Sue Lines (President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

A letter has been received from Senator Lambie:

Pursuant to standing order 75, I propose that the following matter of public importance be submitted to the Senate for discussion:

"The Albanese Government has widened the trust deficit by backtracking on commitments to support small businesses and advancing legislation that damages the integrity of the political process".

Is the proposal supported?

More than the number of senators required by the standing orders having risen in their places—

With the concurrence of the Senate, the clerks will set the clock in line with the informal arrangements made by the whips.

Jacqui Lambie (Tasmania, Jacqui Lambie Network) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to stand on a matter of public importance. When Senator David Pocock and I agreed to vote for a second tranche of the closing loopholes legislation, amongst other things, we asked for, and thought we'd got from Minister Burke in good faith, a review of the suitability of the Fair Work Act's definition of 'small business', which is currently set as fewer than 15 employees. Following a reshuffle, the new minister, Minister Watt, told the ABC that he didn't have plans to follow through on our good-faith agreement. How disappointing. Apparently, the words 'good faith' mean absolutely nothing to this government. This doesn't just send a very bad message to Australians; it says very clearly that the Albanese government is totally out of touch with small business and what they are dealing with right now.

Tasmania has lost thousands of small businesses since this government came to power, and over 6,000 jobs have been lost over the last six months alone. They have been smashed by the red tape, including the unfair dismissal laws, which have completely gone Left. Since this government came to office, promising greater transparency, promising integrity and promising the Australian people that they would be careful about how they spend Australian taxpayers' dollars, I think we all had higher hopes, or at least some hope, that this government would not just talk the talk but walk the walk. Let's face it: they're not walking; they're crawling, and they're still in their naps.

I think the only thing this government cares about is getting elected again. That's why they've done a dirty deal with the coalition to design election funding rules that help the major parties lock in more power. Time and time again this government has tried to stitch up the crossbench. They've taken away crossbench resources. They've pushed a mountain of legislation onto the crossbench with hardly any notice. The Australian Labor Party likes to think of itself as the party for the people, but, according to my research, they could also be known as the party of guillotines. They absolutely hold a new record on that.

For those Australians watching who aren't political junkies, let me explain. A guillotine is when the government, usually in an attempt to avoid debate and scrutiny, put a lot of bills together and try to get them passed all at once. I don't like guillotines. In just one term this government has brought on more guillotines than the coalition did in nine years. In 2½ years they've shut debate down more in here than the coalition did in nine years of power. It's absolutely shameful. From the start of the 47th Parliament to August this government has stopped debate and pushed through 157 different pieces of legislation. That's 157 bills that weren't properly debated or scrutinised.

A prime example of this was just last sitting week, when the government jammed the Australian Naval Nuclear Power Safety Bill down the crossbenchers' throats. Despite there being 30 crossbench amendments on this bill, none of them even had a chance of being debated, let alone seeing the light of day. There was no community engagement. The local council that was affected by the Osborne site has since voted to oppose the storage and disposal of radioactive waste at the site.

This just goes to show how much disregard the major parties have for communities, the Australian people and the crossbench. This government doesn't care about struggling small businesses, and, my God, are they struggling. They are absolutely on their knees. They don't care about kids getting addicted to gambling, and they don't care about wasting taxpayers' money—that's for sure. They certainly don't care about integrity and transparency. I want to remind Australians that these guys over here did everything that they could before the last election to say to you: 'We will be transparent. We will be so transparent. If there's one thing we promise you, we will be transparent.' Well, you failed.

You have not been transparent with the Australian people. Even in here, we're trying to get questions on notice—what a joke!—and waiting months on end. They can't get it. They don't want to show us documents. This is not the way to run a country. This is not the way to build trust. It's certainly not the way to build trust in here, let alone the trust with the Australian people. When you go down at the next election, have a good look at yourselves and go back to one word: transparency. (Time expired)

Karen Grogan (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you to Senator Lambie for this reference for us to have a little debate. There were a range of things in there, but I got the general sense that you were really wanting to talk about electoral reform. When we talk about transparency, let's be really clear. We have talked about electoral reform for years. When the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters first started to look at this, as it does after every election, we were very clear about the things that we were going to look at. We have a very longstanding commitment to sensible long-lasting electoral reform. In the time over the 2½ years since we came to government, those conversations have been ongoing. Senator Farrell has reached out across this chamber and had ongoing conversations.

