Mitch Fifield (Victoria, Liberal Party, Manager of Opposition Business in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I present the 11th report of 2011 of the Senate Standing Committee for the Scrutiny of Bills. I also lay on the table Scrutiny of Bills Alert Digest No. 11 of 2011, dated 21 September 2011.

Ordered that the report be printed.

I move:

That the Senate take note of the report.

In tabling the committee's Alert Digest No.11 of 2011, the Senate may be interested to know that the majority of the bills scrutinised for this Alert Digest relate to the government's climate change package. In scrutinising the provisions of the 19 bills forming part of this legislative package against the principles outlined in standing order 24, the scrutiny committee has identified a number of provisions for comment. The issues raised are those typically considered by scrutiny bodies. In relation to many of the provisions, the committee had enough information available to it to outline the particular circumstances, discuss the scrutiny principle of interest and then draw the provision to the Senate's attention for further consideration. However, in relation to a few provisions, the committee is of the view that further information is required to fully understand the justification for the proposed approach. These are also outlined in the Alert Digest and the committee will write to relevant ministers seeking advice on the points raised.

I also take this opportunity to draw the Senate's attention to a topic of particular interest to it at present. The committee is currently focusing on practical ways in which to improve the scrutiny of uniform national legislative schemes. These schemes involve cooperation between jurisdictions and they can be founded on intergovernmental agreements and text based referrals of legislation. The concern is that bills can be presented to parliament with advice that, for the Commonwealth to be able to rely on the referral from the states and territories, the bill cannot be substantially amended from the form in which it is first introduced. Although the parliament technically retains the right to significantly amend any bill that is before it for consideration, as this circumstance highlights, in practical terms this is not always realistic. The scrutiny committee can provide technical advice about bills to ensure that they are consistent with scrutiny principles. This can assist to avoid legal deficiencies and subsequent challenges to legislation, but the committee's advice cannot be put to good use if it is not implemented.

The committee intends drawing the issue of the scrutiny of national schemes of legislation to the attention of ministers as relevant bills are introduced. The committee will seek to work with ministers to identify effective ways in which to provide our technical expertise at an early stage in the development of cooperative scheme laws without jeopardising any proposed legislative schemes. We are also considering this issue more broadly as part of our current inquiry into the committee's future role and direction.

In conclusion, the full details of the committee's views about the bills it considered this week are available in the Alert Digest and in the report which is being tabled today. I commend the committee's Alert Digest No. 11 of 2011 and the 11th report of 2011 to the Senate.

Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for the Murray Darling Basin) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I appreciate the opportunity to comment on this report and to take note of it and I certainly look forward to looking with a great deal more scrutiny myself at the report which Senator Fifield has just tabled and provided some details on. The Senate Standing Committee for the Scrutiny of Bills is one of the more important but less noticed committees of this parliament.

Mark Bishop (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

So you haven't read the report yet but you are speaking to it?

Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for the Murray Darling Basin) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Bishop, the report has only just been tabled, but this is the opportunity to take note of it. I am speaking to it because there is some great irony, I find, in a discussion about proper scrutiny given the 19 climate change bills that are before us, which Senator Fifield referred to. We are seeing far from proper scrutiny of those bills. Yes, the scrutiny of bills committee has gone through its usual process and, as Senator Fifield highlighted, it has found a number of areas where there are provisions about which they have concerns. They will write to the relevant ministers, seeking additional information to justify the direction the government is taking with this legislation. That is welcome, but in other ways, and especially when considered against the normal processes of this place, these climate change bills are receiving no such appropriate scrutiny.

These climate change bills are being rushed through the parliament on a fixed deadline agreed in both chambers by the Labor Party and their coalition partners in government. They have set this arbitrary deadline and, in doing so, they have set up a shotgun inquiry which is being held under the most ridiculous terms and conditions that any substantial legislative package of this type has ever been considered under. In comparison, look at what happened when the GST and the A New Tax System reforms went through this place. We saw months of genuinely independent, or at least opposition-led, inquiry into the detail of those legislative packages. Five committees were set up through this place, each of them looking, over a period of four to five months, at the detail of those bills, each of them going out and taking submissions and evidence from interested parties right around the country and each of them with a reasonable time frame in which to do all that.

