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

I seek leave to move a motion with other crossbench senators relating to the lack of legislative drafting capacity available to non-government senators.

Leave not granted.

Pursuant to contingent notice standing in my name, I move:

That so much of the standing orders be suspended as would prevent me moving a motion to provide for the consideration of a matter, namely a motion to give precedence to a motion relating to legislative drafting resources for non-government senators.

Yesterday, I wrote a letter to the President of the Senate outlining our concerns about the under-resourcing of the procedural team and drafting office. The people in those teams work hard. We understand that, and I, like the other crossbenchers, always appreciate the work they do. But they are under-resourced, and you promised not to put us in this situation when you took staff off us. This is how much you give a stuff about people up here and the staff in that drafting office. Can you imagine the pressure they are under? When was the last time PWSS went down there and checked on them? When have they done their job? Have you had any Comcare claims from them? If you haven't, they're coming. Seriously—it is absolutely disgraceful.

This is not democracy. We can't get our stuff drafted, and you're trying to throw through 20 bills in a fortnight. What is wrong with you? My letter has called on the President to address this resourcing issue as soon as possible. I've written other letters to the President which haven't been actioned. That's my other problem. She's too scared to make a decision, yet she gets paid twice as much as most of us. The lack of resourcing is an absolute choke on democracy. The legislation that the government is trying to jam through is massive and has serious consequences if it is not correct and not amended. Getting the help of the drafting office to draft motion amendments and bills is absolutely essential for all of us to do our jobs properly. It is absolutely essential.

In early September, I asked the drafting office for assistance to draft around 15 amendments to the Veterans' Entitlements, Treatment and Support (Simplification and Harmonisation) Bill. After a royal commission, I'd think we would want to get onto this, yeah? But you're trying to ram that bill through this parliament. We can't get things drafted. We can't make changes more than two months on for things which should have been easy amendments. I have six amendments; that's all that I've been able to get done for the bill. That's it. I've got lives at risk, if you didn't hear about that royal commission and the people that took their lives, and the Kool-Aid these people are drinking over here, and how Veterans' Affairs has gone back to doing the same crap. And you won't let me do my amendments, because you are stopping this as a government.

You are in absolute chaos. You'll be lucky to get a minority—I never thought I'd say this—in the next election. You are falling apart. And for the pressure that you are putting on our staff and that drafting office you should be ashamed of yourselves. There are more crossbenchers in this parliament, and the procedures office workload has increased accordingly. In 2022-23, the procedures office drafted 86 second reading amendments and 1,049 committee of the whole amendments on 334 sheets, compared to the previous year of 63 second reading amendments and 747 committee of the whole amendments on 228 sheets. That's because you can't get your bills right. That's how many amendments we have to do. This is your fault. This is a 36 per cent and a 40 per cent workload increase respectively. Last parliament, the crossbench senators had more resources, but, once again, you took them off us and made us a promise that we would have more resources in the library and more resources in that drafting office. Did you lie to us? Or don't you want to see democracy going in action out there? Because, if your bills weren't so bad, then we wouldn't have to be using the drafting office.

But right now their health and wellbeing—and I notice none of you are looking at me—should be a concern for you. Don't you give a stuff about those people down there and their lives? I bet you they are working overtime. When did you go down and ask them how they are going? When are you going to put more resources in there? Quite seriously, if I knew the crossbench had the spine, I'd be telling them, 'Don't vote any more legislation through because we can't get our jobs done.' But I'm not sure they are as gung-ho as I am. Quite frankly, that is what we should be doing as a crossbench. You are shameful with the damage you are doing to that drafting office. (Time expired)

Lidia Thorpe (Victoria, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This motion is about calling out the hard work the Clerk Assistant (Procedure) office does. This office supports all non-government senators in drafting private senators' bills, drafting bill amendments to government bills and providing us with procedural advice. This is a small team with immense time pressures, often needing to turn over work with very short notice to enable us to circulate it in the Senate. They need to ensure drafting is legally sound and accurate. I honestly don't know how they do it. They must be some of the smartest people I have ever encountered. They are always up against the wind, there is never enough time to do the work yet these dedicated people respond to us with kindness and do all they can to assist.

