Stephen Parry (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I seek leave to move a motion so that a private senator's bill can be considered under a limitation of debate. As I seek leave, Mr Deputy President, I cannot help but pass comment that this might be your last time in the chair presiding over the chamber. Congratulations and fare thee well.

Leave not granted.

In congratulating you, I hate to give you so much extra pain for your last session in the chair. But, pursuant to contingent notice of motion standing in the name of the Leader of the Opposition in the Senate, Senator Abetz, I move:

That so much of standing orders be suspended as would prevent me moving a motion to provide for the consideration of a matter—namely, a motion to provide that a private senators' bill be considered under a limitation of debate.

I wish to speak a little bit about the process, and my colleagues Senator Colbeck and Senator Boswell will be speaking about the substance of this motion for the suspension of standing orders. This morning we understood that this bill would be proceeding under difficult time constraints. The bill has not been concluded. Senators were speaking on the bill for lengthy times. We asked in the whips meeting under the private senators' bills arrangements if we could time manage this bill. This was denied. We believe this bill is of considerable importance and we would like to facilitate the passage of this bill through all stages today.

The process that I would like to propose—if the suspension of standing orders is agreed to—is that we take up one hour only of the Senate's time. As you have notified the Senate, Mr Deputy President, Senator Fifield has withdrawn the matter of public importance that was listed for this afternoon in this time slot that we are now speaking in. That motion was withdrawn in consideration of the one hour that would then ensue with this debate. In fact, it may be completed in less than one hour if we can have a time managed debate, which is what we have been seeking from the moment this bill has appeared on the Notice Paper.

Time allotted for private senators' bills is a new thing and in effect this is a trial. You would be aware, as Chair of the Procedure Committee, that we have agreed to some guidelines; however, the guidelines still do not allow for a bill to be completed. This is a bill that the coalition has put forward. We accept that the bill may or may not be passed; that is not the issue. The issue is that we want a bill that is a private senator's bill completed. We want to test the bill on the floor of the chamber. The only way we can do this and effect this bill is by debating this bill today.

I understand from my colleagues that this bill has a time-sensitive aspect—there are some 1 July matters that are impacted by this bill. There are some amendments that Senator Boswell wanted to put forward. We would like to facilitate those amendments going through. Once the bill, in its amended or unamended form, is completed, we would like all stages finished and the bill concluded this afternoon. We are being very generous with our time and our management of this process. We did have an agreement that we would split the time of the private senators' business this morning by allowing, in the two hours and 20 minutes that is allocated, one hour and 10 minutes for Senator Xenophon and one hour and 10 minutes for us. That was an agreement whereby we divided our time, as discussed in our normal whips meetings. This did not eventuate this morning. Senator Xenophon's bill went over­time slightly. There were senators speaking on the bill who, I am sure, had genuine interest, but it was a little bit dispro­portionate. There were a number of additional Labor senators scheduled to speak compared to the opposition.

Again, we indicated that we would like speakers to be kept to a minimum to enable that bill to progress—allowing sufficient debate—and Senator McLucas in the committee stage did ask some detailed and probing questions which were answered quite well, I think, by Senator Xenophon supported by the Greens. If private senators' business time will not facilitate the carriage of a bill through to its final stages—again, not determining the outcome of the bill but allowing the bill to reach its final stage so that we can vote upon the bill—then we are wasting our time by having private senators' bills debated without a logical conclusion.

The whips meetings have been very congenial in many respects in allowing many matters to take place. We would agree that under private senators' bills arrangements that, if there are more complex matters, we would allow longer debate. We get one shot at this every sitting Thursday, and some of these bills could then roll over into consecutive Thursdays. So it may take several weeks to get a private senator's bill passed through the chamber. They are the issues that we are concerned about in relation to the process, and I would urge all senators to support us in facilitating one hour of debate for this private senator's bill.

