Scott Ryan (Victoria, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Small Business and Fair Competition) Share this | Hansard source

The coalition is of the view that if there is to be spending there need to be criteria—caps that give people a sense of faith that the money is going to be spent appropriately and fairly. Nothing the minister said, I would contend, addressed the points I raised. Coalition members in the House of Representatives expressed a point of view on a committee report. I respect that, but I also disagree with it. The fact that there has been disagreement by some members of our party some years ago is not something that we shy away from. This was talked about in the first term of the Labor government and nothing was done. The Spiegelman committee came together and said, 'Here are all these problems you haven't dealt with.' They did not deal with them. They brought this up last week, the week before the budget, as another attempt to divert attention from their disasters—fiscal, financial and policy-wise. I am not going to have people who question the flawed process of this government be accused of not getting behind the proposal, as if we have to be some mindless daleks or drones and do everything this government says. I know some of the passionate advocates for this proposal on my side of the chamber would have done it so much better than the people in government at the moment.

The prospects for this referendum are statistically not so great. I cannot remember the last time that a referendum was successful on a day it was held conjointly with an election. The last two successful referenda were 1977 and 1967, neither of which were election days. That takes in beyond my lifetime, and, if I can recall correctly, Sir Robert Menzies, who I note passed away 25 years ago today, put only one referendum in his time, in 1951. We are almost back to the era of Chifley at that point, but my memory does not go back that far. Senator Collins, the government wants to bully people when they provide advice or respectfully disagree on the process so it is not only the way you have done this bill or the way you have failed to lay the groundwork or the way you have failed to engage with the states—important stakeholders—or the way you continually fail to engage with the opposition, as you did last week but it is also this additional barrier you are putting in the way of success for this proposal.

Progress reported.