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

Senator Lazarus, the motion that you have moved is unlike any motion that has ever been moved in the 113-year history of the Senate. And there is a reason for that, Senator Lazarus. The reason is that the motion is a gross abuse of the process of the Senate, is probably unlawful and is likely to attract a constitutional challenge in the High Court.

Senator Moore, you have been a member of this chamber for many years. You and those around you have the experience of this chamber to know better than this. You know that a motion like this is an abuse of the power of the Senate. You seek to justify it by saying, 'There have been inquiries before into a variety of topics that bear upon the jurisdiction of the states.' That may be so, but what this motion seeks to do—unlike the motions to which you have made reference—is to have a comprehensive inquiry into the entire administration of the government of a state. As you well know, Senator Moore—you are visibly embarrassed to have been traduced into supporting this motion—that is an abuse of the process of the Senate.

The device of this motion is, in seven paragraphs, to find a tenuous link between a Commonwealth interest and a state policy. So tenuous are some of these interests that they are non-existent. Take, for example, subparagraph (b):

The administration of the Queensland courts and judicial system insofar as it relates to cross vesting arrangements, with particular reference to judicial independence and separation of powers;

In the first place, that is an invitation for the Senate to have an inquiry into the entire judicial arm of the Queensland government. Secondly, just by the way, the tenuous link insofar as it relates to cross vesting arrangements is incompetent, because the cross vesting arrangements were struck down by the High Court in Wakim's case as long ago as 1999. So the motion as framed is incompetent, apart from being an abuse of process.

We know where this comes from. We know it comes from the member for Fairfax's vendetta against the Queensland government and we know the commercial interests he seeks protect. And we must wonder why it is that he has put up those senators, whom he controls, to perpetrate upon the Senate the imposition of creating a constitutionally improper inquiry to serve his commercial interests and to prosecute his political vendettas. If there were to be any doubt about that, when is the reporting date of this vaunted inquiry? The reporting date is 'on or before 31 March 2015'—just by coincidence, the expected date of the next Queensland state election.

Then we see the composition of the committee. It has always been the practice of this Senate that the composition of Senate committees should broadly reflect the political composition of the chamber. Mr President, do you know how many government senators there are to be on this committee? There is to be one. There are 76 senators, 33 of them are government senators, but there is to be only one government senator on this inquiry. That is a violation of the bases upon which Senate inquiries are constituted.

Might I close by referring, as my leader did, to advice by the distinguished former Clerk, the late Harry Evans. When something—though on a much more modest scale than this—was contemplated in 1996, Mr Evans said: 'If the matter were litigated, the High Court would be likely to have regard to the possibility of the system of government being brought to a halt by the Commonwealth and state houses establishing inquiries into overlapping subjects and summoning a large number of each other's officers. The same officers could be summoned by different houses to appear at the same time. An implied immunity might well be seen as necessary to preserve the system of government itself. In any event, the undetermined legal question is less important than the matter of comity between the houses of parliament and between the Commonwealth and the states. It is a parliamentary rule that houses do not summon each other's members and officers. (Time expired)