Joe Ludwig (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Manager of Government Business in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The loudness of my voice does not underscore the incredu­lousness with which I rise to respond to what is an outrageous stunt. I am certain Senator Parry is not behind this; it is Senator Boswell's mad idea, by the look of it.

What it does and what it is intending to do is up-end the Senate on the basis of a private senator's bill when we have before us appropriations and other important bills to be dealt with on the last sitting day before the end of the financial year. Notwithstanding that, it spoils what were very meaningful discussions about how we could have private senators' bills dealt with at a particular time by an arrangement between the parties to ensure that private senators could bring bills forward into this place, have them dealt with sensibly and appropriately during that period and have them brought to a vote, as we saw this morning with the palm oil bill. It was brought to a vote, which then allowed that debate to be had. In the past, it could only happen in general business or, alternatively, through this process. So the government, opposition and other people sought—and I think Senator Bob Brown wants the credit; I do not mind who gets the credit—time to allow private senators' bills to be debated. We have agreed to that, with quite generous time being allowed for that process each week. The next time we come back here, if the opposition, the Greens or the Senate want to debate Senator Boswell's bill they can. If it is not his time slot then he can debate his private senator's bill in the following week.

What Senator Boswell seeks to do, though, is jump the queue and say, 'No, my bill is more important; it is more urgent than government business; it is more urgent than any other private senators' bills.' Why? Because he is a spoiler. That is the only thing I can think of, quite frankly. He wants to spoil the process of having private senators' business dealt with on a Thursday morning, the appropriate time, and allowing parties to come to a concluded view, because it is all about you, Senator Boswell. It is all about you, because you think you take urgency, you take precedence, over everything else—

Alan Ferguson (SA, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Minister, you should address the chair.

Joe Ludwig (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Manager of Government Business in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Mr Deputy President, I will. The opposition want to undertake this private senator's bill during this time for that purpose. It is an outrageous suggestion. This government does not agree with it. Senators should not agree with it. Private senators' business should be confined to where it is. In addition, the opposition has effectively said that it would gag and guillotine the debate to allow Senator Boswell's bill to be dealt with. It is effectively saying to the Senate, 'We accept a confined debate,' notwithstanding others may want to make a contribution to the debate. But, no, Senator Boswell will then say: 'I don't want people to speak on this for very long because I want it brought to a vote. I want to have a vote in relation to this bill. I want to cut people off. I want to gag them so that I can have my way.' It is very selfish, in my poor view, to have that opinion. But it does seem that Senator Boswell is saying that to the Senate.

The Senate should reject that view outright. The Senate should not accept that position. It is an outrageous imposition. It is not well thought out. It is not a clever plan. It is simply an outrageous stunt from those on the opposite side, and it should be called as such. Quite frankly, they should withdraw it and not proceed with it.

Richard Colbeck (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is interesting that the government talk about management of legislation through the place, yet today we have indicated that we will give up the hour that the parliament gives us to debate an urgency motion. We have already given the government some other time today—an extra couple of hours—so that they can get their own legislation debated. It is interesting that they bring their appropriations bills on late on the last night of the sitting. This is so that it is unlikely that people will want to speak to the appropriations bill, but that is going to happen tonight.

In relation to this piece of legislation, it is interesting that Senator Ludwig refers consistently to Senator Boswell. I do acknowledge Senator Boswell's passion for this piece of legislation, but it does happen to have my name on it, Senator Ludwig—as you leave the chamber. It is quite a simple mechanism. It is not an unusual mechanism to be seen in legislation. In my experience, it is very, very responsibly used. In fact, one interesting piece of evidence that came to the Senate inquiry was from a former Labor speaker in the Victorian parliament, whose view was quite strongly that this legislation should be supported, because one thing that a disallowance provision does is promote proper consultation. If the government is guilty of anything in the development of its marine protected areas it is its failure to properly consult. This has been abysmal to the extent where it was a major issue at the last election—and perhaps that is why the government does not want this piece of legislation debated. There were attempts through the committee stage to put this bill off to report without there being any opportunity for us to debate it in private members' business. I have to thank Senator Cameron for at least conceding that we could get it reported last week, but there were attempts to push it back beyond this week. It is quite an important piece of legislation. We are talking about impacting on a significant area of Australia's marine environment. Senator Siewert seemed to imply that we were against marine protected areas. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, after the evidence to the inquiry presented by the Pew Foundation, and after the glowing description of our efforts in protecting the environment, I was asking Senator Siewert to give me her preferences. Indeed, I had a personal involvement with the south-east marine protected areas. When we undertook a process after the draft maps were released, and the Greens and the media all said that we were going to try to shrink it, we actually delivered 20 per cent more area. We delivered 20 per cent more area than the department put up, but we actually reduced the impact on industry by 90 per cent.

