1973-12-04 28 1 2 SENATE 2367 0 1973-12-04 The PRESIDENT (Senator the Hon. Sir Magnus Cormack) took the chair at 1 1 a.m., and read prayers. 2367 ministerial arrangements 2367 1L5 NEW SOUTH WALES ALP Attorney-General 1 0 MURPHY, Lionel Senator MURPHY Following on the resignation of the Foreign Minister, Senator the Honourable Don Willesee, from his other posts, and the abolition of the Departments of Navy, Army, Air, Civil Aviation, Housing and External Territories, I inform the Senate of the following ministerial changes. The Honourable F. E. Stewart, Minister for Tourism and Recreation, is now also Vice-President of the Executive Council. The Honourable Les Johnson is Minister for Housing and Construction, the Department of Works having been renamed the Department of Housing and Construction. The Honourable Lionel F. Bowen, Postmaster-General, is now also Special Minister of State. He will also be Minister assisting the Prime Minister. Senator Willesee will represent the Special Minister of State in this chamber. The Honourable W. L. Morrison, Minister for Science, will also be Minister assisting the Minister for Foreign Affairs in matters relating to Papua New Guinea. By these changes the number of departments has been reduced from thirty seven to thirty one. Other changes- the abolition of the Department of Customs and Excise and the Department of Supply and the incorporation of their functions elsewhere- are still under consideration. Honourable senators should also know that the royal commission on the Post Office is continuing its work and is expected to report by next March. It may also be of use to honourable senators- I know that this is a little beyond my statement on ministerial arrangements- if there were to be incorporated in Hansard a list of government departments today and as at 2 December 1972. I ask leave accordingly for this list to be incorporated. 2367 10000 0 0 PRESIDENT, The The PRESIDENT - Order! Is leave granted? There being no objection leave is granted. (The document read as follows)- GOVERNMENT DEPARTMENTS AT 2 DECEMBER 1972 Department of Air Department of the Army Attorney-General 's Department Department of Civil Aviation Department of Customs and Excise Department of Defence Department of Education and Science Department of the Environment, Aborigines and the Arts Department of External Territories Department of Foreign Affairs Department of Health Department of Housing Department of Immigration Department of the Interior Department of Labour and National Service Department of National Development Department of the Navy Postmaster-General 's Department Department of Primary Industry Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet Repatriation Department Department of Shipping and Transport Department of Social Services Department of Supply Department of Trade and Industry Department of the Treasury Department of Works GOVERNMENT DEPARTMENTS AT 4 DECEMBER 1973 Department of Aboriginal Affairs Attorney-General 's Department Department of the Capital Territory Department of Customs and Excise Department of Defence Department of Education Department of the Environment and Conservation Department of Foreign Affairs Department of Health Department of Housing and Construction Department of Immigration Department of Labour Department of the Media Department of Minerals and Energy Department of Northern Development Department of the Northern Territory Department of Overseas Trade Postmaster-General's Department Department of Primary Industry Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet Repatriation Department Department of Science Department of Secondary Industry Department of Services and Property Department of Social Security Department of the Special Minister of State Department of Supply Department of Tourism and Recreation Department of Transport Department of the Treasury Department of Urban and Regional Development 2367 1L5 ALP 1 0 MURPHY, Lionel Senator MURPHY -I also inform the Senate that the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Senator Willesee, is in New Zealand attending the 23rd meeting of the Colombo Plan Consultative Committee. He is expected to return on 8 December. In his absence the Prime Minister is the Acting Minister for Foreign Affairs. I shall represent those Ministers normally represented in this chamber by Senator Willesee. The Minister for Transport, the Honourable C. K. Jones, is in Europe to attend the European Conference of Ministers for Transport, to which Australia has just been admitted, in Paris, and to have discussions in London and in Holland. He is expected to return to Australia on 9 December. In his absence the Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, Senator Cavanagh, is Acting Minister for Transport. 2368 miscellaneous 2368 2368 KBY SOUTH AUSTRALIA 0 0 YOUNG, Harold Senator YOUNG -I present the following petition from 50 citizens of the Commonwealth: To the Honourable the President and Members of the Senate in Parliament assembled. The humble petition of the undersigned citizens of the Commonwealth respectfully showeth: 1 ) That Australian citizens place great value on their freedom to choose their own doctor in all aspects of medical care. That we believe in a doctor's freedom to provide a personal service based on personal responsibility within a system based on quality rather than quantity, as opposed to an impersonal service in which doctor and patient lose their identity. 