Senator BROWN (4:12 PM) —In his contribution to this debate, the Leader of the Government in the Senate and Minister for the Environment and Heritage, Senator Hill, described this motion as a stunt. It was the same minister who, just three years ago, described a motion I brought before this place calling for self-determination of the East Timorese people a stunt. What we are seeing here is a pattern of inability to grasp important human rights issues, be they international or domestic. The efforts of the Labor Party, the Democrats, the Greens, Senator Harradine and Mr Andren, the member for Calare in the other place, to have a debate on this matter brought to full maturity in the House of Representatives have been described as a stunt. What is stunted here is the government's view of parliamentary democracy. That an important issue like this should not be debated in the House of Representatives—the only private member's bill to go through the Senate to the House of Representatives in five years, but moreover a bill on a matter which is engaging the attention of the whole nation and now the community nations—and that it is not considered a matter that the government in this parliament should debate fits right into the category of stuntism, but it is on the government's part. The minister also said that the Labor Party ought to put out a press release—that it would have the same effect. So we see this pattern of trivialisation of a major issue by the government. As I said earlier in my submission, that pattern starts right at the top. It comes from the Prime Minister's office. It is a matter of the Prime Minister believing that his office is more important than this parliament. He is wrong.

It is this parliament that the people elected; it is not the member for Bennelong that the people elected to run this country. It is a very important matter of democratic principle and understanding of the Australian democratic system that is at stake here. That is why I support this motion, by which the Senate is saying to the House of Representatives: undertake a debate that is worthy of the importance of this piece of legislation to the nation. That said, the Labor Party implied that to take stronger measures would be blackmail and that we did not want to be involved in guerilla tactics. I do not go along with that terminology. We could say that the Senate simply asking the House of Representatives to undertake a debate on mandatory sentencing, with the clear implication that they will be getting another motion tomorrow from the Labor Party if they do not take notice of this one, could be labelled blackmail or guerilla tactics. It is nothing of the sort.

It is the responsibility of this Senate, if it believes in legislation coming from this place being worthy of debate in the House of Representatives, to send a clear and unequivocal message to the House of Representatives that that debate should take place. Whatever we might think of the differences between the Senate and House of Representatives, the constitution is clear on this part: that the houses are equal. They are different, but they are equal. Without that equality we would not have a federation and we would not have a constitution. We would not have had 100 years of togetherness in this great nation with the guidance of a popularly elected parliament composed of a House of Representatives and a Senate which was set up to give balance to the House of Representatives and, in those days, to represent the interests of the colonies, who were afraid of losing say through the federation.

The fact is that the Senate does have a pivotal role. While it is not the house of government, it does have a pivotal role in many ways—as a complementary house, an equal house, a house with important functions to see that democracy is healthy and vigorous and, indeed, to see that a watch is kept on some of the excesses that could come from executive government using the House of Representatives as a rubber stamp. What we have got here is an excess; it is an inverse form of denigration of the democratic process. How can we, on a matter like mandatory sentencing—after a Senate committee has looked into it, with the whole of the community engaged, with United Nations committees involved, with the attention of the world on us as we head for the Olympics—accept a situation where a dictate from the Prime Minister's office says: (1) members of the government will not have a conscience vote on this matter and, (2) there will be no debate. In effect it says: `I deny those members of the House of Representatives who want to speak on this matter their right to speak on behalf of their constituencies.' How dare the Prime Minister gag this parliament in this way? How dare the Prime Minister thumb his nose at Australian democracy in this fashion? How dare the Prime Minister trivialise the issue of mandatory sentencing—which now has international ramifications—by saying, `I will not even debate it'? Behind this is a failure of leadership, and through the centre of it is a shard of ice, a failure of heart and an inability to relate to the spirit of this nation, which is the spirit of a fair go.