Compare and contrast that with what we have for the carbon tax. The government have introduced 19 bills into the other place and their approach to assessing and considering them has been to establish a select committee. It is not a balanced select committee, mind you, but a select committee on which the government, together with the Greens and an Independent member—all of them part of the government's coalition arrangements—overwhelmingly outnumber the representatives of the opposition. They have seized total control of the committee, appointing a Labor member as its chair and a Greens senator as its deputy chair. When the GST bills were considered, those committees were chaired by Labor senators with Labor majorities. However, so much is the government wishing to totally control this process of consideration and public debate on its carbon tax that it has had to seize total control of this committee. It has thrown out all long-standing parliamentary conventions that where a chair is from one side a deputy chair is from the other side, ensuring some semblance of balance in the organisation and coordination of the committee. It has thrown that out in favour of having their own coalition partners running the show with them.

What about the timing of it? The timing of it does not exactly allow for proper scrutiny either. This is a rushed committee, a rushed inquiry—it has 20-odd days from go to whoa to get the job done, to thoroughly assess and analyse the details and merits of these 19 bills and make any recommendations after taking evidence about the content of those bills. That is a virtually impossible task in such a short period. The government has set and has forced the committee to set an equally impossible task for the Australian public, because the Australian public was given just six days to make their submissions on the legislation before this parliament—Australians have been given just six days to make submissions on the 19 bills, on the more than 1,100 pages of proposed new laws for this country contained in the carbon tax legislative package.

My message to Australians is: do not be deterred, do not be held back by the government's contempt for you and its contempt for proper commentary, proper scrutiny and proper accountability—please make sure you get your submissions in. Australians have slightly less than 24 hours now to get their submissions into this inquiry. It has been a terribly rushed process, but I would urge anybody listening to this broadcast to go onto the Parliament House website and make a submission to the committee, with of course its very spin-generated name of the Joint Select Committee on Australia's Clean Energy Future Legislation. It is a little bit of a mouthful but I am sure anybody who wishes to make a submission will be able to find its webpage and get their voice heard no matter how hard this government tries to stifle them.

Sadly, in terms of actually taking evidence and scrutinising this legislation around the country, the committee finds itself totally hamstrung by the government-Greens-Independent majority. The committee will not take evidence anywhere away from the eastern seaboard. That is a concern to me and I am sure to you too, Mr Acting Deputy President—

Judith Adams (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

And it is a concern to me.

Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for the Murray Darling Basin) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

And it is certainly of concern to Senator Adams as well, as it would be. The committee and coalition members have argued that we should be going west and that we should hear from the people of Western Australia who have such concern about this carbon tax. But, no, that idea has been blocked—the committee will not be going to Western Australia; it will not take evidence in my home state of South Australia either, or the Northern Territory or Tasmania. We are not quite sure yet whether the committee will even get to Queensland and perhaps hear from somebody outside one of the big cities and actually visit one of Australia's regional centres, particularly those regional centres hit so hard by the carbon tax proposal. No, the government, because of the time line it has imposed, because of the ridiculously tight time line for this committee to report, has instead put in place an arrangement where the committee will hear some evidence in Canberra and hear some evidence in Melbourne, and we are still arguing for one extra sitting day for this committee to take evidence into the carbon tax proposal out into the region somewhere, out into a regional area where we can hear from those interests across the agricultural sectors, the mining sectors, the exporting industries, the manufacturing industries, the tourism industries—so many of the sectors that will be directly affected by this carbon tax legislation and have been given such minimal time and opportunity to comment on it.

Even today we saw the ultimate in farce—this committee met for the first time for a public hearing and heard from government officials including officials from the Treasury. You would have thought that, in this process, the committee would have the opportunity to question officials from the Treasury about the latest Treasury modelling into the carbon tax. But, no, the government in its wisdom, despite having finished the modelling last week, despite the Treasurer drip feeding selected parts of it out on the weekend, decided not to release this modelling until the final few minutes before the hearing commenced this morning, thereby making it nigh on impossible for the committee to properly scrutinise the Treasury information upon which this legislation rests.

I welcome this report from the Standing Committee for the Scrutiny of Bills. I am pleased that it has been at least able to fulfil its usual task in this legislative process. It is perhaps the only parliamentary committee that has been able to fulfil the normal process of legislation and consider the legislation—all others appear to have been stifled when it comes to scrutiny of these bills. I commend the report, as Senator Fifield did, to the chamber.

Question agreed to.