3 ) That proposals to change the existing health scheme are unacceptable to the people of Australia. And your petitioners, as in duty bound, will ever pray. Petition received and read. 2368 Questions 2368 2368 DV4 0 0 WITHERS, Reg Senator WITHERS -My question is directed to the Minister for Aboriginal Affairs. I ask: Has Dr Bustard, Managing Director of Applied Ecology Pty Ltd, been sacked by the company's board? If so, why? Did the Minister know that this action was to be taken and did he approve of the action? Lastly, will Dr Bustard remain a director of the company? 2368 K6F ALP 1 0 CAVANAGH, James Senator CAVANAGH - I have received notification from Senator Georges, as Chairman of Directors of Applied Ecology Pty Ltd, that Dr Bustard has been dismissed. I have been informed that it was as a result of a number of charges made against Dr Bustard at a meeting last Thursday, at which I believe Dr Bustard asked for those charges in writing. His replies were considered by the directors to be unsatisfactory. Consequently they dismissed him. It was not with my approval and it was contrary to my directions the previous day. As to whether he will be replaced on the directorship of the board, Cabinet has made a decision on the Carr and Smart reports and its decision will be announced when the Premiers of Western Australia and Queensland have been notified of it, which is a formality. Applied Ecology, which was set up as a commercial undertaking, will no longer continue as a commercial undertaking. Applied Ecology will continue as a scientific and research organisation. Therefore the present directors are unsuitable for that function. The future directors, in accordance with the recommendation of Mr Smart, will comprise 3 scientists, 2 businessmen and a representative of the Council for Aboriginal Affairs. While that board is being set up the only directors displaced will be those who do not come within that category. Therefore, Dr Bustard and one of the representatives of the Council for Aboriginal Affairs will remain and there will be other appointments to meet the requirements of the Smart report. 2368 2368 KMX 0 0 GREENWOOD, Ivor Senator GREENWOOD -My question is directed to the Minister for the Media. I ask it against the growing background of distortion and misrepresentation of the Opposition's case on the current education controversy. I ask: Will the Minister again pursue his inquiries of Commissioners of the Australian Broadcasting Commission to ascertain why, in the current controversy over the States Grants (Schools) Bill, the program 'A.M.' on the morning of Friday last, 30 November, gave publicity only to the Government's viewpoint by featuring both the Acting Minister for Education, Mr Lionel Bowen, and the President of the Australian Labor Party, Mr Hawke, and no Opposition spokesman? Will he again remind the Commissioners of the ABC that their charter of freedom and independence requires them to maintain objectivity and carries an obligation to give both sides in the controversy a fair go? 2368 KTA ALP 0 0 MCCLELLAND, Douglas Senator Douglas McClelland - I am sure that there is no need to remind the Commissioners of the ABC of their overall responsibility to ensure that everybody is given a fair go. I am satisfied that they have done this to date and that, in their ensuring of it, there has been an overall balancing out of programming activities. Senator Greenwood asked me a question along these lines last week. I provided information on this matter to the honourable senator and it has satisfied me beyond doubt that they were setting out to achieve an overall balancing of their programming. I will certainly make inquiries of the Commission to ascertain what other programs were involved, stating the Opposition's case on the education controversy without the Government's viewpoint having been reported. 2368 2368 JXR 0 0 DRAKE-BROCKMAN, Thomas Senator DRAKE-BROCKMAN -My question is addressed to the Minister representing the Minister for Urban and Regional Development. Have the Federal and Victorian Governments agreed to co-operate in developing small selfreliant cities on the fringe of Melbourne? Is this decentralisation? Is it not certain that the development of so-called 'systems cities' on the outskirts of Melbourne Will accelerate rather than slow down the drift of country people to the metropolis? 2369 K6F ALP 1 0 CAVANAGH, James Senator CAVANAGH -A conference reached some agreement on this question. I do not know whether one could call the areas for development 'fringe' or not far distant from Melbourne. I believe that Geelong is one area that is under consideration for development. The same kind of development is to take place near Sydney. The purpose of the development is to restrict the growing influx of people to the centre of cities. It will in no way interfere with proposals for the development of towns completely away from cities, such as Albury-Wodonga and new town areas. 2369 2369 KSY 0 0 MCAULIFFE, Ronald Senator MCAULIFFE - My question is addressed to the Minister for the Media. By way of preface, let me say that three major sporting activities- namely, Korea versus Australia in World Cup soccer, the rugby league ashes series between Australia and Great Britain, which Australia won, and the recent Davis Cup final between Australia and the United States have been telecast direct to Australian audiences by satellite coverage. Is the Minister aware of the keen interest in sporting programs televised by the Australian Broadcasting Commission which is strongly supported by a large Australian audience? Will he ensure a continuation of this policy by the Australian Broadcasting Commission? 