Page 251 - Week 01 - Thursday, 27 February 2014
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refused to work out this process where we might bring the two reports together. It was suggested that we might try that. Somebody said—I think it was Ms Porter—“Let’s start with the small report,” which was the alternative draft that I tabled, in accordance with the standing orders, and the Labor member said, “We can’t agree to anything in that.” Nothing, zero, blank, no. Nothing; absolutely nothing.
You bring that sort of attitude but then accuse this side of not being willing to work and establish a rapport. But your baseline is that you will not accept a single piece of criticism of the government that you are there protecting—and good luck, you are doing a good job. Well done; you are protecting the government and that is the outcome of having two members on the committee. But do not blame us and say we did not want to make it work.
We had a process. And you can ask questions: I think the committee sat for 11 months. I think we had 11 meetings. There are some big gaps where nothing happened. Indeed when I presented my draft report, the chair failed to adhere to the standing orders at that first meeting and put it to a vote. So it necessitated coming back to this place to extend the life of the committee because, in a way, the chair failed. The chair failed to adhere to the standing orders. There was a motion later on and we have now extended the inquiry into the standing orders.
When you have to start writing down the standing orders and the process in which you are going to operate, when you start to codify things like that, it means there is a problem. You have to ask yourself what has changed that would cause this problem, and what has changed is this government’s insistence that committees be two-all, which they started with the PAC committee. I note that today I did see an amendment to be moved by the Treasurer to make the estimates committee two-all as well. We all know the debacle that was last year’s estimates committee, when the government was embarrassed by the thought that there might not be an estimates committee report, and one of the government members actually abstained on the report. So the chair’s draft got up 2-1 and then, not having had the courage to vote it down, as he should have, the government members of the committee tabled something like 497 recommendations. Forty-two of them were repeats. They had plagiarised their own recommendations.
This is the farce that we have had. We know that Mr Gentleman had to go back to the planning committee; he did not get the approval of the committee to table the report because he did not make the final vote. As per the standard practice in this place, if you have been on committees, the chair says, “I move that the draft report, as amended, be agreed to.” Mr Gentleman did not do that because he knew his report would not have been agreed to.
We can waffle on all day about this and we can throw insults across the chamber, but at the end of the day the committee system is suffering from the government’s insistence that party lines be brought into the committee process so that we have two members from each side there. Let us face it: a lot of work goes through this place without contradiction or controversy. A lot of work goes through this place where we simply agree to bills and off they go, and most people do not know that. But if you stand up for what you believe in, suddenly you are immature. If that is the level of
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