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| Mike Elliott Leader Australian Democrats Member of the Legislative Council |
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Legislative
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| Mike Elliott Leader Australian Democrats Member of the Legislative Council |
Parliament Index |
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The Hon. M.J. ELLIOTT: Over the past couple of months, it appears that parliamentary reform has become the flavour of the month, although it is interesting when one puts some critical analysis to the particular proposals being made to see what people are trying to achieve. From talking to members of the public, it appears that the public wants greater accountability of government. The people are deeply concerned that government is becoming less and less accountable. There is growing concern that the executive dominates the government and the parliament and that, in fact, it largely ignores the parliament.
What does executive government want to do? It wants to further diminish the ability of parliament to, in any way, keep it accountable. The proposals coming out of the Liberal Party will most likely get Labor support from members who are thinking about their next term in government. They are interested in making sure that they are not kept to account. That seems to be the driving force of any parliamentary reform.
Amongst proposals being made is a proposal to reduce the size of parliament, and included in that is the size of the Legislative Council. Members of this place know that this is a relatively small chamber already. The ability of this chamber to serve committees is constrained by numbers. I am of the view that this Council should become a house of committees and that the spread of committees that is currently covered by joint house committees should be covered by committees of the Legislative Council alone. That would not be possible if the size of this chamber was diminished.
If we are going to talk about accountability, I think that an upper house which is increasingly independent, one which does not have ministers within it, a house where people cannot by behaving themselves on the backbench eventually be promoted to a ministry but in fact their career would be built within the service of committees of the upper house, would be a far more robust and independent house than the one that we currently have.
The Hon. A.J. Redford interjecting:
The Hon. M.J. ELLIOTT: It has been suggested by way of interjection from the government benches that we are nervous. I assure the interjector that there is no nervousness on the part of the Democrats. I draw to his attention, if he has not already seen it, a paper written by Jenni Newton of the Parliamentary Library. She makes it quite plain that the Democrats are not under threat by any change, short of going to single member electorates in the upper house. The fact that the Democrats are about to win lower house seats, particularly from members of the government, indicates that we are at no risk.
The people who are at risk are some of the smaller parties and Independents in the upper house. Indeed, the government is seeking to ensure that the widespread community is not represented. It believes that governments should be elected with about 30 per cent of the vote and have absolute power. It is the view of the government that sizeable sections of the community should not be represented.
It is worth noting that in the last upper house election one-third of South Australians voted non-Liberal and non-Labor, clearly expressing the view that they wanted other representation. So, if Liberal and Labor get together, it will be straight out collusion of self-interest. I hope that the Labor Party, which in opposition talks about accountability, will not go for that.
There have been suggestions that the upper house might only be able to have three-month delays on legislation. If that is done, it will remove all power from the upper house. The Legislative Council in New South Wales could only exercise its powers in terms of insisting that certain reports be made to it because it had more than the power of a three-month delay.
Time expired.