2369 KTA ALP 0 0 MCCLELLAND, Douglas Senator Douglas McClelland -As the honourable senator has said, in addition to the satellite coverage of the international soccer matches between Australia and Korea and the rugby league test matches in England, on Saturday the Australian Broadcasting Commission had a direct satellite telecast lasting some 6 hours, which I understand was the longest satellite coverage ever carried out of the Davis Cup final, followed by some additional hours of coverage on Sunday. The Davis Cup satellite coverage attracted an estimated viewing audience of 6 million in Australia. I can tell the honourable senator that the ABC will cover directly by satellite the Commonwealth Games which will be held next year in Christchurch, New Zealand. This desirable and popular type of programming has been made possible by the Australian Government's desire to see an improvement in the quality of life and by our making available an additional SI Om this financial year to the ABC so that it may specifically engage in this and other more popular types of programming. 2369 2369 CAK 0 0 RAE, Peter Senator RAE - My question is directed to the Acting Minister for Transport. In view of the allegations now being made relating to the conduct of the search for survivors of the 'Blythe Star', will he reconsider the decision of the Minister on the request by the Tasmanian Solicitor-General for the addition of assessors expert in marine searches to assist the inquiry into the sinking of the 'Blythe Star' and the mammoth but unsuccessful search for survivors? 2369 K6F ALP 1 0 CAVANAGH, James Senator CAVANAGH -The Minister is satisfied that the inquiry that has been established is sufficient to ascertain the necessary details of the disaster. Press reports this morning show that counsel assisting the inquiry intends to bring out the whole question of some neglect. We think that the matter is well covered. There is no need for additional assistance at the inquiry. I think it would be unwise to make statements on the inquiry while it is in progress. 2369 2369 KVK 0 0 MULVIHILL, James Senator MULVIHILL - Can the Minister for Primary Industry now indicate whether the 1974 conference on the law of the sea, with its implications for fishing rights, is still to be held in Santiago or whether, in view of the political turbulence in Chile, a new venue has been determined for this momentous conference? 2369 ISW ALP 1 0 WRIEDT, Ken Senator WRIEDT - My only information is that after events in Chile some months back it was decided to transfer the conference to Venezuela. At the present time my understanding is that that is where the conference will take place. 2369 2369 K3R 0 0 BYRNE, Condon Senator BYRNE - My question is directed to the Minister representing the Minister for Minerals and Energy. In view of the implications for every country of the current international energy crisis as a result of the withholding of oil supplies from the Middle East and as Australia is not self sufficient in liquid petroleum or oil will the Minister indicate the programs under way with Commonwealth assistance to explore all sources of energy generation, that is, petroleum, petroleum gas, solar heating, hydrogenation of coal, kerosene shales, nuclear energy and tidal energy generation? Does the Government propose to accelerate or stimulate investigation of or experimentation with these energy sources? If so, what particular expanded programs are contemplated? 2370 ISW ALP 1 0 WRIEDT, Ken Senator WRIEDT -I believe that this question should be placed on the notice paper to enable the Minister to give a detailed answer. 2370 2370 KSW 0 0 MAUNSELL, Charles Senator MAUNSELL - My question is directed to the Minister for Primary Industry. Is it a fact that there is a world shortage of wheat which is likely to continue for the next 3 years? Is it also a fact that the much publicised wheat agreement with China covers only the next 3 years? Have the Minister for Primary Industry and the Minister for Overseas Trade given consideration to securing from China a concrete agreement for the sale of wheat beyond the 3-year term as a condition of supplying China during the period of world shortage? 2370 ISW ALP 1 0 WRIEDT, Ken Senator WRIEDT - It is true that at the present time there is a world wide shortage of wheat. Every effort is being made during this forthcoming season, both in Australia and overseas, to build up the world's reserves of wheat. Of course, the length of our agreement with China is a matter of negotiation between the Australian and Chinese Governments. I was not directly involved in these negotiations; they were the prime responsibility of the Minister for Overseas Trade. But I do not think that either the Australian or Chinese Government would be prepared to enter into an arrangement longer than the 3-year term. I am not aware of what discussions may have taken place in relation to supplying China with wheat beyond that period. However, if the Minister for Overseas Trade can supply me with additional information I shall let the honourable senator know. 2370 2370 JYA 0 0 O'BYRNE, Justin Senator O'BYRNE -My question is directed to the Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Securities and Exchange. On 16 October and again on 18 October I asked Senator Rae, as Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Securities and Exchange, when the report of that Committee would be tabled. In his answer to me he said that the Committee had been unable to proceed with its sittings from the prorogation of the Parliament in November 1972 until the Committee was reconstituted in April. I ask: Did not the constitution of the Select Committee make provision for it to continue sitting during time of prorogation of the Parliament until the reconstitution of the Committee? Will the report be presented before the Senate rises this year? What delays are now occurring? Will the report ever be presented? 