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

This government's true north is bad process. Unerringly, that is where this government heads every single time—whether it is bad process by design, as in the case of a carbon tax; whether it is bad process through sheer incompetence, as in the case of the mining tax; or whether it is bad process as a cover to rig an outcome, as we are seeing with the referendum. There should be only one threshold requirement for equal funding being provided to a yes case and a no case: that there are two sides to the argument, that there are two options for voting—yes or no. That is the only threshold which should need to be passed in order for there to be equal funding for both cases in a referendum campaign.

Amongst all parliamentarians, there is—or so I had thought—a sense that there is something bordering on sacred when it comes to the Australian Constitution. Similarly, up until now I had thought that all parliamentarians, regardless of which side of politics they come from, would approach any change to the Constitution with great sobriety, with great sincerity and with great solemnity—because the Constitution is the overarching legal framework within which our system of government operates. I had thought, no matter which side of a proposed change to the Constitution a senator or member was on, that that was something all parliamentarians would agree upon—that it was a serious business, that we should approach it in that fashion and that we should support the yes case and the no case being equally put.

A fundamental part of a yes case and a no case being equally put is equal resourcing. You cannot have equality in the public presentation of the yes case and the no case when only one side is substantially funded. There is only one conclusion you can draw when the government of the day seeks to provide significant resources to put one side of the argument and minimal resources to put the other side—and that is that the government of the day wants to rig or skew the outcome.

We have no issue at all with the government of the day arguing vigorously for a particular position. That is not what is in question here. What is in question here is the complete and absolute abrogation of what has been a cross-party, bipartisan Australian convention—that, when any proposition to change the Australian Constitution is put forward, both sides are presented equally and fairly and funded accordingly. Mr Albanese has come up with this bizarre new concept—that the resources allocated to the various sides of the argument should be dependent upon the number of people who vote a particular way in the Australian parliament. In fact it is not even the number of people who vote a particular way in the Australian parliament; it is just those in the House of Representatives. Even if the voting patterns of both chambers were looked at, however, it is still a bizarre new threshold that Mr Albanese has set. The only conclusion to draw is that the government are worried about their ability to mount the case for their preferred outcome.

There are different views about the referendum among people on this side of the chamber, but I think there is one thing which unites everyone on this side of the chamber, regardless of whether they see a need to change the Constitution or not. The one thing which unites everyone on this side of the chamber is the desire to see the Australian people fully informed so that any referendum gives a fair and accurate reflection of their views. That is the only thing which Mr Albanese should take into account with this proposition. For those reasons, further consideration of the legislation should be deferred until this issue is resolved. (Time expired)