Christine Milne (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That standing order 18 establishing the Committee of Privileges be amended as follows:

(a) in paragraph (1), omit "7", substitute "8"; and

(b) omit paragraph (3), substitute:

(3) The committee shall consist of 8 senators, 4 nominated by the Leader of the Government in the Senate, 3 nominated by the Leader of the Opposition in the Senate and 1 nominated by a minority party and independent senators.

For the purposes of the debate, I would like to indicate that the motion seeks for standing order 18, establishing the Committee of Privileges, to be amended so that the committee would consist of eight senators—four nominated by the Leader of the Government in the Senate, three nominated by the Leader of the Opposition in the Senate and one nominated by a minority party and Independent senators. There is a very good reason for moving this amendment today, and that is to represent the democratic wishes of the Australian people and in particular in terms of the representation here in the Senate.

The current membership of the Privileges Committee is under a temporary order of the Senate that was passed in October 2011 without any opposition from any party or Independent in the chamber, and it has been working well ever since. It is an accepted practice with Senate committees that they should be reflective of the composition of the chamber. Every other substantive Senate committee has got crossbench representation. For example, if you consider the legislation committees or the references committees, the Procedure Committee or the Standing Committee of Senators’ Interests, all have crossbench representation—minor party and/or Independent representation. The Privileges Committee is the odd one out. As I indicated, that was changed by temporary order in 2011 and it has worked extremely well. There can be no argument in democratic representation. The Senate committee system is indeed one of its great strengths. I think all of us in here who have served—and everybody does from time to time—on the various committees will recognise that the strength of the Senate is having all the views in this Senate represented and given voice on those committees. The committee system has worked well.

There are some of us who were here in the Senate when the Howard government had control of both houses of the federal parliament. We saw then a change to the committee system for the worst. I remember that, when I was first elected here and took my seat in 2005, Senator Siewert and I moved for references on a number of occasions. One in particular was the impact of climate change on Australia's agricultural industries. It took us years before the Senate would finally agree to that, because it was blocked as a result of the majority that the Howard government had in both houses of parliament and they did not want to have the views of the alternative voices in the parliament considered, and yet now everybody across Australia's rural and regional communities understands the impacts of climate change that they are already suffering, and we could have been dealing with that years earlier if we had not been blocked from doing so. No-one will forget that the change to the committee system that occurred then gave the government control of all Senate committees. That has fortunately changed back, and I would hate to think that there were any prospects in the future, after such a bad experiment, that Senate committees would not reflect the make-up of the Senate. It is on that basis that I argue strongly that the Privileges Committee does need to represent—