2370 10000 0 0 PRESIDENT, The The PRESIDENT - Order! Senator Rae, you will recall the terms and conditions which I laid down previously, namely, that you may reply if you speak on behalf of the Committee. 2370 KMX 0 0 GREENWOOD, Ivor Senator Greenwood - I rise to a point of order. Mr President, I have an interest in this matter as you would be aware. I sought to get information from a chairman of a select committee by asking a question without notice. I think the chairman was willing to respond to me but he did not do so because there had not been a meeting of the committee, as you said there should have been before he could reply. I submit that consistency requiries that either I be allowed to ask my question again on the terms under which you are now permitting Senator Rae to answer this question or that Senator Rae be bound by the terms of your earlier ruling. 2370 10000 0 0 PRESIDENT, The The PRESIDENT - I have a clear recollection of how this whole situation arose. It arose as a result of questions being addressed to previous chairmen of committees and the members of the committees complaining that the answers given were not in accordance with what the committees felt to be the correct position. It is perfectly permissible for a senator to address a question to another senator who is a chairman of a committee and therefore is in charge of part of the Senate's business. At that time I ruled that the chairman could respond only on the basis that he was responding on behalf of his committee and as a result of a discussion with his committee. Referring now to Senator Greenwood's observations, I am perfectly aware that I made that ruling in that context. I have no objection to his addressing the question again to the Chairman of the Committee concerned to see whether he has held a meeting of his Committee. 2370 CAK 0 0 RAE, Peter Senator RAE - Thank you, Mr President. I will continue to give the answer I had proposed to give before the intervention. I would like to make that clear. The answer I would give is that I shall refer the question to the Committee at its previously scheduled meeting which is to be held tomorrow. An answer will be considered by the Committee at that time. Mr President, I also would like to refer to you, for your authority to publish, certain correspondence which took place in relation to one part of the answer sought by Senator O 'Byrne. 2371 10000 0 0 PRESIDENT, The The PRESIDENT - I will discuss that later. 2371 2371 KQN 0 0 LAUCKE, Condor Senator LAUCKE -The Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, in reply to an earlier question by Senator Withers, stated that Applied Ecology Pty Ltd which conducts the turtle farming projects in the Torres Strait Islands will in future be a scientific and research organisation. What effect will this change have on Aboriginal employment opportunities as compared with the commercial turtle farming projects? What are the specific objectives of the proposed new organisation? Will the total present stocks of turtles be taken into the new arrangements or will there be some financial returns from sales of stock now on hand? 2371 K6F ALP 1 0 CAVANAGH, James Senator CAVANAGH - I think that the restructuring of Applied Ecology Pty Ltd and its new purpose will have a beneficial effect on the employment of Aborigines. The company will seek methods of farming of native animals and sea life in areas where Aborigines could be employed. Reports would indicate that the present operations in Torres Strait could be a viable commercial undertaking but it is not known what danger we are causing to the ecology and cultural life of the area. Research into this aspect has not been carried out. The farms in operation will continue to be operated as a pilot research project to study the whole question of ecology and culture with the purpose of adopting turtle farming as a commercial undertaking, if no damage is done. 2371 2371 KPG 0 0 KEEFFE, James Senator KEEFFE -Is the Attorney-General aware that certain allegations and charges have been made by the New South Wales Police against Kevin Gilbert, a resident of that State? Will the Minister undertake to assist Mr Gilbert with any legal assistance to which he may be constitutionally entitled through the Attorney-General's Department? 2371 1L5 ALP 1 0 MURPHY, Lionel Senator MURPHY -I will look into the matter. If he falls within the scope of the assistance provisions of the legal aid scheme that certainly will be done. 2371 2371 KBY 0 0 YOUNG, Harold Senator YOUNG - Is the Minister representing the Minister for Minerals and Energy aware that early in October I placed many questions on the notice paper, all of which have been answered with the exception of one. I ask whether the Minister is aware of that question in which I asked: Will the Government have any control over the already established Moomba-Gidgealpa pipeline in South Australia. Will the Federal Government construct the feeder pipeline to the proposed petro-chemical plant at Redcliffs, South Australia. Will the Government have control over the feeder line. Will the Minister endeavour to obtain an answer for me as soon as possible, because the other place will rise soon for the summer recess, or will we in South Australia have to wait during the recess period in a condition of great concern, wondering whether the Federal Government will try to take over the pipeline, including the feeder pipeline in South Australia? 