Senator MARGETTS (8:43 PM) —I have been involved in debates on gagging mercifully few times since I came to the Senate in 1993. Native title in 1993 was one of them. There have been, I am glad to say, very few in recent times. Part of the issue with gagging is that, in the past, there was a double whammy due to the fact that there were bills that as a Senate we did not get a chance to see much of at all. Fortunately that was before my time as well. It was as a result of work by my colleague former Senator Christabel Chamarette, who required that the Senate have a chance to look at legislation, that that changed. There was very good reason for that.

Funnily enough, people in the community—our constituents, the people we are supposed to be representing—want to be able to see and comment on the legislation upon which we are being asked to vote. That includes, I believe, the details of major legislative changes that occur as a result of negotiations between parties—governments and whichever parties will allow a certain piece of legislation, which may be highly controversial, to get through the Senate. The general principle of all of this legislation is that, as far as possible, if there are major changes within legislation, we should all have the chance to see what those changes are and what the implications are.

Senator Campbell has said that the difference between the current government and previous governments is that they are going to allow us to see the amendments before we get the bill. That is going to be really interesting because, if the rumours are correct, we are going to have the environment legislation shoved on us tomorrow and most, if not all, of the environment movement do not have a clue about what is now being proposed in the bill. If Senator Campbell is correct, we will have a chance before we vote—before we go to the second reading—to have a look at what the government are proposing.

The problem is that in the last eight days of sitting—theoretically seven days—we are being asked to deal with a program which is far too great for the time allocated. Perhaps if all waking hours were to be included—and that is just about what we have at the moment—we would still have a program far too great to be properly considered in the time. Does that mean that we then have a process in the Senate such that whoever agrees to a bill—one would assume the reason people agree is that they think the legislation and the deal they have struck is supportable and able to be defended—has to apparently sign on the dotted line, saying, `By the way, I not only agree to this bill, I agree to it not being debated. I agree that the issues not be brought out, I agree that the questions not be properly asked and I agree with the implications of these amendments and this legislation not being debated.'

We are well used to this situation when we see it in the House of Representatives. That is what happens when there is a lack of democracy in either chamber of this parliament. I would like to think that at some stage in the future, if and when we get proportional representation in the House of Representatives, that monstrous undemocratic process will cease. However, what we do see, sometimes from both sides of the chamber—the government and the opposition—is that they often think the Senate has far too much say; that is, that the community, via the Senate that is meant to be representing it, has far too much say in the process of debate and review and that they would all like to have a go at weakening the rights of the Senate, to reduce the Senate to simply a rubber stamp for whoever happens to scrape over the line in an election.

Tonight not only have we had a debate about whether we are going to gag the debate on the bill in relation to the sale of Telstra, but also it has been rightly pointed out that the government have been on again, off again, on again, off again in relation to this bill and others simply because they had not stitched up the numbers at that stage. I had the embarrassment this morning of standing up to deal with the services bill and Telstra and finding out that in fact the government had brought on another bill instead. So there you are, on again, off again this morning. I had to deal with a piece of legislation that the government had not had the courtesy to even let me know was on and on which I had the first amendment. We were particularly pleased about that, but not for the dummy spit right now where the government are saying, `How dare the Senate not behave?' As I say, it was the government that basically brought on and changed the program without telling us this morning.

Then we had a situation just before the dinner break—it was not recorded in Hansard—where Senator Campbell was very cross that we should have any debate about the sitting hours. We know now why Senator Campbell was very cross—not just that there was any debate on the sitting hours but that anybody should still be in this chamber after dinner to hear the end of the debate. Why was he cross about that? Because he knew what was coming up. He also knew that the rest of the chamber had not been advised about what was coming up. In the normal way of things there would have been just those people in the chamber to deal with the Telstra sale bill—those people in each of the parties who were dealing with it. Of course, unprepared, there may not have even been this debate because it would have gone through quite quickly—so quickly that we may not have even got our 10 minutes.

Can I indicate that I was actually standing to speak even as Senator Alston moved his motion on the suspension of standing orders. Everybody was in such a hurry to push this through and to gag debate in the Senate that I was not even recognised in the chamber. Maybe I should have yelled out louder, but basically it was a rush to gag and to stop the rights of the Senate to debate and to find out what is actually in the deals—first of all, the deal in relation to the sale of Telstra. Of course, as we go on this week we all know that the only way to get that big a legislation pile into that time is going to be to squash the democratic process.

I know Senator Ray said he was quite proud of guillotining 62 bills in the parliament. I would like to have thought that that is not the way the Senate operates now, considering it has other people who can stop that process going on. But no, in the last days before 30 June everyone seems to be wanting to get on the bandwagon to see which bit of the bill they can sell out as quickly as possible with the least possible debate. What do you think the rest of the community in Australia thinks about this process? Think about what it is going to do to the environment, to rural and regional Australia and to our economy and employment. And this is what the government says is the right way to deal with it.

Like other people who have spoken on this side of the chamber, I am going to vote against this gag. I would like to think that if the process is wrong for this gag the process is also wrong for any potential gags in relation to the GST package or any potential bill in the environmental protection package. I am sorry the Democrats have not yet spoken. Maybe there is still time. I would like to see them answer not just my concerns and not just the concerns of members of this side of the chamber but also the concerns of the constituents in Australia whom we are all meant to represent.