Deborah O'Neill (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

For most people working around the country that would not even constitute half a day's good work. These guys have decided in the space of less than four hours that they had enough evidence to push through this shameful deal. That is what they have done. It is a disgrace; it is a disgrace that it has happened in this country; it is a disgrace it has happened in this building; and it is a disgrace that they think that sham of performance this morning will constitute anything other than the abuse of the Senate's authority in a most shameful way. It is contemptuous of a proper, robust and transparent inquiry into this most significant piece of legislation.

It is not only the Labor Party which should be upset about this; experts who have long-held and critical views on these matters are absolutely outraged by what is being attempted here. I was very honoured to meet Malcolm Mackerras. I only joined the Labor Party 19 years ago, when I was pregnant with my third child and I was a teacher; I was not a political staffer and I did not know until I got here that it was Malcolm Mackerras who created the horseshoe shaped graph of seats. This is what Malcolm Mackerras, who has had a long and distinguished career as a psephologist, had to say: 'It is not about fairness what is going on here. It is about the reshaping of our party system. South Australia is to have a four-party system, Liberal on the right, Xenophon in the centre and Labor and Greens on the left. The rest of Australia is to have a three-party system—coalition, Labor and Greens. There will be no independent senators, unless Jacqui Lambie can get a short-term at a 2016 double dissolution election. There will be only one benefit for the voters: the ballot paper will be smaller.' That is what Mr Mackerras said.

The Greens are always on about the environment and perhaps their great political goal is to shrink the voting paper for the Senate. They have become the Green political party. Whatever the perception might be out there that the Greens are the cuddly, generous ones, this deal absolutely seals forever that possible view of the world. The Greens are a political party who are seeking to advantage themselves in the most shameful way through what they are undertaking right here in this chamber. They have the hide to call it reform. 'Reform'—there is an abuse of a word if ever there was one in this context. Unlike the Greens and the Liberals, the Labor Party does not believe that putting a sticker that reads 'Reform' on a piece of legislation actually constitutes reform. It is deeply concerning to see the Liberals and the Greens announce a deal that will favour the Green politicians and Liberal politicians, and that is not in the interests of ordinary Australians.

Twenty-five per cent of Australians voted—not for Labor, not for Greens, not for the Liberal Party, not for the national party—for those ordinary Australians who we see here in this chamber. These are people who have been maligned and who have had to suffer the slings and arrows of considerable contempt on their arrival into this place. I think of each one of those senators as valued colleagues who have a right to be here. It is not that I agree with their philosophy or their views on many issues, but they got here by being elected by a system that enabled a range of different views to come into this place. I note the entry into this chamber of Senator Bob Day. Senator Day has not voted with Labor on many occasions, but I do appreciate his support for a particular motion that I put forward to call the government towards some transparency in a deal they did with the ATO in Gosford. I acknowledge that and thank Senator Day for his support. If we counted his votes, I would say he has voted with the Liberal Party an awful lot more often than he has voted with the Labor Party. But he got here legitimately. He got here in a system that this government is seeking to reform, to change in a most significant way after 30 years—and they want to change it without proper scrutiny, without proper care for the impacts, without careful consideration of unintended consequences. They just want to ram it through.

It is true that more than three million Australians exercised their vote by voting for a party other than one of the major parties. Three million people chose candidates carefully—or perhaps without too much care, but of course in the case of Senator Day he is saying it was a very careful choice—and voted for candidates from other than the main parties. It hardly seems fair, when we have that result that indicates what Australians think at this time, that this piece of legislation is being pushed through. Certainly I do not think we can call it reform if you leave out three million people whose intentions were pretty clear, if you construct a way of voting that excludes them from revealing that perspective once again.

Imagine for a minute if the Liberals had with Tony Abbott what they are seeking now with Malcolm Turnbull. This Senate would have been unable to prevent the worst excesses of a government that will go down in history as a shameful government that attacked very fundamental elements of Australia's health and education systems. If the Independents had not been elected we would by now have had our students in tertiary institutions paying $100,000 for a degree. We would have seen the cuts that they had tried to inflict on Medicare come into being and there would be a $7 co-payment. I notice there is a family sitting in the gallery. I am sure that mums and dads out there, like me, with a few children, find that when you get one child with an ear infection you get three children with an ear infection. When you need to get your child to the doctor to prevent illness or complications—and ear infections can turn into deafness—you need to take your Medicare card and know that you are going to get the service that you want, not take your credit card and hope to god you can afford to pay for the care you need for your child.

