Mr SWAN (Manager of Opposition Business) (5:09 PM) —I rise to support these amendments, because standing committees are an essential part of the parliamentary process and a central part of its very important accountability. They ensure that bills put forward by the government receive that additional scrutiny which in many cases is required. To do their job properly, however, these committees need to be given time to look in detail at the government's legislative program. Their effectiveness is therefore linked with the sittings of parliament. For reasons only the government can best explain, they have decided we should sit for only two weeks out of the last 23. It is probably the case that these committees will not sit or deliberate until May—that is just a scandal.

We know the government does not have a third term agenda. It has much to hide, because there has been much deceit, so it does not want parliamentary accountability. Of course we have seen through question time that the stench is seeping out, and the more this House sits and the more the Senate sits, the greater the stench that surrounds this government. These committees are very important in ensuring the process of accountability, and that is what we have seen in the Senate. But these committees will first become effective probably as late as May.

Consider this figure: between the last sitting of the parliament before the election and the return of the parliament this year there was a gap of 138 days. In surfing terms, in my home state, they would call 138 days an endless summer. I know the minister would understand that. That is pretty good for the government, but it is not a great deal for the Australian people. One of the things that we fight hard to do when we want to get elected and come to this parliament is to ensure some accountability and to give value to the people of Australia—that is what we are here for. But they are not getting it. That is why these committees are so important.

If we are to protect the excellent work undertaken by standing committees in this place, we must address the problems surrounding standing committees. We only have 1½ sitting weeks before the budget. What do we now see if we look at the blue today? We see the government rushing very important bills which go to the heart of national security matters into this House and out of the blue. I sincerely hope that this parliament does have the opportunity to effectively scrutinise these bills, because at the moment we have too many bills and too little time for them to be debated. The problem we have here is that avoidance of accountability and excessive partisanship have become key hallmarks of this government.

You saw the deceit at question time today. The principal deceiver—the Gollum of Australian politics, the man that would do anything for the ring— was up there again telling untruths about his knowledge of the photographs and what occurred on that evening of 7 November. We only got to the heart of that via the Senate estimates committee process, when those brave airmen appeared before the Senate committee and blew the whistle on former Minister Reith. When the Prime Minister first came into this parliament when the parliament returned, he denied any knowledge of these events. Until Air Marshal Houston told the Senate that he had had a conversation with Minister Reith around lunchtime on the seventh, the Prime Minister's word was unchallenged. That is why we need committees to sit: to expose the deceit of this government, which will do anything to save its political hide. It will do anything to save its political hide because this government is master of the great camouflage, the great diversion.

Why is it that suddenly today all of these bills emerge that are going to be dumped into the parliament with very little sitting time to adequately scrutinise them? I will tell you why: because the government do not want to talk in this parliament about a lot of the other issues that they have got into deep political trouble on. The committees that we are looking at establishing will have a very important role in exposing the deceit. For example, the committee on family and community services will have a lot to say about the 600,000 Australian families who have incurred debt through their family tax payments. It will have a lot to say, as the Senate estimates committee did, about the fact that 200,000 of those people who were to receive debt letters because they had a bill of over $1,000 did not receive those letters before the election because they were suppressed by the government—another example of the government saying one thing before the election and another thing after the election.

Indeed, the evidence in the Senate estimates committees was that the government had been exposed for lying again. Before the election Minister Vanstone and her sidekick Minister Anthony had said that all of these people were being written to—or being phoned if they were not being written to— and told that they had debts. But what emerged during the senate estimates committees was that only one-fifth of 600,000 Australian families with a total debt of $500 million were notified before the election that they had a debt. The only people who were written to or phoned were those who had their debts waived—that is, those who had debts under or around $1,000, not the 200,000 who received debts greater than $1,000 and who on average received a debt of over $1,000. They were more people who suffered from the deceit of the government.

The family and community affairs committee that we are talking about establishing today would have a lot to say about that. I am sure that the legal and constitutional committee would have a lot to say about how the government did not tell the truth about children overboard. They would have a lot to say about truth overboard because it says so much about the style of the government. We have had the Leader of the House in here today enthusiastically supporting his Prime Minister, the chief deceiver, the Gollum of Australian politics, the man who would do anything for the ring, anything to save the hide of this government. He was running around like John Howard's lap dog. The minute he sees the Prime Minister he runs around in circles and starts barking, `John, you're a great man. You're fantastic. You saved us in the election.' He is barking the whole time—barking mad.

One of the reasons why we need to keep this government accountable is that it has become insufferably arrogant. Only an insufferably arrogant group of people who have been in power too long could produce a parliamentary timetable such as the one that they have given us today. That is another reason why we have to support these committees. I am sure the economics, finance and public administration committee would have a lot to say about Wooldridge House. They would have an enormous amount to say about Wooldridge House. And I am most certain that the economics, finance and public administration committee would have a lot to say about Costello's casino—the loss of $4.8 billion.

I know who else would be very interested in the accountability of this government—all of those people in this community who depend primarily on the government for their day-to-day existence—that is, recipients of social security, families struggling to make ends meet through family payments, unemployed Australians and age pensioners. What we have seen leaked by this government over the last week or so is that they intend to make the disabled of this community pay for Costello's losses of $4.8 billion. This government have had a long-term agenda to take the axe to disability support pensioners in this community. It was there under Senator Newman, it is there under Senator Vanstone and after the election it is out there again. They have also got an agenda to cut back on the indexation of social security benefits, particularly those measures that they put in place under the GST compensation package, which they claimed were extremely generous—those measures, for example, which linked benefits to 25 per cent of average weekly earnings. You can be sure that that is for the chopper because of Costello's loss of $4.8 billion in his gambling on the international money markets and finance markets.

Those people are going to be extremely concerned and they would like a committee of the parliament to look into what the government is up to. They most certainly would. It is not just those people; it is the wider Australian community who desperately want much more accountability from this government. They want a government that is in touch with their needs. They want a government that is concerned about the kitchen table, not the boardroom table. They want a government that understands that when prices go up in supermarkets they hurt the hip pocket. They want a government that understands that they are under financial pressure. They want a government that understands that the pressure of work and family is having a material impact on their lives. They want a government that is committed to having an industrial relations system which recognises the problems that they face on a daily and weekly basis.

That is the role of this parliament: to raise those concerns and to articulate them in this House. This pre-eminent House ought to directly represent the needs of all Australians, but it does not. And the reason it does not is that it is not sitting. It is barely sitting enough. I hope that the Leader of Government Business can come to an arrangement where there is time to discuss these very important bills which have suddenly appeared in the parliament. We all know that since September 11 concerns of national security and border security are to the forefront of the views of all Australians. The response of an Australian government to those has to be in this parliament. When statements are made about these matters they should be made in this parliament and when responses are made they should be made in this parliament. That cannot happen if this parliament does not sit.

I hope that the government are going to make adequate time available to discuss these very important matters, the detail of which we are as yet entirely unaware. If they make that time available, they will receive the cooperation of the opposition because these are very important matters. But if the time is not made available, if we do not have time to adequately scrutinise this legislation in the interests of the Australian people, then there will be a very vigorous exchange in this parliament because our responsibility is to make this government accountable to the Australian people and we will not shirk from it.