Senator MURRAY (9:39 PM) —Mr Acting Deputy President, you would be aware that I have 40 minutes allocated to me, and we are due to close off at 9.50 p.m. The government has requested that I seek leave to continue my remarks a little early so that it has time to make an announcement and deal with some business. I will do that right now. I seek leave to continue my remarks as from 12 minutes to 10. I think that will leave the government sufficient time.

Leave granted.

Senator MURRAY —With regard to the 27 bills before us—and I am sure there are many more to come—the government has two main and separate objectives, and they are separate objectives. The first is to get its tax package through, but the second main objective is to diminish and attack the Senate. The government intends to do that by attacking its process, its members and the Senate committees and their reports.

Out there in the scheming world where these sorts of plots are hatched, we know that a few—not many, but a few—bullyboys in business, the usual suspects, are building up their war chest for an assault on the Senate as well, and they will add a great deal of money to the campaign to try to propagandise against the Senate. Yet the Senate, as a proportional representation body, truly does represent the people of Australia. As Senator Forshaw made clear in his remarks, only 37 per cent of the vote in the Senate went to the coalition in the last election—their worst result in the last 60 years. I would not just venture to suggest, I would state as a fact, that that low percentage was entirely a result of the GST and the ANTS tax package.

Because of that, this package must be rejected by the Senate unless fiercely amended because, without its acceptance by sufficient senators other than the coalition, it will lack the legitimacy of popular support which any major change should enjoy. If the last election, which the Prime Minister insists had as its centrepiece—and I think he is right—the GST and the new tax system package, had been a referendum or even just a plebiscite, the government would have failed to get a majority of Australians to support it. You can twist and turn about who has mandates, which mandates they are and where the mandates exist, but you cannot get away from the fact that a majority of Australians did not vote for the coalition's tax package as they put it. Therefore, the Senate must either reject it or savagely amend it to make it more acceptable to the community as a whole.

I think the community as a whole need to be very alert to the way in which a number of people within the political process are seeking to use this process to reduce the power, the impact and the personality of the Senate. This is the same agenda which seeks to advance the power of the Prime Minister in the presidential republican debate. This is the same agenda which reduces the tenure of the clerks of both houses. This is the same agenda which reduces the independence of the senior bureaucrats who run our civil service. This is the same agenda that seeks to appoint capital `C' conservative judges to the High Court. It is a desire for excessive executive power. In the exercise of its role in legislation, this Senate must resist the efforts of a number of senators, particularly in the Liberal Party, to demean and diminish the Senate, the senators and its process.

With those remarks I want to draw attention to some of the remarks made by Senator Ferguson yesterday. I have known Senator Ferguson since I came into the Senate, and I have found him to be an exceptionally capable, cooperative and very accommodating senator on the Senate economics committees and other committees where I have interacted with him. But from the moment he entered the Senate Select Committee on A New Tax System he seemed to undergo a personality change, and I think he exhibited far more aggression than is normal for the man as I know him. Either that is the strain of the responsibility of defending an indefensible package or, alternatively, he was under orders to be far more disruptive than is his nature.

When he made remarks about the behaviour of senators in the Labor Party I was distressed, not because some of those remarks might not be true—because there are senators who go over the top, as we might say—but because it was a one-eyed approach. We all know that within his own coalition there are senators who go over the top. Any remarks about the fierce nature of politics and the way in which people conduct themselves in committees have to be remarks about behaviour as a whole and not directed at one particular political party. But there was one thing he said with which I do want to agree. There were remarks made yesterday by Senator Conroy implying bias by the Senate committee secretariat. I will say clearly that I have worked with Robert Diamond on the IR report and numerous other reports since mid-1996, and he is not a person who exhibits bias in the conduct of his duties. Madam President, I think I have got to stop here.

The PRESIDENT —You could seek leave to continue your remarks, Senator.

Senator MURRAY —I already did before you arrived. I think the government needs this time just to wrap up a few details.

The PRESIDENT —Thank you, Senator.

Debate adjourned.