George Brandis (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Attorney-General) Share this | Hansard source

The opposition’s position in relation to this referendum has been transparent from the start. Our position has been, after very difficult discussions, I might say, inside the Liberal Party, that we would not oppose the putting of this referendum question to the people. We see that, following the Pape case and the Williams case, there are issues about grants to local government which do require to be addressed by constitutional amendment, and it has always been our position—even though some of my colleagues have a different view, in good faith—that we would not stand in the way of this referendum proposal being passed through the parliament. However, that was always on the footing—and the discussions between the office of the Prime Minister and the office of the Leader of the Opposition have always been conducted on this basis—that there would be equal funding for the yes case and the no case so that the Australian people would have the opportunity to make up their minds on the basis of a full expression of the yes case and a full expression of the no case. It was on that basis, on the basis of those assurances, that the opposition, in the House of Representatives, did not oppose these referendum bills. After they had been passed through the House of Representatives, after the issue of funding for the yes case and the no case had been explored in Senate estimates and the opposition had been led to believe by the government that there was not a problem here, yesterday, for the first time, the government, through Mr Albanese, the minister with carriage of this, announced that the yes case would be funded to the tune of $20 million and the no case would be funded to the tune of half a million dollars.

An opposition senator: It's appalling!

That is the most appalling breach of faith with an opposition which was prepared, and had indicated to the government that it was prepared, to allow the passage of these bills through the parliament on the basis that the yes and no cases both had equal funding.

Senator Cormann interjecting—

You are right, Senator Cormann. You cannot trust these people. You cannot trust the Labor Party. Senator Collins says there was no notice of this suspension motion. That might be so, but nor was there any notice to the opposition of the trick that Mr Albanese tried to execute yesterday. It has always been the constitutional practice that the yes case and the no case at a referendum have been funded equally, regardless of the vote for or against the referendum bills in the parliament. Senator Abetz referred to the republic plebiscite, but let me give you an example of the most recent referendum where that occurred—the 1977 referendum, during the Fraser government, for simultaneous elections of the Senate and the House of Representatives. That was defeated. It had bipartisan support. It was proposed by the government and supported by the Labor Party in the House of Representatives. It was carried in the Senate with bipartisan support, but a small group of backbench Liberal senators—some of them I note, Senator Cormann, were Western Australians—