We've held numerous hearings of the Join Standing Committee on Electoral Matters to inquire into people's perspectives and people's views. The committee worked exceptionally well together in doing that piece of work, in understanding what it was that wasn't working and in understanding what it was that we wanted to achieve. Some of the recommendations in there are exactly why we are where we are now. The notion that, just because you have a lot of money and just because you have a lot of resources, you can buy a seat in this chamber or a seat in the other chamber is not okay. That is not about the will of the people. That is not about people across this country being able to decide for themselves who they wish to have represent them in this chamber or in the other chamber. We can all stand around and talk about not agreeing with someone's views and not respecting different people's views. We should respect everyone's views in this chamber, because every last person in here has got here because they got enough votes to do so. These reforms are about making the system fairer. The reforms that have been put forward through tireless work from Senator Farrell are about fairness.

One of the things that is, I think, a little sad is the thought that the truth in political advertising bill won't gain support. I've had this conversation numerous times over the last couple of years. I come from the great state of South Australia, where we have had truth in electoral advertising laws since 1984. We do it quite well, especially when we look at other states. The fact that we're hearing that people across this chamber are not going to support the introduction of truth in political advertising is deeply alarming to me. I would have to ask the question: why would you not support that? I think you should really ask yourself that question. We see some great opportunity here to make our electoral system fairer and to even up the playing field so that no-one can spend large sums of money and that every donation that is provided into any political campaign is declared as quickly as possible for transparency and for clarity. That's so that when voters, the good people of this country, decide who they are going to vote for, they can see exactly whose money has been spent and exactly who is utilising what resources to help get their message out about why people should vote for them. So why some of our colleagues in this room think this is bad is totally beyond me.

We need to ensure transparency. We need to build faith, across the country, in how people get elected and how they campaign. We need to make sure that we are honest and transparent. These are things that we should all be aiming for. These are things that we should all be getting behind.

Any conversation that says this hasn't been consulted on is, frankly, misguided. I was on the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters, and I can assure you: there were many meetings, many conversations and many witnesses called, and many senators from this chamber engaged in that process. It was a great process, very well chaired by Ms Thwaites from the other place. I would commend this reform— (Time expired)

Slade Brockman (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank Senator Lambie for moving this motion. Rightly, Senator Lambie spoke, in moving this motion, to the promises—the very hollow promises—that the incoming Labor government gave about integrity and transparency, which they have, over and over again, walked away from, misleading the Australian people. I won't use another term that would more appropriately fit, but they have completely ignored the commitments they made to the Australian people for honesty and transparency.

I was in this building, in a different capacity, in June 2013, on that very ugly day when 55 bills were guillotined through this place. So I say to you, Senator Lambie: this is not a new phenomenon. This is not some new pattern of behaviour from the Australian Labor Party in government. They have form. Not only was there that one week—effectively, one day—where 55 bills were guillotined through this place without proper debate, but during that term of government, 216 bills faced the guillotine. The Committee of Public Safety would have been proud of the Labor government's record of using the guillotine; Robespierre would have been proud of the Labor government's record on using the guillotine!

Did they learn from the process failures of the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd years? Did they look at their own behaviour and say to themselves, 'Oh, maybe this actually isn't the way to run a legislative program. Maybe this isn't the best way of governing Australia'? It got to the point where bills with multiple, multiple—sometimes 10, sometimes close to 100—amendments were being rammed through, with no chance to look at those amendments, no committee stage on those bills and no chance to properly debate. Sometimes, there was not even the chance to have second reading debates, which are an essential component of our work of this place, in doing our duty to the people of Australia. Two hundred and sixteen bills, in one term of government, were guillotined through parliament. The Rudd-Gillard-Rudd years—we thought we'd seen the end of them; we thought that the Labor Party would have learnt their lesson from that time. But, sadly, Senator Lambie, the Labor Party didn't learn their lesson from the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd years.

Senator Lambie, something I would also like to point out, as to this motion, is that the Labor Party cannot guillotine alone. The Labor Party, on their numbers, cannot guillotine bills alone; they need the support of their allies in the Greens and they need the support of some of the crossbenchers in order to guillotine. So I say to you, Senator Lambie: I accept that you have been strong in this area, but the fact is that fellow crossbenchers have not been as strong. They have worked with the government. They worked with the government back in the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd years to ensure all those bills were guillotined—216 in one term of government. Currently, the crossbench works with the government to see all the many, many bills we have already seen in this term of government guillotined, and I suspect next week there's going to be another raft, if not later this week. We're going to see another huge raft of bills rammed through this place.

Senator Gallagher, are you going to stand up and deny it? Is there going to be a guillotine next week? Oh, well, Senator Gallagher laughs, but I'm willing to predict there will be a guillotine next week. I'm willing to predict that the Committee of Public Safety will be at it again, that we in this place will lose our power to speak to bills, to discuss and debate amendments, and to have a committee stage, where we ask the minister very justified questions about this government's failure of process. (Time expired)

David Pocock (ACT, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Over the last couple of years we've seen small businesses ignored when it comes to legislative agenda. We've seen things like the instant asset write-off and the energy incentive legislated weeks before they expired. How is that an incentive? Sometimes we are legislating things after the fact. How are these not permanent measures to allow small businesses to actually plan? I think for the last seven budgets they've been announced. The coalition did it too—they announced new spending for small businesses. This new package which you've had for the last five or six years—just make it permanent. Allow small businesses to have certainty.

