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

The Committee is considering clause 4, amendment (1) on sheet 7384. Senator Rhiannon, you were seeking the call earlier. Do you wish to seek the call again?

Lee Rhiannon (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yes, Mr Chairman. Could you please explain what just happened? I have never seen that process.

The CHAIRMAN: Certainly. The government has just moved for an extension of time to consider this bill, I presume in the anticipation of completing the bill before we rise this evening. To do that we had to move out of committee stage, and now we have moved back into committee. That is how I get my exercise for the day!

So we are back to where we were?

The CHAIRMAN: Exactly, we are back to where we were but we had to go through that formality, otherwise the debate would have expired at 6.50pm.

Thank you for the explanation, Mr Chairman. I was interested in the comments made earlier, particularly by Senator Ryan. I am not doubting his passion and his interest in the constitution, but what we have here tonight is a whole number of excuses being used. There are heavy spoiler tactics going on around this important legislation. We have heard many comments being made—concerns about the constitution, the need for good process, the need for a commitment to ensure the machinery really works. But when you listen closely to what has been said, and when you remember how it played out today—initially there was only one speaker from the coalition and one from the Labor government, because this was supposed to be noncontroversial legislation—there was clearly an agenda going on. Yes, anybody can come in here and speak. It is one of the wonderful things about our parliaments in Australia. As Senator Ryan said, all of his party members—like all of us—are entitled to their opinion. But what we saw today in so many of the comments from the coalition was very worrying for a party that states that there is bipartisan support for this bill.

We are starting to see various guerrilla tactics going on here—throwing bombs out to be very disruptive about this important process to get the machinery in place for this referendum. We are running out of time. The process has not been perfect, but what is going on here is very troubling. To take just one of the arguments that Senator Ryan sets out, on the one hand he says that they want to spend $10 million on taking forward the campaign for the two cases but then on the other hand he says not to expect them to say, 'Well, that has saved $4 million'. Isn't that being responsible? There is a clear contradiction in how that is argued. Surely that is actually improving the management of this budget. Then we hear the senator again trying to justify his position by arguing that we have not got details of the criteria or the caps. I started thinking that the next thing would be him wanting to know what papers the advertisements would appear in, or how big the leaflet would be—would it be a DL or would it be an A5? He was getting down to a level of detail that is clearly a spoiler tactic.

I think the question that Senator Ryan needs to answer here is: what will he be saying when this campaign on the referendum gets going? Is he still going to be running a spoiler campaign? Is he going to say: 'Well, it was not done properly. We had this discussion in the Senate, the legislation was rushed and the machinery wasn't any good.'? Nothing is perfect in this world. Is he going to get up there and follow through on the supposed bipartisan commitment that we sometimes hear coming from the coalition? From the sum of the comments I have heard from coalition senators today, I certainly did not feel confident that any of them would be following through with that message. I found it interesting that few National Party senators spoke on this issue. My guess is that they are hearing from their constituents that their constituents really want it. But it looks like the message coming from the majority of the coalition is to be disruptive on this at all costs.

This is not perfect but we have a chance here and, Senator Ryan, you know we can get this through if the coalition would take a tripartisan, multi-party approach to this. Let us get this through, let us get out in the community and get this done. We have the opportunity and we should not ruin it.

Scott Ryan (Victoria, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Small Business and Fair Competition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would like to briefly respond to some of the comments made by Senator Rhiannon impeaching my colleagues for coming in and speaking on this today. Let us go through the time line of how this bill got here. Did the speakers list change? Of course it did, because at 9.25am today we were advised that this bill was coming on straight away. We were advised late last night—after the government had rammed it through the House of Representatives in the hour before the House rose for the budget—that this bill was going to come on today after two other bills. At around 9.10am or 9.15am, we were told that it was coming on first, and then—during prayers!—we were told that it was coming on straight away, not even at 10 o'clock—first thing! Senator Rhiannon, if you want to impeach Senate colleagues for having the gall to speak on a constitutional amendment when the opposition was given minutes notice to speak on it, then that betrays your particular values. They are further betrayed by you describing people daring to oppose a motion as troublemakers.

The opposition has said that in principle the coalition supports putting beyond doubt the ability of the Commonwealth to make payments to local governments, but we have also said the Gillard government—I suppose in this case the allies—has failed to prepare the ground for this referendum and, so typical of this government, everything is rushed out at the last minute to generate a headline rather than a result. We saw that last Thursday when a phone call was not even made to the two most prominent coalition supporters of this proposal. Even when in Campbell Newman's home state, in his capital city, a few hundred yards from his office, the Labor Prime Minister did not make a phone call to him—and Campbell Newman has written to her advocating support for this.