Senator Siewert also talked of science. Some of the science that has been presented in this debate is what genuinely concerns people like Senator Boswell. We had a report provided by the Ecology Centre—used extensively by NGOs to promote the process. The report said that 50 per cent of the south-west zone needed to be locked up, based on the science in this report, to effectively protect marine stocks and ecosystems in the south-west. We then find in the fine print that 50 per cent is an input to the report, not an output to the model. That is the sort of thing that we need the opportunity to be able to investigate and have a look at. It is absolute rubbish.

We do support the process of marine protected areas. We support the process of them being done responsibly and with proper consultation. But we do believe that the parliament should have the opportunity if there are problems with the consultation process and within the system to deal with those problems. To that extent, when I discovered that there was an error and some concerns about the drafting of the legislation, I wrote to the committee before inquiry. I put that on the table before the inquiry so that the committee could actually deal with that. Yet during the inquiry it was very difficult to get the chair to actually focus on it. I think we have been really upfront about this all the way through, and I think it is reasonable that we get the opportunity to debate this properly and have it put to a vote in this chamber.

Rachel Siewert (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

(Western Australia—Australian Greens Whip) (15:47): The Greens will not be supporting this motion. For a start, regarding this issue about private members' time, we did debate a bill this morning and we got a whole bill through. The Independents were always due to have a slot during this sitting. In fact, as I recollect, it was the previous week that they were due to have a slot on a program—the whole slot. Senator Xenophon was very generous in giving up some of the time for this morning's debate to start the debate on this particular bill.

It is quite obvious why the opposition has brought this debate on at 3.50 pm on the Thursday that we are rising. It is because they know very well what is about to happen in the Senate as of 30 June. So do not pretend anything else; that is exactly why you want to do it. All this talk that it is time dependent on 1 July is nonsense. Admit why it is time dependent. It is not because there are time dependent divisions in the legis­lation. Be honest: you got the drafting wrong and that is why you had to make amendments. The original drafter of the bill tried to amend the wrong piece of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act and it very rightly got sent off to committee.

Senator Colbeck needs to be fair about what happened in the committee. We all agreed that it should be reported and not pushed out beyond July. We all agreed at that discussion in the committee. As to the comments that Senator Colbeck made in terms of consultation, I think that I went through this pretty clearly this morning when I spoke about the extended period of consultation that had been occurring around the south-east process—during which time the coalition was in government—and the very extensive consultation process that is going on in the south-west areas.

If it sounds like I am backing up the government there, I do not want them to think that we are happy with the plans. We are on the record saying, 'No; we think it needs to improve.' But we do think that there has been a lot of consultation with every stakeholder. As for the backlash during the election, we know very well who was stirring up a whole lot of that. The untruths and misrepresentations of various people's positions that were articulated were outrageous—for example, about the Greens' position on fisheries. There were outlandish statements being made that we want to ban fisheries—which is so far from the truth; it is nonsense. We are the ones who care about the future of fishing because we are the ones who believe we should have adequate marine protected areas so that fisheries can be protected for the long term. In fact, since having that debate this morning, I received an email that once again highlighted the peril that our oceans and our fisheries are in.