Another extraordinary failure—and I spoke about this yesterday—of both of the major parties is their failure to act on security of payments. These are small businesses and subcontractors across the country who are getting dudded. They are not being paid for work that they have completed. They are doing jobs, builders go under and they don't get paid. We've seen the parliament move to make wage theft illegal, to do all sorts of things to protect workers, yet when it comes to tradies who run small businesses or sole contractors who are subcontracting on job sites—nothing, not even a response to the Murray review. We have a firm commitment from the Prime Minister to respond to the Murray review in this term of parliament, yet it seems like we're in the last two weeks of it and we still haven't seen it come through.

The other area that we've heard so much about from small businesses is our procurement rules. They are not working for small businesses, yet we haven't seen any major changes to these procurement rules, despite everything that has come out about the failure of multinational firms who suck up contracts, often just skimming off the cream and then subcontracting to Australian businesses who should be able to get these contracts in the first place. Again, I've heard from so many Australian businesses who, when it comes to big procurement construction work from the Commonwealth government, will put in their bid with the builder. The builder will go to the Commonwealth government and say, 'These are all the subcontractors we're using and this is the price we can do it for.' The government then awards that contract, and the builder goes back out to all the subbies and says, 'If you want this job, give me your best price.' They've already worked out what it's going to cost them. Now the subbies are fighting amongst themselves, having to undercut each other, leading to more profit for the builder, while the subbies are at times are losing money to do jobs. We've got to do better than this for small businesses.

The other part of this urgency is rushing through huge bills without any parliamentary scrutiny. I think the Senate recognises that at times guillotines are used to deal with bills that have been sitting in the Senate for a long time and have been through a Senate committee process, and people are largely settled on the way they will vote. We've seen that happen. It's a very different thing we are seeing with electoral reform. JSCEM recommends broad strokes, but the government then drops 400 pages of legislation and wants it passed in eight sitting days. It's extraordinary. I think it's a real abuse of parliamentary process to not even have a Senate committee scrutinise that amount of legislation.

One of the other issues we've seen not dealt with is whistleblower protections. After almost a full term of government, we have heard lots of promises from the A-G about better protecting whistleblowers, acknowledging that the PID Act is often useless for whistleblowers. At the same time, he continues to prosecute Richard Boyle. It's time to drop that prosecution because that is also undermining trust not just in government but in institutions in this country.

Gerard Rennick (Queensland, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I too rise to speak on Senator Lambie's MPI about the damage the Albanese government has done by advancing legislation with regard to the integrity of the political process. We can talk about legislation, but we can also talk about the way we go about business in the chamber. I think there has got to be serious consideration and a bit of foresight. This fortnight is going to be very good example. I fear we are going to have a lot of important legislation guillotined at the end of next week, and we aren't going to get an opportunity to speak on the bill or ask questions in the committee stage. That's very important to do. If we and the public want to have a better understanding of the meaning and impact of these bills, it's important that we have an opportunity to put questions to the minister in a more informal process than question time.

We could also cut some of these things that go on throughout the week—even this MPI. We do two lots of MPIs, but maybe we could do one set of MPIs throughout the day, or none at all. We have take note of answers to questions, which is basically bickering between the two major parties. Even question time most of the time, like today, is a waste of time, with people shouting over the top of each other. We really need to look at ways to stay focused on the legislation at hand and actually ask serious questions about the legislation at hand.

I want to support Senator David Pocock's comments about whistleblower protections. I did speak about it last night. The case of Richard Boyle, who raised the issue of the ATO and how they were being heavy handed on small business, beggars belief when you compare with the double taxation arrangement we have with Ireland that hasn't been updated since 1983. Perhaps time would be better spent by the ATO and Treasury if they focused on looking at tax loopholes in these double taxation arrangements. I'll repeat the numbers for those of you who haven't heard them by now. Withholding tax on royalties to Ireland is 10c, company tax in Ireland is 12½c, and 10 plus 12½ is less than 30, so you have a 7½c arbitrage on every dollar that goes offshore. There are businesses in this country that are lucky to make a margin of 7½c, and yet we've got this screaming tax loophole that you could drive a truck through, and Treasury and the tax office aren't doing anything about that, but they're going after someone who was acting in good faith, Richard Boyle.

