Rex Patrick (SA, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yesterday, Labor Senator O'Neill presented the Senate Standing Committee of Privileges report on whether the Commissioner of Taxation committed a contempt by refusing to comply with an order of the Senate. He refused to produce a list of all employers with an annual turnover of greater than $10 million that received a JobKeeper payment. The Privileges Committee decided against a finding of contempt. No action is to be taken in response to the defiance of a Senate order. The committee, acting outside its remit, has made a compromise with the commissioner that he will supply information about JobKeeper recipients in a way that he claims enables the Senate to fulfil its accountability function, whilst excluding details that would identify entities that received JobKeeper. So we're likely to receive a list that has no company names on it. How pathetic. But that's what the Privileges Committee has come to.

I'm not surprised Liberal senators signed up to this, but I expected better from Labor. Labor condemned the waste of billions of taxpayer dollars paid to profitable corporations through JobKeeper. The member for Fenner, Dr Andrew Leigh, has, like me, energetically campaigned to shame some of those corporations to give back the JobKeeper payments they did not need. A list with company names would have made these efforts much more successful.

The Privileges Committee has gone to water, with Labor members too afraid to defend the rights and privileges of the Senate that were obtained over centuries in the UK—too afraid to stand up to the executive government. The Senate was weakened yesterday. Erskine May would be turning in his grave. Journalists often refer to the committee as 'the powerful Senate Privileges Committee'. In the interests of accuracy, they should really change that adjective from 'powerful' to 'piss-weak'.

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

Order! Senator Patrick, you know that's not parliamentary.