Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

It says a great deal about the Abbott government that its first act on the first day of this new Senate is to look to break the Senate's rules and undermine the role of the Senate. It says a great deal about this government. This morning in the discussion that ensued post the election of the President everyone talked about the importance of the role of the Senate. The reality is that this is a government that acts like it wants Australia to be a one-party state and thinks that this should be a one-chamber parliament. The role of the Senate is not to rubber-stamp the government's legislation, to acquiesce to the government's broken promises, to wave those through or to cop it sweet when ministers fail to answer questions and refuse to account for their actions.

I do think it is worth remarking on the make-up of this Senate. Why does this Senate have a different political complexion? It is because that is what Australia voted for. An overwhelming majority of Australians did not vote for the Abbott government in the Senate. In fact, 8½ million Australians gave their first preference Senate vote to parties and senators other than coalition senators. By comparison, 4.9 million people voted for the coalition in the Senate.

Senator Ian Macdonald interjecting—

I will take the interjections from Senator Macdonald. They remind us that he does not want a Senate that acts as a check on executive government. But that is what Australians voted for. Australians voted for a Senate which acts as a check and balance on untrammelled government power. An overwhelming majority of Australians voted for non-government parties in the Senate, and I say that is because they did not trust Mr Abbott. It is the case that we have a government that would prefer not to have a chamber that held the executive to account—but that is not the chamber that Australians voted for.

I want to turn briefly to the Senate procedure and carbon bills point. The government claims it has a mandate for these bills. That does not justify breaching the Senate's order. Even if that were the case, it does not justify breaching the Senate's standing orders to ram bills through without allowing the Senate committee processes to be concluded. Let's remember that senators previously agreed on a not unreasonably long date for a committee report—not October or the end of the year or next year, but next week. Everyone listening should understand that the government are seeking to overturn the Senate's rules, the standing orders, simply to bring forward this vote by a week, because they want a political win and they want to avoid talking about their budget of broken promises, which is a vicious attack on middle Australia and low-income Australians.

We are going to continue to follow the rules and the conventions of the Senate. I would make this point to the chamber. As Odgers' makes clear:

When a bill is referred to a committee with a fixed reporting date—

As it has been on this occasion—

and the committee reports early, the bill cannot be proceeded with until the due date, except by leave or a suspension of the standing order.

Odgers' then goes on to explain why it is that this is in the standing orders. It is in the standing orders because we want to ensure better legislation, better scrutiny of legislation and a better argument about the detail of legislation. This is the core work of the Senate—and it is not the work that the government want the senators to undertake.

Finally, I want to make a point about Senator Abetz. It is quite interesting to look at what Senator Abetz said on previous occasions about how important the Senate is, how the coalition parties would stand up for the Senate and how the coalition would use every opportunity afforded by the standing orders to make sure legislation was ventilated. I want to make this point about his argument about the carbon price. He says the carbon price destroyed the Australian economy. That is yet another lie. The carbon price did not destroy the economy. In fact, our GDP grew by about 2.5 per cent in the first year, and we saw about 155,000 new jobs created during this period. That was yet another lie from a government that was elected on a lie.