There are seven people in that office and they work very long hours to try and get us the drafting we need. No matter how hard they work, it is almost impossible to fulfil the demand, and over the last months we have noticed that increasingly we cannot get amendment drafting in time to meaningfully engage with other officers and the government on it, or even at all before a bill comes to a vote. We have seen a very demanding parliamentary schedule and a significant volume of legislation, which are hard enough to deal with in the limitations of an Independent's office that does not have the staffing and resources that political parties have. The under resourcing and understaffing of the drafters office compounds these challenges. The consequence is that we cannot always do our job to the extent we need to represent the interests of our constituents. We cannot always negotiate the changes to legislation that need to happen to improve outcomes for the community. There are clear consequences of this to our democracy. This seemingly small thing perpetrates structural inequalities, inequities, within the parliamentary system and inevitably undermines the quality of outcomes. Therefore, I strongly call on the government to immediately review the resourcing and staffing levels allocated to the office of the Clerk Assistant (Procedure) in light of the current parliamentary workload and provide additional funding and staffing to the officers to alleviate pressures. I call on the government to ensure that sufficient time is allocated for senators, including those on the crossbench, to scrutinise and propose amendments to legislation supporting meaningful engagement and informed decision-making.

Larissa Waters (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak briefly in support of this motion which the Greens have co-sponsored. One of the ways in which the government of the day, no matter who is in charge, tries to deal with the power of the Greens and the crossbench is to diminish our resourcing. It is a very convenient way of thumbing their noses at the one-third of the country that voted for the Greens or an Independent. It serves the interests of the two big parties very nicely to have it difficult for us to get the drafting support we need to fix their weak legislation.

We hope for a time when there is a government with courage to draft legislation that does address the problems that people are facing—the genuine cost-of-living crisis, the crisis the planet is in. We hope one day there will be a government that will have the guts to do what is necessary to meet the scale of the challenges but, at the moment, unfortunately, we don't have that. That is why the influence of the Greens and the crossbench is so crucial, because we bring those interests of the community to this chamber and we demand better from the government of the day.

When the drafters say, 'We're sorry but we're slammed, there's not enough of us to do the work you need us to do, because the government haven't given us the staff to do the work,' it's not their fault; it is the fault of the government for not hiring enough people to do the work to help the Greens and the crossbench fix the government's weak legislation.

That's why we're supporting this motion today. It'll be very interesting to see how the government deals with this. I don't have very high hopes, because, frankly, they're very threatened by the rise of the Greens and the independents, and there's a reason why the vote for the two big parties is going down.

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

I want to thank the crossbench members for signing on to this. I also really want to thank Rachel Callinan for the last couple of years and now Toni Matulick for the way that they and their teams assist with drafting and I want to echo the words that have been said about just how tirelessly this small team works for our democracy. I want to add my voice saying that it is not good enough when, as an elected representative, you cannot get a private senator's bill drafted, when you cannot get amendments that are based on what you're hearing from experts when they have concerns about a government bill, when you're hearing from people that you represent and you want to move amendments that reflect that and when you've got a government that seems intent on dropping hundreds of pages of legislation, forgoing all parliamentary scrutiny and ramming it through while you cannot move amendments. This is not good for our democracy, so I urge the government to address this.

You're very happy to cop an extra $20 million at election time to give yourselves $30,000 per sitting member per year to go to the party for administration costs. Let's put some money into the actual parliament so that we can do our jobs better and we can better reflect the communities that we're here for. The reality is that we have a growing crossbench. Australians want more competition. They want a diversity of views, and that means that we need to be able to move amendments to legislation, so I hope that the government will finally take this seriously.

I note that over the last two years crossbenchers have consistently raised this at estimates and have written letters to the President. It shouldn't take the crossbench having to delay the Senate in the last two sitting weeks, when we have this massive crunch of 20 bills and the government willing to forgo any sort of parliamentary scrutiny of inquiries, to raise this and to bring this to the Senate's attention.

Again, I thank fellow crossbenchers and hope that the government takes this seriously.

Jenny McAllister (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Emergency Management) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The government doesn't support the suspension for a reason that has been stated on many occasions, which is that we support the progress of legislation through this chamber and there is important legislation before this chamber right now. I note that the opposition has indicated their intention to vote for the suspension. That's disappointing. The opposition's stated position is that the Aged Care Bill on the Notice Paper ready for debate is their priority, yet their proposal at the moment is to support further delay rather than bringing on debate for this important piece of policy legislation.

