David Fawcett (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Pursuant to order and at the request of the chairs of the respective committees, I present reports on legislation as listed at item 19 of today's Order of Business, together with the Hansard records of proceedings and documents presented to the committees. I move that the reports be printed.

Jacinta Collins (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Cabinet Secretary) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Madam Deputy President, I am in your hands. I wish to speak briefly to the tabling of one of those reports. Should I do that now or on the next motion?

Gavin Marshall (Victoria, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The practice, Senator Collins, is that reports of the bills are not generally spoken to because you would do that during the debate on the bill.

Jacinta Collins (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Cabinet Secretary) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Let me perhaps circumvent this by speaking on the motion that these reports be printed. Senators may have noted that similarly this morning some senators spoke on the tabling of reports when, as you have said, the practice would be that we ordinarily would not do so. The practice would be to make some remarks about the process of the Senate committee inquiry, rather than the actual substance of the report itself. I intend to deal with those substantive issues when we come to dealing with the legislation involved in the third of the reports that we are now moving be printed—that is the Education and Employment Legislation Committee report on the Family Assistance Legislation Amendment (Jobs for Families Child Care Package) Bill and a related bill. The related bill is a social services bill in relation to family tax measures.

The concern that I want to raise here, similarly to the contributions made earlier today in a separate tabling, is that the Selection of Bills Committee recommended that the inquiry and the reporting on this matter occur within a truncated period of time. At the time I understand that Senator Xenophon's contribution was to require that we would at least allow two days of hearings on this matter. There was the process of outsourcing the consideration of these measures to a separate Senate committee because of the workload of the Senate Education and Employment Legislation Committee, and then also there were some of the communication circumstances that occurred within that—no fault at all, I should say, of the committee secretariat or indeed the outsource committee secretariat but more so the fault of the limited timing that was eventually allowed. It is useful, particularly for crossbench senators who might be inclined to respond to government requests that a period of time be truncated, that the consequences of that be highlighted. On this occasion, the government is not proceeding with these bills in this sitting week, so there was no reason at all that we needed to truncate the reporting of this matter to today.

Secondly, the consequences of the limited time frame led to the situation like, but not completely akin to, what happened in the earlier matter today where non-government senators were told that there would be no assistance available to produce additional remarks or a dissenting report to the chair's draft report. This is a practice that has been occurring, as other senators have highlighted, in some areas because of the enormous workload being sent through the Senate committee process. But the consequences of this, I think again, do need to be highlighted. The consequence on this occasion is that it has allowed the government or the minister of the day to limit the public exposure of these measures. He has attempted, through a couple of episodes of chest beating, to distract public attention, not completely successfully, but he has been able to limit the amount of consideration and public consideration of these measures.

I mentioned that Senator Xenophon had been assured that there would be two hearing days. Indeed, there were only 1½ days, and we did not have sufficient time to question the Department of Education and Training in relation to the details of this measure and there was not sufficient time for the department to respond adequately and for us to reflect on those responses in relation to questions on notice.

I wanted on this occasion to highlight to senators that continuing to agree to limited time frames through the Selection of Bills Committee is eroding and diminishing the standard of Senate committee reports, and the capacity for the Senate to examine in detail measures that come before the Senate is being diminished as a consequence.

I hope this is a rare exception. As you have said, Madam Deputy President, ordinarily senators would not speak at this stage in the consideration of a matter. But, akin to the discussion on a different reference this morning, I think it needs to be highlighted that our capacity to address legislation is being diminished and the quality of reports being produced is being diminished by matters moving through—and I think Senator Marshall has made this point—essentially with a rubber stamp on the government's agenda. That is not the role of the Senate. It is not the role of non-government senators, and we should not allow it to continue.