We do need greater whistleblower protections; indeed I said last night here in the chamber that that is going to be one of People First's key policies for holding the establishment to account. I'm sick and tired of it. I often come in here and criticise the bureaucratic departments, but, to be fair, there are good people in those departments who try to speak up, or would like to speak up, but live in fear of actually losing their jobs. Indeed, I know whistleblowers who have lost their jobs because they spoke up. One in particular, who worked for Home Affairs, came to me about the fact that one of his roles was to censor posts throughout COVID.

The other thing is that these electoral reforms are coming up. If you want to cap the big end of town in terms of donations, I think it's only fair that you allow minor parties to get electoral funding for the votes that they receive. The four per cent cut-off at the moment, I think, is entirely unfair to minor parties, because sooner or later, if you do want to break the monopoly of the two major parties, you've got to start as a small party, and denying them funding whilst also denying them access to the big end of town is not fair. So I have serious concerns over what may be proposed there as well. I look forward to the opportunity to actually discuss that particular bill if it comes up in the next fortnight and also to ask questions in the committee stage about that. I support this matter of public importance, and I would have liked to vote on it.

Malcolm Roberts (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Ask anyone in the real world what they think of politicians, and the answer is, 'I don't trust the bastards.' And why should they? We're again about to enter an election season where the Liberal, Labor and Greens parties will make endless promises about things they will never do. If you lie to the people, they won't trust you, and Liberal, Labor and the Greens have done plenty of lying. It's telling that in this chamber we can't call out a lie. I can say that the Labor Party lies, that the Liberal Party lies and that the Greens party lies, yet I can't say a particular senator has lied in a debate. That's unparliamentary. Well, Australians are listening to this discussion live right now, and tens of thousands more will listen later on social media. Listening to the comments, Australians think the never-ending lies are what's unparliamentary.

Teenagers make a lot of those social media comments, and teens certainly are not fans of the government. The memes that teenagers come up with in picking apart the government are as funny as they are cutting. Has Prime Minister Anthony Albanese started reading the comments on social media? Is that why he's trying to get teenagers banned from social media?

Eighty-nine per cent of Australians agree most politicians will lie if they feel the truth will hurt them politically. The Australian people aren't morons, and they aren't just seeing things. Many politicians do lie, and they lie all the time. That's not how it should be. It's not what I believe in. Ministers stand up in this place and avoid answering simple, direct questions. They give themselves a pat on the back and cheer themselves, thinking they're so clever for not giving an answer. Well, ministers, out in the real world, no-one believes the spin and the lies. They can see through the distractions and smears from ministers—for example, Ministers Watt and Ayres. People are laughing at and ridiculing you. Ninety-four per cent of surveyed respondents believe that a politician who is caught lying to the Australian people should resign their position. Liars are destroying trust in the democratic process and parliament. This place should deserve respect and trust as a gathering of representatives of the people. Every dishonest answer is a chip away from the health of our country.

So I say to the other parties: the proof is in the data, and the solutions are obvious from the data. On 18 October, the Courier-Mail in Queensland reported the Roy Morgan survey on political trust. They surveyed the number of people who trusted and distrusted four of the largest parties and looked at the difference to get a net figure. Have a listen to these figures: net trust for the LNP, minus 12 per cent; net trust for the Greens, minus 13 per cent; net trust for the Labor Party, minus 17 per cent. Guess which is the only party with a net positive trust rating? One Nation. It turns out that, if you have principles and you say what you mean, people trust you. Many people agree with what One Nation says. Some people don't agree, yet everyone knows where we stand.

If politicians stuck to their guns as Pauline Hanson does and if they listened to the people and stood up and said, 'This is what I believe in, and I can't be changed,' no matter what side of politics you're on, our country would be in a better place. No matter how embarrassing they are in the short term, honest answers are better for politicians and for the country in the long term. What will it take for politicians from the major parties to understand this? The Australian people are not mugs. They can make up their own minds, and they sure know when you are lying, so it's time to stop lying.

The misinformation bill treats people as if they're all idiots who can't be trusted with the facts. There's nothing more damaging to trust and integrity than censorship. Australia doesn't trust them, so the question immediately becomes: what are the Liberals, Labor and the Greens hiding? The answer is everything, because you stand for nothing. That's why One Nation will move a motion asking the Senate to throw out the misinformation and disinformation bill this Monday. I'll say that again. This Monday, One Nation will be moving a motion asking the Senate to throw out the misinformation and disinformation bill—the MAD bill, the censorship bill, the one that doesn't trust the people. To restore trust in politics, politicians must be trustworthy. No-one who seeks to censor the opinions of Australians deserves their trust. While Labor pushes for a censorship regime under the excuse that it's about protecting your safety, One Nation pushes for you to be allowed to see the true facts and make up your own mind. There is nothing better for getting to the truth and being the arbiter of truth than free, open, public debate. Why do you not like free, open, public debate?

Helen Polley (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The time for this discussion has expired.