To get back to the science, the science continues to highlight the importance of marine protected areas. The fact is that at the moment the act allows a lot of consultation. The management plans are disallowable instruments. In fact, you used that measure yourselves—and I am obviously referring to the coalition—to try to disallow the process for the Coral Sea. So you made use of that process yourselves. It did not get through, but you made use of that process yourselves as a disallowable instrument for the zoning of the management plans. So the ability to have the debate in here quite plainly works.

You want to circumvent the consultation process that happens in the community. When all that process is negotiated you want to then come in and circumvent that and make it a political process so that certain people in the community—and I am not pointing any fingers here—can tell mistruths and half truths about what impact those particular zonings have and say that it will stop fisheries forever and that certain people want to ban fisheries, which is nonsense. That is what will happen if you try to do that with marine protected areas.

Your party felt the process outlined in the EPBC Act was satisfactory at the time. Now, all of a sudden, it is changing, because 11 years down the track those provisions are finally starting to be used to get some conservation outcomes and a proper planning process. This talk about bioregional plans and the planning process delivering uncertainty is nonsense. They deliver certainty because there has been extensive com­mittee consultation and everybody knows where the lines are drawn. That is certainty; it is not uncertainty. What you want to do is further destabilise the process.

Ron Boswell (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy President, I congratulate you, too. I am not going to respond to the Labor Party and the Greens. What I am going to say is that this needs to be debated, because there are four million blue-collar workers who normally vote for Labor. I will read one of the submissions to the committee again. It should be absolutely compulsory reading for everyone in the Labor Party. The Labor Party is getting ripped to pieces. This is just a classic example of why you have to listen to the people, and you do not. The vote is dividing now, at 27 per cent, and the people who want those bioregional zones, in the form that they are, are voting for the Greens. The four million people who fish and normally vote Labor are coming over to us, and that is why we won every seat down the east coast of Australia, in Queensland. You ignore this at your peril and you continue to ignore it.

This bill covers twice the land area of Australia—16 million square kilometres—and it is in the hands of only one person. The minister, Mr Burke, has the power of life and death over fishing, mining, boating and anything that happens in those zones, and he can do what he likes. This bill does not want to ban bioregions—not at all. It is saying: give the parliament a vote; let the parliament have the right of disallowance. It is the same in every declaration, bar this particular one.

We had a number of submissions to the inquiry, something like 31. Out of those 31 there would have been 28 that represented professional fishermen or boat users, such as the Cairns Professional Game Fishing Association and the Haines Group, which provides boats. The boating industry is worried; it is in the doldrums because of all the closures that are going on. I will read from Cameron Talbot's submission. It is an absolute cry in the wilderness from a Labor voter. He said:

I’m concerned that lobby groups like PEW WWF—

that is, the World Wildlife Fund—

and AMCS seem to get access to Ministers and control of what happens. The Department does not consult us or simply ignores what we have to say. I feel that democracy has been lost and further more my faith in the Labour party has gone with it. I along with all labour supporters that I know who also fish, are so disenfranchised with this government that at the next election we will do what I never thought we would and vote LNP. This is the last chance I will give labour, if this falls thru so does my vote—for good. Fishermen (and there are a lot of us) will not forget this if it is swept under the carpet.

Those are the people I am appealing for—the people who are voiceless. Yes, they have consultation: 'Sit down here. We'll tell you what we're going to do, and if you don't like it don't worry about it. But, if you're on the Pew group or if you're on a green group, you get the ear of the minister.' This is what the four million people are saying: 'We want the same rights as Pew. We want the same rights as the World Wildlife Fund. That is what we want and we're not getting it. We voted for the Labor Party, but we're not going to do it anymore.' You are going to be torn to pieces and you should understand this, but you keep walking into the fire.

