James Paterson (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I'm very pleased to be able to make a contribution to this take note debate. Like a lot of simple pleasures that we previously took for granted, I have a new appreciation for the opportunity to take note of answers to questions without notice. I do so as the government's nominee as deputy chair for the new Senate select committee to be established to scrutinise the response to COVID-19. I want to take the opportunity of the take note debate today to reflect on the task of that committee, and on the task of all of us as parliamentarians in the months ahead.

I am honoured to be joining this committee, because I'm a big believer in parliamentary scrutiny of the decisions of executive government. I particularly have great faith in the unique capacity of this chamber to provide that scrutiny. I congratulate the chair and deputy chair of the Senate Standing Committee for the Scrutiny of Delegated Legislation, Senator Fierravanti-Wells and Senator Carr, for their initiative to continue the important work of their committee at this time. In times of crisis, parliamentary scrutiny remains important. It is even more important, given the extraordinary measures governments have been forced to put in place to respond to the coronavirus; measures this parliament would normally never agree to but that have been put into place—for good reason—very rapidly. Normal parliamentary oversight—like Senate committee inquiries into proposed legislation—has not been possible in this environment, where responding quickly is essential. That's why I'm pleased the Senate is establishing a Senate select committee, to be led by Senator Gallagher, to help fill that scrutiny gap, given the parliament may not have a regular sitting schedule for some time.

The committee and all of us as parliamentarians have a significant task on our hands in the months ahead. The most obvious and immediate task is to examine the health measures put in place to slow the spread of the coronavirus and how effective they have been. The first duty of any government is to protect the health and safety of its citizens, and this will undoubtedly be the major focus of the committee. Many of these public health measures, implemented in conjunction with the states, have also had severe economic consequences which we are only seeing the beginning of. It will be important for the committee to carefully consider the economic costs of these measures on the lives of ordinary Australians. And, of course, that cost is not just measured in terms of dollars. We know from recessions past that lost jobs and failed businesses leave behind many human tragedies and a significant personal toll of their own.

Those economic consequences have necessitated a strong fiscal response from the government. While the need for these fiscal measures is obvious, they represent some of the largest-ever peacetime Commonwealth outlays. Meeting the cost of those outlays will be a shared national task for many years ahead and, depending on the extent and the length of the economic downturn we are all anticipating, it will potentially be an intergenerational one. As a younger member of this place, I'm particularly conscious of this. The interests of taxpayers must be carefully considered by the committee, given the burden the parliament is asking them to bear, today and in the years ahead.

The path out of this public health crisis is, understandably, of great interest to all Australians. It will be appropriate to question decision-makers in government, and the experts who advise them, about alternative pathways from here. Australians will also look to all of us for the reconstruction project ahead. Putting the economy into hibernation and starting it up again on the other side has never been tried before. The closest historical analogies we can draw are the transitions we've made in the past from a wartime economy to a peacetime one. Once the immediate danger of the virus has passed, rebuilding our economy and public services to a degree of normalcy will be our challenge. In the longer term, we'll also have to consider questions about our national resilience and self-sufficiency.

In response to the crisis so far, we have seen the suspension of the partisanship which normally defines our politics. My sense is that this has been warmly welcomed by the Australian people. Inevitably, though, there will be things on which we disagree, and that is normal and healthy in a liberal democracy. We come here informed by different values, and that is reflected in our policy preferences. In this crisis, we have all been required to set aside, to some degree, our political philosophy. When the conversation returns to the post-coronavirus world, it is likely that those differences will re-emerge, although perhaps not in the exact form that they took in the pre-coronavirus world. The challenge for us will be to set aside the gratuitous partisanship, and to explore those differences constructively in the spirit of national unity that has defined this crisis so far. That is what the Australian people expect of us.