Mr CREAN (Manager of Opposition Business)(2.16 p.m.) —I join with the member for Banks (Mr Melham) in opposing the discharge of this item from the agenda. I think it is important that the House understand what has been done here. The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission Amendment Bill 1996 (No. 2) that was guillotined through this parliament last night was the same bill that started in the Senate some weeks ago, which the Senate has debated, deliberated upon, amended and returned to this parliament. We are now effectively dealing with the message.

To essentially move this motion that you discharge it means that you are rejecting everything that the Senate has considered in detail on this bill. Let us just understand the significance of that. We have a government that came to power saying they were going to lift the standards of parliament; they were going to make parliament more supreme than the executive; they were going to make the parliament more accountable. Yet what are the facts? They guillotine—in other words, fast-track—the bill through the lower house and ignore the detailed consideration that it has already been given in the upper house. It is utter nonsense. It makes a complete sham of all those high moral principles they talked about when saying they wanted to lift the standards in the place. There may well be all sorts of motives, but can they really stack up against the notion that you are going to make the parliament more accountable?

Let us have a look at the other areas in which the standards of this parliament have not only not been lifted in the course of this new government but have been debased. The most noticeable is that we now have a foreign minister who has misled this parliament—not just once but on four occasions. He has admitted to having misled the parliament; his Prime Minister (Mr Howard) has admitted to misleading the parliament.

The Prime Minister came in with a code of conduct and said, `Ministers shall not mislead the parliament and, if they do it inadvertently, they should correct the record at the earliest possible opportunity.' That is the code of conduct that the Prime Minister said he wanted his ministers to operate by. Yet that did not happen. Not only did we have the parliament misled four times, we did not have the record corrected until the Minister for Foreign Affairs (Mr Downer) came into this parliament two days ago to correct it. But coming into the parliament to correct it—from the initial misleading of the parliament—took him five sitting days. The first misleading of the parliament was on 18 June; the second was on the Monday of this week; the third was on the Tuesday of this week; and the fourth was on the Wednesday of this week—before he corrected the record.

It is another example of where a government that prides itself on lifting the standards has failed dismally. The previous decision by the Prime Minister to require the resignation of his shadow minister for the environment for inadvertently misleading the parliament has not been implemented in the case of the foreign minister. These were things that were demanded of us when we were in government. We had a number of ministers that did resign when they inadvertently misled the parliament. Not only have we not got the foreign minister having resigned; we have a situation in which the Prime Minister says he wants to lift the standards—not just equate to them but lift them. By any standards, the foreign minister should have resigned. That is another example of how this parliament, and what it stands for, is being abused by the current government.

Another example is that in the life of this government there have been six sitting weeks of parliament—we are about to go into the recess before we come back for the budget session—where we have had the guillotine and gag imposed seven times. Understand what that means. For a parliament that you say has to be supreme and given the opportunity for open debate for consideration of all the issues, why move the guillotine and the gag, the very purpose of which is to restrict debate, to limit the time, to close off the opposition in what it can say and move?

There may be a view on the other side of the parliament that what we get into is filibustering, but the reality is that, when you are stopping amendments even being put in the parliament, it just makes a sham of your assertion that you want the parliament to consider all matters. An example of one of those guillotines is the Telstra debate—no insignificant issue. This is the selling of one-third of Telstra, one-third of a public asset. The opposition had a number of amendments it wanted to move and it was not given the opportunity to move one of those amendments—not one! How can you argue that the parliament is to be supreme, that its standards are to be lifted and that it is to be made more accountable if you will not even allow amendments in the parliament to be moved?

We have the other example of the gag and the guillotine being moved on the social security bill—another terribly important piece of legislation. This also happened with the establishment of committees of this parliament. The government wanted to ram through a proposition which effectively said that the committees of this parliament could function through a quorum, through effective representation, with not one member of the opposition present.

How can you really assert that the parliament is being given a role, is being listened to and is being made more accountable if you want to deny the opportunity for the opposition to participate? Why not be open about it? Do not hide behind this notion that you are lifting standards in this place. Do not hide behind the notion that you are improving the running of the place. Just be open and honest and say, `We are going to use our numbers. We are going to close debates. We are going to restrict committee considerations. We are going to cut the resources to them so they can't do too much investigative work, and we will do it all as a cabinet.' It makes a mockery of the notion that you want the parliament to be supreme and the executive answerable to it. This is the most centralised, dictatorial government that this parliament has had in 13 years. They pretend that what they are doing is opening the place up.

Another piece of legislation that was gagged and guillotined was the workplace industrial relations bill. This is the bill—despite the promises that no worker will be worse off—that is going to see living standards cut, women workers more disadvantaged, young workers paid less, unions attacked and award conditions eroded; yet you closed off the ability for the opposition to move amendments to that piece of legislation.

