Senator IAN MACDONALD (Minister for Fisheries, Forestry and Conservation) (6:47 PM) —I only have about three minutes to make my contribution. I have been in the unfortunate situation of not being able to listen to the debate because of ministerial duties, but I did want to speak—ever so briefly, as it turns out—to indicate my support for a wide-ranging debate on reform, particularly of the Senate. For a number of reasons which the Prime Minister mentioned in his address earlier on, and which I assume other senators and other speakers in the debate so far have mentioned, it is now virtually impossible for a government to obtain a majority in the upper house, no matter how large its majority may be in the lower house.

People elect a lower house to elect a government and to elect a Prime Minister. We have seen many examples, even in the time I have been in the parliament, of the elected majority government not being able to get through the program upon which it was elected to govern. People have mentioned the GST and said, `You Liberals got the GST through,' but we got it through in a form which we really did not want. We had to make compromises, and I think history has shown that those compromises have meant that it has not worked as effectively as perhaps it could have. I do not have time to go into that.

I am disappointed that, from Mr Crean down, the Labor Party seems to have used our Prime Minister's initiative in opening the debate as an opportunity for personal political attacks on him and on the Liberal Party. The Prime Minister and those of us on this side of the parliament want to open this up for debate to make sure that the public understand over a period of time all of the issues and how important reform of our parliamentary system could be. If that involves—as Senator Conroy has suggested—looking at four-year terms then I am certainly, on a personal basis, very happy to do so.

I am very happy to have a look at the issue of blocking supply. I know there are a lot of arguments on that. I simply point out for the record that, when supply was blocked at the following election, in 1975, the government of Mr Malcolm Fraser was returned with an all-time record majority. That clearly indicated what the people thought of that action at that time. Nevertheless, it is an appropriate time to talk about and debate those issues. I am very pleased that the issue has been raised by the Prime Minister and that the parliament, and indeed the wider public, has the opportunity of fully debating these important reforms.

The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT (Senator Cherry)—It being 6.50 p.m., the debate is interrupted and we now proceed to the consideration of government documents.