Bridget McKenzie (Victoria, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I just have a couple of comments to make around the discussion this morning. During my time here as a senator, I have sought to maintain the integrity of the Senate committee process and I have often raised my concerns with the resource issue and indeed the workload issues that have come. We all have to take responsibility for that. They are decisions of the Senate, which actually mean we set up select committees and we refer issues to references inquiries and the like. In the selection of bills process any Senator can refer a piece of legislation to the legislation committees for inquiry. So, whilst we complain that that occurs, we all actually have to take responsibility and maybe talk to our own whips and our own leadership to ensure they are thinking of that as those decisions are made.

I do not agree with the notion that a legislation inquiry, particularly in the committee that I chair, results in a rubber stamp. I refer the senators who would question that to the higher education reform legislation of a couple of years ago, where our committee made significant recommendations—five recommendations actually—for changes that over a period of time were actually adopted by the government. So I do not take legislation committees being a rubber stamp as fact.

With respect to this particular inquiry, our committee has been under the pump—absolutely. It was very clear that this piece of legislation was always going to come to our committee and was always going to be subject to an inquiry. And, with the government's desire to see it before the parliament as soon as possible, as per our election commitment, it was not going to be a long inquiry. But our committee secretariat's workload has been taken up with doing the fourth inquiry into the ABCC and registered organisations legislation, which, again, was always going to come before the Senate.

The committee I chair, the Education and Employment Committee, has inquired into this so many times—hearing the same evidence from the same submitters, over and over again. And, yet, we took up committee secretariat time to hold another hearing, to read the submissions and to write a report. Similarly, there are the childcare legislation and hearings that our committee has had to do over the past two weeks. So I would question those that are making the complaint. Look at your own behaviour. We could have done that report into ABCC and registered organisations on the papers and given our secretariat some issues.

I also want to put on the record that when we were in opposition getting secretariat support for dissenting reports was similarly difficult, so I do not think it is a unique situation. But I will do everything I can as chair and everything I can do as a senator to ensure that the integrity of the Senate committee process is upheld and that there continues to be a body of work from this place that all Australians can be proud of and that will inform debate and discussion in the public arena. Thank you.

Ordered that the report be printed.