We are not going to be distracted from the key task on 14 September—the referendum that is really going to be a referendum on this government. We will not oppose this legislation because in the end the people do have a decision to make and, quite frankly, there will be some coalition MPs and senators who express a different view. As I said previously with respect to this amendment, if the proponents try to use this as a political attack on the coalition because there happens to be a couple of members who express a different public view, then they are only doing their cause a disservice. If they want to make the level playing field uneven—I am providing advice here, Senator Rhiannon—the coalition will not try to corral people who have a genuinely held, different view on this issue, and nor should we. The government has put more effort into legislation for tax laws amendment bills and that is the process that is weakening this. I assume the amendment is going to fail but, in all good faith, I think it shows the weakness of the process this government has used.

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

The question is that clause 4 stand as printed.

The Senate divided. [18:58]

(The Chairman—Senator Parry)

Question agreed to.

Scott Ryan (Victoria, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Small Business and Fair Competition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In reference to the amendment we have just dealt with, I have been informed that Senator Wong referred to that amount of money as the LGA grant a few minutes ago on television. I am not sure if that provides any extra clarity for the government to be able to give answers. I am led to believe, although I was not a witness to it, that Senator Wong also conceded on air that equal funding should be given to proponents and opponents. I am not a witness to that and I am happy to be corrected, but that is the message I have received, which I thought might inform the house of, given the debate we just had. I now move opposition amendment (2) on sheet 7384:

(2) Schedule 1, items 1 to 3, page 3 (lines 4 to 21), items TO BE OPPOSED.

This amendment concerns the distribution of what is simply known as the yes/no booklet. This booklet has a history in this country and this booklet is a century old. It was conceived in 1912 to inform electors of the arguments for the yes and the no cases in amending our constitution. I cannot understand why on earth the people on the other side of this chamber and their Green allies are so desperate to stop the booklet going to each elector. I have never heard such a contrived excuse as saving money from this government when it just voted to spend $10 million on an advertising campaign. I notice that Senator Rhiannon said that the combination of these two measures improved the budget. Only the Greens could say that saving four and spending 10 improves the budget.

This booklet is prepared by a majority of the people who voted yes in the parliament and by a majority of those who voted no in the parliament. It gets mailed to every elector, and I think it is fair to say that we all, maybe, open mail that looks more official rather than something that might come in a plastic envelope and says, 'To the householder'. The government stood up here and preached about the need for information to voters and how an advertising campaign was so important to this referendum, yet it is doing everything it can to stop a very simple booklet going to voters.

The Attorney-General in the other place yesterday seemed to imply that these changes were necessary to enable use of the internet. He said to the opposition spokesperson, Mrs Bishop:

By that, I mean the use of the internet—which perhaps the member for Mackellar has now discovered …

In the typical dismissive and sarcastic way that only the member for Isaacs can manage he implied that, somehow, the internet is not able to be used. We had it confirmed this afternoon that in 1999 information was put up by the AEC on their website. There is nothing that stops the AEC putting information on its website.

What this provision does is merely ensure that each voter gets a booklet, that each voter gets the information determined by those people in this place who have the constitutional responsibility and prerogative to put a proposal before them to amend their constitution. Yet, for the most contrived reasons, the government are determined to not let them have that. You are so determined to only let them see what you want them to see that you are basically going to throw it in with the Coles catalogue. This is treating the voters with contempt and I would say, even more importantly, that it is treating the proponents of this argument with contempt. It is treating those who have worked for this for many years with contempt. It is treating the people you claim to care about so much and who care so deeply about this issue with contempt.

No justification has been provided to take this booklet from a direct mail from the AEC. If there is one I am happy to hear it. The opposition and coalition members have never supported this. We have always opposed it and for good reason because this is the one thing that the public gets from proponents and opponents that is unfiltered. We, after all, have a unique constitutional responsibility. No-one can put a proposal to change the constitution before the people other than members of at least one of these houses. Unlike the US, unlike many other places in the world, which people might consider democratic, where states might be able to convene a constitutional convention or decisions to amend the constitution are made by politicians alone, we have a unique and well-designed provision in section 128. Both houses by absolute majority or one house with an absolute majority on two occasions separated by a couple of months have the right to put something before the people. What you are saying is that the one thing they get from the proponents and opponents, unadulterated but approved by the AEC and the Commissioner, you basically do not want them to get.

Senator Rhiannon, you may actually get up and make allegations about the opposition's motivations again, but I challenge you to say how this booklet and getting this booklet is in any way a challenge to the viability of this referendum, unless of course the proponents of it are scared of people seeing both sides of the argument.

Jacinta Collins (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for School Education and Workplace Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I can indicate, as we did in the debate in the other place, that we will be opposing this amendment, and I am in the hands of senators as to whether we should seek to report progress or move to vote on the amendment.

The CHAIRMAN: As no-one else wishes to speak, I will put the amendment. The amendment is that schedule 1, items (1) to (3), of the bill stand as printed.

The Committee divided. [19:12]

(The Chairman—Senator Parry)

Bill agreed to.

Bill reported without amendments; report adopted.