We had a couple of submissions from recognised scientists who said that drawing lines on maps does not really help the fishing industry. I will read one to the Senate by Steve Oxley from the department. He said:

I think it would be fair to say that, relative to other parts of the marine environment—and bearing in mind that the marine environment is generally not well understood—we have a relative dearth of information about the biodiversity of the Coral Sea …

This will be the next cab off the rank to be declared a zone. The Labor Party have to realise this: how do you go when your vote goes below 27 per cent? (Time expired)

Alan Ferguson (SA, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Before I call Senator McEwen, I just thank senators for the kind words they have expressed to me this afternoon. This will be the last time I am in this chair. I have appreciated the courtesy shown to me by all senators.

Anne McEwen (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I, too, would like to extend my congratulations to you on your illustrious career in the Senate and on your sterling representation of the people of South Australia over that long period of time and for your excellent chairing when you were President and Deputy President. I would also like to thank you for our many chats on aeroplanes to and from Canberra. I have appreciated that very much. You were first coalition member I ever sat next to on the plane to Canberra, on my first trip. You were very kind to me then. I also remember that you told me on that day that it would not be too long before I would be a government senator, so thank you very much.

Alan Ferguson (SA, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You shouldn't have told them that!

Anne McEwen (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The government is opposed to the motion moved by Senator Parry to suspend standing orders. As Senator Parry said, the opposition's intention is to bring back the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Amendment (Bioregional Plans) Bill, which was on the Notice Paper and, indeed, debated this morning during private senators' bills time, which was the appropriate place for a private senator's bill to be placed and debated. It is not the appropriate time to be debating a private senator's bill now when the Senate is in the last hours of the last day of the last sitting week of June and there is significant government legislation that needs to be debated, including the incredibly important appropriation bills and other time-critical legislation that has to be implemented by 1 July.

But no, we have seen, as Senator Ludwig has quite rightly pointed out, a stunt on the part of the opposition, trying to accommodate one of its members whose only interest, I believe, is to force the Senate into a vote one way or the other on this very important bill so that he can, I presume, issue a press release or something before the media takes off at approximately five o'clock. People listening should be well aware that this is a stunt by the coalition to try to force something to happen with this bill.

Senator Colbeck in his contribution rightly pointed out that this is significant legislation. I admire Senator Colbeck's dedication to this issue. He is usually a very reasoned and thoughtful contributor to debates and was a good participant in the Senate committee. He is right. It is significant legislation and it should be given the dignity of significant legislation and be allowed to be debated in full, and the debate should be able to be contributed to by all senators who want to make a contribution to it.

I am one of those. I participated in the inquiry on this bill and I have been walking around all day with my speech ready to give. But I was prepared to give it in private senators' bills time. Now is not the time for me to be making a speech about this bioregional plans bill—and I know that there are government senators who also wanted to contribute, because we understand how important it is.

We also understand how the people of Australia have been misled by the fear campaign whipped up by those opposite on the basis of their claim that, if this bill is not passed, somehow Armageddon is going to be visited upon the marine industry, on com­mercial operations that rely on the marine environment and on recreational fishers and other people who use our beautiful marine environment for many and varied purposes.

As Greens whip I should also say that, while the intent of this stunt is painfully obvious to everybody here, it is not correct, as Senator Boswell continually says, that there was some arrangement entered into by the government to ensure that private sena­tors' bills are brought to a vote. There was never an agreement that that would happen. There was an agreement that there should be private senators' bills time, and in fact in that time we have seen a number of government bills brought to the vote including, I clearly remember, a vote on the Defence Force retirement incomes bill. I clearly remember a vote on Senator Nash's social security legislation, and I clearly remember a vote just this morning on Senator Xenophon's palm oil bill. So it is outrageous for the coalition to claim that somehow the govern­ment is not allowing private senators' bills to be debated to fulfilment. It has happened and it will continue to happen.

Alan Ferguson (SA, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The time for the debate has expired. Question put:

That the motion (Senator Parry's) be agreed to.

The Senate divided. [16:07]

(The PRESIDENT—Senator Hogg)

Question negatived.