Slade Brockman (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Nine times that inquiry was put to this chamber, and nine times Labor, the Greens and the crossbench combined to block what was a perfectly reasonable inquiry. I see here, from Senator Rennick, a perfectly reasonable thing to inquire into—consideration as to whether a Federation convention should be considered to look at some of the issues that have been identified over many decades as being at least a question mark over the efficiency and strength of our Federation.

One of these issues has been laid absolutely bare in the past few weeks, and that is the overlap of federal and state jurisdictions on mining approvals and the lack of clarity that provides to the industry. Regis, a listed Australian company, one of the largest Australian goldminers, spent $193 million and seven years going through all the state approval processes and through all the federal approval processes only to have an arbitrary decision from a minister overrule the project at the eleventh hour. That shows that these systems are not at all as efficient, clear, transparent or reasonable as they should be. Any of us in this room who talk regularly to major project proponents, who have to go through these dual processes, know that the approval times for projects have blown out from between two and five years to between seven and 12 years, sometimes even beyond that for much more significant projects. This is the fault of systemic problems that see state approval processes intersect with federal approval processes, and the delays and confusion that result from those approval processes, overlaid with another layer of arbitrary decision-making, which we've seen from this government in particular in recent days. So I think Senator Rennick's motion clearly raises issues that are of concern, that are of interest.

We saw the very long, protracted debate over GST-sharing arrangements. My home state of Western Australia was on track to receive cents in the dollar of GST revenue raised in WA, and it took a coalition government to fix that issue, in the face of Labor state parliamentarians and Labor parliamentarians in this place saying it couldn't be done—absolutely impossible. Of course, the Liberal government did fix it, championed particularly by the Liberal members of parliament in this place, to put in place a 75c floor in the GST-sharing arrangements, but should that be the last word? From my point of view, that 75c floor should be the lowest we possibly see, but what Senator Rennick is proposing here is an examination of other funding streams to the states and the way in which the Commonwealth government interacts with the states on that basis.

So I think the motion is one that deserves our support. It's a perfectly legitimate motion, and we should allow the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs References Committee to look into this matter.