Doug Cameron (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Human Services) Share this | Hansard source

I must say that does not explain why, when we are being told that there had been this extensive period of consultation prior to the current round of consultation, that this issue of symmetry or asymmetry was never recognised. Surely, if you get all these experts who you are consulting with, the issue of symmetry did not take two to three years to find out. The reality is that: this has nothing to do with symmetry or asymmetry. It is simply about trying to come up with a deal between the Greens and the coalition that would lock out other progressive parties ever having an opportunity to come to this place and actually having a different point of view, from a left perspective, to the Greens party. That suits the coalition. It suits the coalition because as Ross Gittins indicated in the article:

If the left-leaning Greens and centrist Xenophon party are happy to give the Coalition what it wants, it's a fair bet that's because the deal leaves room for their comfortable survival, while raising the drawbridge against the emergence of new minor-party rivals of either leaning.

So Ross Gittins has got it. We agree that is what this is all about. That is why we are concerned about the argument that this bill is about democracy and this clause is about symmetry. It is nothing to do with that. It is simply about trying to maximise the coalition in terms of their electoral capacity to either get control of the Senate or block legislation in the Senate. If you look at the issues that Senator Cormann championed in the 2014-15 budget, we know that these are the issues that Senator Cormann would want to bring back. He has never walked away from the 2014-15 budget.

Remember the budget where former Treasurer Joe Hockey and Senator Cormann were outside puffing on Havanas that probably cost more than an unemployed person gets in a week in their payments. They were sitting there with their expensive Havana cigars, celebrating cutting back on pensions and forcing unemployed youth in this country to survive for six months without any payments at all, forcing them into poverty or onto charity. That was the type of approach in that budget. There was the $7 co-payment for families. I remember, even though it was a long time ago now, that when I had young kids, if one of my kids got sick, my other daughter would get sick; my wife, who was looking after them, would end up sick; and I would end up sick. So there would have been four co-payments for many families under the proposal that Senator Cormann was putting forward as part of the 2014-15 budget—the celebratory Havana budget.

I take the view that this is not about symmetry for this clause; this is really about trying to gain control of the Senate in any way it can, and certainly the way it is gaining control of the Senate is by doing a deal with the Greens, which Senator Abetz is horrified about. It is creating huge divisions within the coalition. It was a divided coalition prior to this but it is an even more divided coalition in relation to this bill and clauses like this that it has been argued are about symmetry. Symmetry is simply a word if you cannot explain what the symmetry will deliver. What will the symmetry deliver? What will it achieve other than being six with 12 or three with six? What else does it achieve? Mr Gittins goes on:

… it was a quite small initial primary vote that allowed Bob Brown to get known and eventually spread the Greens to all states.

The reality is that there will never be another progressive party coming into this place who could do what Bob Brown did—that is, to get some national standing, form a party and spread that party to become a reasonably sized party with a capacity to have an influence, good, bad or indifferent, in this place. This is what it is all about: pulling up the drawbridge and ensuring that no-one else can ever get in here to do what Bob Brown did. Ross Gittins states:

If the indication of preferences becomes optional—meaning many people won't bother—the hurdle facing future Xenophons and Browns will be almost unreachable. They'd need a primary vote not far short of the quota.

Behavioural economists know that the way you ''frame'' a proposition greatly influences how people respond to it. Turnbull has framed his thus: if you want to put an end to micro-parties gaming the system and getting people with a primary vote of as little as 0.5 per cent elected, support my reforms.

That is the threat. That is the argument. But Ross Gittins goes on to say:

Sorry, non-sequitur. You can agree with the first part—as I do—without accepting that Turnbull's solution is the only one, or even the best available.

It was clear that this bill was rushed because they brought the bill in and did a very cursory joint inquiry. Then we suddenly found out, with the most cursory analysis of what was going on, that this bill does not work. I just think this is an absolute nonsense. It is clear what this is all about. Ross Gittins has framed it. Ross Gittins has nailed it. Certainly there is no use asking any more questions on it because the minister has absolutely no idea why this has been done.