Events of the past week have troubled me terribly as a Green representative in this chamber. I am serious about this. I am very serious about this. This failure to debate mandatory sentencing, now compounded by a failure to recognise the stolen generation, is doing this country great harm, internally and externally. It is a provocative and harmful process as far as the first Australians are concerned. It is provocative in the lead-up to and on the eve of the Sydney Olympics. All members will be aware of comments made by indigenous spokespeople in the last 24 hours. Whatever one may think of them, one has to take notice. I have been enormously impressed by the forbearance of the first Australians despite the loss they have been occasioned and the failure of the parliament to deliver justice to them in the matter of native title. Then there is the appalling evidence coming forward in the inquiry into the stolen generation and now the appalling evidence about the situation in respect of mandatory sentencing, which is but the tip of the iceberg in a nation where, if you are Aboriginal, if you are indigenous, you have 13 times the chance of being locked up in an Australian jail than if you are not. Mandatory sentencing is but the tip of that iceberg, and the legislation in the House of Representatives deals with the most vulnerable few who are amongst those thousands of indigenous Australians locked up. Those are the children who are in jail unnecessarily because politicians in Darwin and Perth have, through legislation, usurped the proper function of the courts, of the magistrates and the judges, to ensure that the punishment—the sentencing—was meet with the crime, the background, the circumstances and the needs of victims in an individual situation for which no law passing through a parliament and essentially generalised to cover the eventualities within its ambit can be tailor made. Yet sometimes arrogant and always shortsighted leaders in Darwin and Perth insist on defending their bailiwick.

But not our Prime Minister. He says that mandatory sentencing is wrong and then fails to defend anything. In the last few days he has had his minister for Aboriginal affairs, of all people, insulting the indigenous people of this country in a provocative way. Just as it is unnecessary that indigenous children are locked up in Darwin and Perth and our legislation is to get rid of that awesomely bad situation, so it is unnecessary that the government is so rapidly leading to a confrontation with the indigenous people of Australia on the eve of the Olympics. This is a very serious moment in Australian history. All of us want to be celebrating this nation in Sydney in September. But the ill thought out, short-sighted words of the Prime Minister and now several of his senior ministers are threatening all of that celebration. They are threatening the happiness not just of the indigenous people but 19 million Australians and I do not know how many visitors coming to this country and the billions of people who will be watching on television.

I say to the Prime Minister, `Think again. You said you were going to govern for all of us. You said you were going to set us on the path to reconciliation. Your actions fail those words.' I cannot believe that the Prime Minister was not consulted by Minister Herron before this extremely damaging denial of the stolen generation went to print. I believe they are the sentiments not just of Senator Herron but of the Prime Minister himself. Australians do not like it. Australians do not want such an unnecessary and inflammatory approach being taken on the eve of the Olympics. There is not just a failure of imagination here; there is a failure of heart, of caring. There is a failure of commitment to governing for all of us. I remember Noel Pearson saying that he felt those words excluded the indigenous people. Sadly, two years later he has been shown to be right, in the worst possible way.

This is an extremely dangerous and harrowing time for Australia. We should be, as I said, celebrating the moment, celebrating the new millennium, celebrating to the world what Australia stands for, and its exclusiveness, through the Olympics. But all that can be lost by a few injudicious, harmful, divisive words. Those words are now out. One has to think, after the process of ministerial hard-heartedness about indigenous affairs in recent months, that we can expect more. I am frightened for Australia under this Prime Minister about this turn of events. Good gracious, what a fantastic country we have, what a beautiful nation, what a wonderful indigenous culture and people and relationship with the land—celebrated around the world but not in the prime ministerial office, not in a way that gets beyond some words, including always the word `honest', indicating that the Prime Minister understands. I am beginning to see that the Prime Minister does not understand, he does not have the caring heart that a leader of this country should have. He does not have respect for the first Australians and he is not going to get respect. That is essential if we are to feel proud as a nation, in the view of the community of nations, in this Olympic year.

The Prime Minister must take stock; the cabinet must take stock. It is not good enough to say, `We'll do this behind closed doors out of the view of the people of Australia.' This is a matter which is very justifiably debated in this parliament and in this chamber. That is why this motion is so important. That is why I so strongly support it. There needs to be a change of direction for Australia and it needs to be now. We have six months until the Olympics. We need a sensitivity which will see those six months turn us round and put us in true celebration mode when the time comes, with indigenous culture no doubt taking an important role in the opening ceremony where the world can get a glimpse of what a joyous country Australia can be. The Prime Minister should take stock.