That is what would have been the reality in Australia today if the people opposite had got their way and got their bill through the Senate. But they did not, because Labor stood firm against it and, in a moment of conscience, the Greens came with us some of the time and also there were the Independents, who saw the unfairness of this government particularly in the 2014 budget. They stood up and they were counted. No amount of wiping them off the ballot paper is going to undo the good work that this Senate did in preventing Mr Abbott from doing what he wanted to do to the fabric of our society. If what they are doing now had already been achieved, we would have seen further cuts to family payments. Reform is important but reform that entrenches the right wing of the Liberal Party and reform that entrenches control of the balance of power in the Greens party, who want to legalise ice—that is one of their policies—is not in the interests of the ordinary people of this country. This bill was brought into the parliament by the Greens to reflect the deal that they have done with the Liberals. It does not even reflect the report of the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters. If it was in any way significantly the same as that, it might have some validity, but they have ignored that and they have just come up with their own little way of maximising the vote for themselves. It is a greedy power grab.

What we are seeing is a very concerning push for this big change—the biggest since 1984—where people will be encouraged to vote one to six across the top of the ballot paper and the government will be able to enact this very promptly and then get a double dissolution. Labor's concern arising from that and other changes—Senator Dastyari made this point very clearly as early as last week—is that one of the flow-on effects is that there is an informal vote likely when you make this sort of change. We are changing something for an entire country; we are changing what people do when they go in to vote. And we are doing this in the blink of an eye, or as quickly as a dirty deal signed in blood between the Greens and the Liberal government can be delivered. They are seeking this corruption of Australia's democratic processes as fast as possible. It is easy to be sceptical when the Liberals and the Greens hope that this produces more senators of their persuasion.

It is also very interesting that the Greens party have decided that they are the best minor party in the land—better than anybody else. The Greens have decided that they do not want anybody else to represent an alternative view in this chamber other than them. That is a pretty big call, and that is what the deal is about—it is about getting more Greens in this little bit over here so that they can have a say without all these separate voices, all these different voices that have characterised this Senate. The Greens should be out telling their supporters about what they have done here. They should be confessing to the fact that they have done a dirty deal and given the Liberal Party the permanent blocking vote of a majority in the Senate, that they have handed Australia over to the right wing without critique. As I have said, Senator Day has voted with the right wing more often than not but even he is disgusted by what they are attempting. What they are doing to our nation today shows breathtaking arrogance.

The Greens have sacrificed all principle and all policy to ensure that they and the Liberal Party together can block a progressive agenda in the future. You wonder how they could do this when you look at some of the things done not just by Mr Abbott but by Mr Turnbull. If they deliver this and he remains Prime Minister he will have control of the Senate and control of the House of Representatives. Who is this Mr Turnbull? Let us have a look.

Mr Turnbull and Julie Bishop conspired to assassinate the Prime Minister. After that departure of Mr Abbott, they delivered a profoundly dysfunctional and divided government. It is constantly contradicting itself, backflipping on one decision and the other. It is a disaster, frankly. We can see that. Mr Turnbull was once full of hope, but now all people hear is the waffle of his words. He backed in the cuts that they made to health and education when he was a cabinet minister. He backed them in again in his mini-budget in December. If he gets the chance, he will back them in again in another budget in May. If he gets elected, God help Australia because we will no longer have a Medicare card that works. We will no longer have schools where any child from any background can go and be assured they will get a good education, because this Senate, reconstructed by this deal between the Liberals and the Greens, will make that impossible to achieve. They will be able to do whatever they want. That is why Labor will fight so hard to give people an alternative. People know what Labor stands for. They can trust the party that instituted Medicare—the Labor Party—to fight to keep it.

It was Mr Turnbull, doing this deal with Ms Bishop, who created an incredible contrast to the way in which the government operated before. Mr Turnbull is a pretty good master of saying one thing and doing another. It is a mighty leap of faith to believe that he will not use the same hand-over-fist tactics while he is dealing with the Greens. On the environment, which is an issue that is supposedly close to the Greens' heart, as Leader of the Opposition Mr Turnbull said, 'I will not lead a party that is not as committed to effective action on climate change as I am.' Since becoming the Prime Minister, he has gone weak at the knees about climate change, and there is a very real risk that a re-elected coalition government will pass legislation previously rejected by the Senate, including Tony Abbott's bill abolishing the Clean Energy Finance Corporation. Remember that blue booklet that everybody got? I found the Liberal Party's Real solutions for all Australians statement of 2013 littered everywhere when I was door-knocking in the lead-up to the last election. It said:

We will improve rewards from working, reduce cost-of-living pressure and help families with the real costs of raising children.

But their words mean nothing because people are not reaping the rewards of working. Wages are not increasing, growth is slowing and unemployment is rising. Mr Turnbull put his name to all of the cuts that Mr Abbott made in the community and he is still after Medicare. This is a shameful deal between the Greens and the Liberal Party, who are in cahoots to take away— (Time expired)