However, may I indicate this also: we were not provided advance notice of the motion that's before us, and I note there are ordinary protocols within this chamber that allow matters to be discussed between senators before they are elevated in this way. So it is disappointing to have a motion put before the chamber without notice and without discussion in the way that has occurred this morning. I understand that Senator Lambie wrote yesterday to the President and that the President is preparing a response.

We were in opposition for quite some time, regrettably, as senators will understand, and we are really familiar with many of the issues that have been canvassed in the material before us. We are, as you are, incredibly grateful for the hard work, the diligence and the drafting capabilities that are present, and I think every senator in this place has had cause to be immensely grateful for the time and attention and support that we've received from that office.

However, the appropriate place to raise this is either through discussions informally or through referral to the Appropriations, Staffing and Security Committee, which is the entity which oversees the budget for the Senate. It is disappointing that the matter is instead being raised in this way without notice and without discussion. It suggests that the people who are seeking to resolve it are not, in fact, seeking to truly resolve it but actually seeking to escalate a conflict when a better and more effective way of doing it would be through conversation.

As I indicated, we don't support the suspension. I've made some remarks about the substantive motion as well. I move:

That the question be now put.

Question agreed to.

Andrew Bragg (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Home Ownership) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The question is that the suspension of standing orders moved by Senator Lambie be agreed to.

Question agreed to.

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

I move:

That a motion relating to legislative drafting resources for non-government senators may be moved immediately and have precedence over all other business.

Question agreed to.

I, and also on behalf of Senators David Pocock, Waters, Payman and Thorpe, move:

That the Senate:

(1) notes that there is a lack of legislative drafting capacity available to non-government senators and that this is constraining the ability of senators to exercise their rights to propose amendments to legislation;

(2) calls on the President to urgently provide more legislative drafters to the Department of the Senate before any further controversial bills are put before the Senate; and

(3) thanks all staff within the Department of the Senate for their hard work, dedication, intelligence and kindness.

This is your time that you're wasting this morning, not mine. For the last two years, we've been telling you this is a problem, but you come in here and act like everything's all kosher and it's fine and we haven't been doing anything for two years. I'm intending to come back in here tomorrow and do this again tomorrow morning unless something is done today to take the pressure off that drafting office and to take the pressure off our own staff. I will come in here every day next week, because, while you sit here and you change rules up here for people who can't take phone calls of a night-time and then you say, 'No, our advisers are at work 24 hours a day,' it's like you want to do a little bit for these people over there but nothing for these people over here. You talk about the welfare of people out there, and I tell you what: you've done nothing. You are part of the problem over there.

Right now—and I want to make sure this is quite clear—we have a harmonisation bill going through that's bringing three different acts together for veterans, which needs severe amendments put through it to fix it. In the meantime, I have to ask. I'm waiting for them to do a bill on the national commissioner, which they can't get done fast enough. If you were doing it in order—comporting with the royal commission—then, before you made any moves with these veterans, you would put that babysitter back on top of them, because DVA is failing to do the job. I have no idea how the coalition can possibly vote for that harmonisation bill until that national commissioner is put in place, and right now I can't do that, because I can't get that bill done. More suicides will be on your hands over there. More suicides—that's where it's going to.

I want this fixed. I swear to God, I will get up every day and we will waste your time, because you've had two years. We have been begging you for more staff down there. You expect us to put through your bills when we can't even get our amendments done. You should be ashamed of yourselves. I'm not going to spend any more time on this, but I want something done or, as I said, I'll be up tomorrow morning and next Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. I want more staff down there for those people in that drafting office. What I want you to do is go down and ask them if they're okay. I want you to get PWSS off its backside to actually start doing something in this parliament that's done in a hurry. It is failing to do its job. I want the minister to go down there and ask, 'Are you okay?' That's what I want to see today. In the meantime, I know that aged care is really important, especially for the elderly out there. I'm not going to take any more of your time.

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

I want to be brief because I recognise that aged care is important, and we want to get onto it. I just want to put on the record that, whilst it's incredibly important, we're still waiting for amendments to the Aged Care Bill 2024 to be able to move our amendments and debate them. I'll put this back on the government. This isn't a new issue that's just come up today. We're only suspending standing orders because after two years nothing's happened, and now it's crunch time. We've got big bills that need to come through and be dealt with, and we can't even move our amendments to them.

Question agreed to.