We had 335 amendments to that bill. People might think that that is an extraordinary number until they hear that the government, because it botched the first bill, had 61 amendments itself. So, in total, we are looking at 400 amendments. How much time did the government allow for 400 amendments to be considered by this parliament? Two hours. If you divide that up, you are talking about something like 15 seconds an amendment. What a joke in terms of the parliament being able to consider these issues. They want to laugh about it over there. They want to make out that this is not an important piece of legislation.

Mr Marek —It is important and you are holding it up.

Mr CREAN —It is, and it ought to be, and you ought to be ashamed of the fact that you joined with the Leader of the House in closing down the debate on that very important piece of legislation.

Another area that they closed and gagged the debate on was the export market development grants scheme. This is a grant that enables companies to actually get out and export their produce to the rest of the world. The exports would not have occurred but for these grants to those companies. The grants have a multiplier effect of something like five to 10 times. For every dollar spent, $5 to $10 extra is generated in exports.

Isn't that what we are trying to do as a nation? Aren't we trying to get more exports, more growth, more investment and more jobs? Isn't that what we are about? How do you expect businesses to do it on their own? Yet you cut the very schemes that have assisted them but, worse than that, you close down debate on the issue in the parliament. What have you got to hide? I do not understand the logic of these issues in their own right, but when you put it against the standards that you assert you are raising in the parliament it makes a nonsense of it.

Now we have the final piece of legislation—the ATSIC bill. This is the seventh piece of guillotined legislation in the parliament. Let's just understand the way this issue came before the parliament last night so that we can indicate why we are raising our concern at this opportunity today.

The Leader of the House came to me last night at about 20 minutes past 6 and said, `We are going to bring on the ATSIC legislation. The shadow minister is aware of it. We will let debate run on until 10.30 p.m.' There are three things that he failed to tell me. First of all, he failed to tell me that he was bringing in a new bill. It was not the one returning from the Senate but a new bill which required leave of the parliament, and they did not even seek to get agreement with us on that point. The second issue is that the member for Banks had not been notified. He knew nothing about the legislation coming on in the parliament at 6.30 p.m. and knew nothing about the fact that the government was bringing back a new bill. The third piece of trickery that the Leader of the House engaged in was that in moving the procedures he introduced a guillotine.

Mr Marek —Good management.

Mr CREAN —You might think it is good management to deceive people, but we do not—

Mr Marek —Yes, and you would have done the same. You have done it for the last 13 years.

Mr CREAN —No, we would not. We would always deal with people openly and frankly. You cannot deal any other way. If you think that you can have relationships and understandings with people based on mistrust, you are sadly mistaken. That is why I am annoyed about the way in which this process has come into the parliament, because they sought to deceive us last night by not telling us the full story. That is why we are dealing with this issue again today.

The shadow minister was not told. We were not told it was a new bill, and we were not told it was going to be guillotined. That is all rammed through by sheer weight of numbers. How is that lifting the standards of the place? If we are really trying to get cooperation on these issues, to debate them openly and frankly and to deal with them properly, there has to be cooperation. Until the level of trust between the two sides in dealing with the procedures is raised, there is no point in giving any cooperation in the future. It just makes a sham of the whole notion that what you are trying to do is to get the smooth and efficient running of government going.

We are not against cooperating with the government. We do understand that they have a mandate in certain areas. Sure, we will debate the issues with them and debate them vigorously, but we ought to be entitled to have our say. We ought to be entitled to put our amendments. We ought to be entitled to know the procedures that are really in the minds of the government when they put these things through. We do not need the trickery or the skulduggery, where they rub up to you in the corners and say, `Oh, by the way, the shadow minister knows about it. We are going to bring it on.'

Mr Melham —Sneaky Reithy.

Mr CREAN —It is `Sneaky Reithy'. He loves the title. He told me outside that he does not mind being called sneaky. He sees it as an accolade.

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER (Hon. N.B. Reid) —Order! I think the honourable member for Hotham should apologise.

Mr CREAN —Mr Deputy Speaker, I apologise. Can I just say that it sums up in a number of ways why we are concerned about the way business is being run in the parliament. We also had the Prime Minister saying he wanted to lift standards. But who was the person who said from across the table to the opposition, `Why don't you shut up?' It was the Prime Minister—the person who used to accuse and abuse the previous Prime Minister for bad language and bad manners. All of these things he moralised about improving and then he says that to us!

You have the Leader of the House trying to pressure the Speaker in terms of not proceeding with supplementary questions. We have had late night sittings, no dinner breaks and the order of business is in utter chaos. He wants cooperation. He will only get it if—(Time expired)

   Question put:

   That the order of the day be discharged.