion between the yes case and the no case might give us a clue as to what the total cost of a referendum of this kind might be. Given that we are talking here, in relation to this Referendum (Machinery Provisions) Amendment Bill 2013, about provisions that will be unique to the referendum of 2013, I think the specific questions about the referendum would be appropriately answered by the minister at the table, Senator Collins.

So I put it to the Senate what I think any reasonable person with a little knowledge of this matter would suppose, which is that the government has motives for wanting to put the Australian community to the cost and trouble of a referendum with a price tag of perhaps $100 million other than simply amending the Australian Constitution to recognise local government. As a person with a background connected with local government, as I detailed earlier today, I can see the reasons for such a clarification of the status of local government within Australia's constitutional arrangements. But I cannot see how the government is advancing that proposition by the confused case it is putting to the Australian people for action in this way, underpinned by the legislation the government is putting before the Senate now.

So I ask the minister to answer those questions and clarify once and for all the bona fides of the conduct of this referendum. And I invite the minister, if she wishes to, to back up her claims here by making a quiet wager about what she actually thinks is going to happen in this referendum. I somehow doubt much is going to hang on that question at the end of the day.