Claire Moore (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Women) Share this | Hansard source

I very rarely take comments across the chamber, Senator Macdonald, but you actually calling out someone from this side for filibustering is indeed a brave statement, because, having been here for a number of years—not as long as you, Senator Macdonald, through you, Mr President—I have learnt the art by watching people like yourself being able to speak at length over any form of process.

I think it is absolutely important that there is no allegation about anyone trying to mislead this place. The important element—and I cannot stress it too much—is that we want to see what is on the red. As Senator Wong brought forward, we actually want to see the items of business that are currently listed on the red for debate today given the opportunity to be concluded today, before we rise again and before we again have the situation where issues that the Senate needed to consider and issues that the Senate expressed a desire to consider would not occur, and where we would walk away having spent a large amount of time speaking in this place on issues that perhaps we did not particularly want to speak on or that were not particularly that important.

There are issues about the referral of committees and there are a large range of issues that are there under the notices of motion—including a couple under my name; I do not think they are any more important than any others. In terms of the process, we want to ensure that those are concluded. Opportunity in this place is very often limited by the set rules of the Senate so that we would have a period of time in which we are able to have these debates and then after a set period of time the Senate rules move on and we close that section of the process. That is not what we want to occur this afternoon.

Senators who have their Reds in front of them—and I am sure you live by them every day that you are here—can see that under business of the Senate we have a number of committee references. Then we go down to two pages of notices of motion—in fact, I do not think I have seen two pages of notices of motion before—which relate to a range of issues that senators have brought forward and put through the process to ensure that they are before the Senate. They do not wish to be disappointed or frustrated because they will not be able to have that debate effectively here rather than elsewhere. Too often, I think, we have debates outside the chamber, in many groups talking about what should happen, when in fact these debates, wherever possible, should be had here so that every senator who chooses to be involved in the discussion has the opportunity to take part in that.

The issues that are before the Senate are not confusing. The issues that are before the Senate are there for everyone to see. When you look at the Red, you can see exactly which committees are being asked to be formed and have references made to them. You can also see exactly which items of business are being put forward into the Red. As I have said, it should be a simple enough process that senators are able to understand which business they will be looking at during the time that they are here, as indeed are the people who take an interest in the operation of the Senate. We all know that the Dynamic Red is available on the parliamentary website, and there are some people, bless them, who actually check that website and see what will be on the agenda. So they would expect, if there is something on that Red in which they are interested and on which they have a view, that that would be concluded by the Senate and not moved forward.

As a point of interest, there is a notice of motion on Down syndrome which we put forward in the last sitting of parliament. We were not able to have that concluded in the last sitting of parliament, which actually linked with World Down Syndrome Day. We were not able to have that considered, because the rules of the Senate moved forward and we were not able to get that particular issue to the attention of the Senate and have it voted on. There were a range of organisations that were expecting that that particular motion would be considered by the Senate and we would be able to share in celebrating or noting World Down Syndrome Day. A few of us—and I am sure there are many in here that share that—then had to explain to the organisations to whom we had given a commitment that it could not be considered that day because the process of the Senate did not allow that to happen.

That is but one example, and yet again that particular motion is back on the Red today. It is back among the notices of motion to be considered in this place. Should the motion that the opposition have put forward ever get concluded, we would expect that we would then, as Senator Wong's motion indicated, look at the referrals to committees first and then go through and look at all the items of business as noted on the Red. That seems to me a quite straightforward proposition, and I would expect that there should be agreement around this place that that should be a process that we would be able to conclude.

Of course, for particular reasons, senators have views that they do not want to pursue a certain debate process, and that is why we have the process we saw earlier this afternoon, where leave was denied when Senator Wong put up her original motion. Then we went through the 30-minute process, as allowed by the rules of the Senate, to look at the suspension. Then we had the vote. Then we moved into this segment of the debate, which—as I am sure people across the board, particularly the learned senators on the government benches, would understand—under the processes we have in the Senate is open-ended and allows every senator who wishes to take part a 20-minute option to speak. I have listened to many 20-minute options to speak in this place, and all of them have some value—some more than others. But, in the way we move forward, we allow the process to continue. This afternoon, yet again—in the process that we heard was so important—on the issue Senator Kim Carr brought forward, we heard two very strong contributions by government members in response to that process, each of 20 minutes. Each spoke about how the rules would operate, and no-one stopped that contribution. We allowed the rules to continue so that we would see exactly how the process should operate.

So we move forward. We look at how the process should operate. My motion is before the Senate so that we have the opportunity to look at the sequence of how the issues on the Notice Paper today will be considered. If the government had not been unable to support that motion—a significant time previously to this—we would not be having this debate. We would have been moving through the process quite clearly, looking at each item: the referral motions for the Senate committees and the notices of motion as they were printed. We would be concluding those issues and moving forward. But we are not. We are still in stage 2 of the series of debates when formality is denied and someone seeks leave. That is what occurred, and we need to move now.

We have had that process. We are moving forward, and I think that we need to ensure that we have the option for the Senate to consider the items of business looking at referrals to committees and then—most clearly, and in some cases probably even importantly—at the extensive list of notices of motion, which actually belong to this Senate and to no-one else. Those notices of motion belong to the Senate, and we should, if we are doing our job, get to that business. I think that there should be an opportunity for all of us to have our different views, if necessary, on some of them. Now, having seen where the procedure debate goes and understanding the process allowing for the procedure to be agreed, we know that we are moving on exactly how we look at the process and ensuring that the Senate is aware of what we are doing, that the Senate takes its position and that the notices are considered.