Gavin Marshall (Victoria, Deputy-President) Share this | Hansard source

I do not often speak on a political nature in the Senate, or I rarely do anymore, but, given some of the contributions made about the actual process, I do want to lend my views to the processes we are dealing with here. What we are actually debating is whether the bills should be exempt from the cut-off. It is easy for people to say—and people have said—that to exempt a bill from the cut-off is the normal process of events and procedure in the Senate. Of course, it is not. The cut-off is actually there because it has been developed over a long period of time through the Senate and is part of the Senate practice to stop bills being brought in towards the end of the session in order to ensure that they get less scrutiny and have less debate upon them. This was something first identified and complained about by Greens senators. Greens senators actually initiated the early cut-off processes in this chamber, and it was for very good reason. Many senators, particularly senators who were not government senators, had problems with bills being introduced and not being given the appropriate scrutiny.

It is true that from time to time bills need to be given an exemption from the cut-off, but that is more unusual than it is the norm. The norm is that bills that are subject to the cut-off do not get debated until the following session. Now, if there is an urgent requirement for a bill to be debated, one would assume that discussions are had around the chamber and agreement is reached about why the urgency is needed, and those matters are then put before the chamber. If it is agreed that they are urgent, there is agreement on that. I have been in this chamber many, many times where agreement has been reached, and it is simply a process motion for the bills to be exempted from the cut-off because the argument has been made and it has been accepted that bills should be exempted from the cut-off.

But to simply bring things in without discussion—and I am advised that, at least in terms of the opposition, there was no discussion whatsoever about why these bills needed to be exempt from the cut-off; they were simply introduced into the chamber to be exempted from the cut-off, which is against the practice of the Senate. The normal practice of the Senate, established over many, many years and, as I said, initiated by the Greens senators, is that, if bills are introduced late, they should be dealt with in the next session unless there is an urgent reason. Again, all I can say is that a lot of people are assigning different motives to why leave was not given to move a motion to exempt these bills from the cut-off, but I just want to put on the record that the normal process is that bills that are subject to the cut-off should not be dealt with until the next session.