2371 ISW ALP 1 0 WRIEDT, Ken Senator WRIEDT -No, I was not aware that an answer to that question on notice was still outstanding. I agree that Senator Young is entitled to an answer before the House of Representatives rises. I shall contact the Minister for Minerals and Energy immediately after question time with a view to obtaining an answer. 2371 2371 KBW 0 0 WRIGHT, Reginald Senator WRIGHT -I direct a question to the Minister for Primary Industry. Is it a fact that the Minister and his colleagues have under consideration at present an application for assistance to the Tasmanian apple industry? Will the Minister take into consideration, in his assessment of the matter, the loss sustained by the industry due to revaluation? Does the Minister not recognise that, by imposing a limit on the compensation for revaluation to crops of 5,000 bushels, a great part of the export was not compensated for? Will the Minister give consideration to that aspect in his judgment on the assistance which should be given to the industry? 2371 ISW ALP 1 0 WRIEDT, Ken Senator WRIEDT - The decision on revaluation adjustment payments was a policy decision which was made by the Government earlier this year following the revaluation decision of last December. The case in support of the Government's decision has been well argued in this place and publicly. I am not aware of any further application for revaluation adjustment payments as a result of any later revaluation decision which was made by the Government. When I last inquired about this matter no application had been made. In the consideration of the problems of the fruit industry in Tasmania, which are currently being considered, all the factors which have created problems for the industry will be taken into account. I certainly would not be in a position to make a commitment that there will be any further specific payments because of revaluation. The inclusion of a limit of 5,000 bushels in the first revaluation compensation decision was, I believe, well founded, and it assisted those growers who needed assistance most. I am quite sure that the stronger growers and those who are better able to survive the very difficult market conditions which almost certainly will obtain in 1974 will be able to surmount the present problems. 2372 2372 KUD 0 0 MCMANUS, Francis Senator McMANUS -My question, which is directed to the Attorney-General, concerns a rather extraordinary statement which appeared in the Melbourne Press during the weekend. A young lady stated that she was the secretary of an Australian Labor Party member of the House of Representatives and that she was one of two previously unqualified persons who had been appointed by the Attorney-General to conduct marriages in future. The young lady further said that she understood that she had been appointed to conduct marriages as a representative of the Labor Party. Will the Attorney-General inform us whether there have been appointments of this nature? If so, on what basis are they made? Does he intend to appoint persons to conduct marriages as representatives of the Liberal Party of Australia, the Australian Country Party and the Australian Demoratic Labor Party? 2372 KTA ALP 0 0 MCCLELLAND, Douglas Senator Douglas McClelland - What about the Independents? 2372 KUD 0 0 MCMANUS, Francis Senator McMANUS -And the Independents? 2372 1L5 ALP 1 0 MURPHY, Lionel Senator MURPHY -I regret that I have not seen the report, so I am not in a position to deal with it adequately. If the young lady was correctly reported she needs, I would think, to be corrected on the nature of the office. Certainly no persons are appointed to conduct marriages for members of the Australian Labor Party, or for members of the Liberal Party. It may be necessary to appoint someone to conduct a marriage between the Country Party and the Democratic Labor Party. Apparently the matchmaker has not been as successful as was thought at first. The position under the Marriage Act is that a large number of ministers of the various religions are appointed to conduct marriages- something of the order of 10,000 or more of these people have been appointed-and in addition State officers, who broadly comprise the Registrars-General and their officers in the States, are appointed to conduct marriages. Apart from those people, very few people have been appointed by the Attorney-General, pursuant to the Act, to conduct marriages. 2372 KAS 0 0 WEBSTER, James Senator Webster - Who are they? 2372 1L5 0 0 MURPHY, Lionel Senator MURPHY -There are only about half a dozen of these people. It is proposed that more will be appointed. But not a great number is required, and the suitability of those to be appointed is being considered. If there is some error in respect of understanding the office in the case to which the honourable senator has referred, the matter certainly will be attended to. But so far the system is working very satisfactorily. 2372 2372 RG4 0 0 GIETZELT, Arthur Senator GIETZELT - My question, which is directed to the Minister for Primary Industry, refers to the report on meat prices by the Joint Parliamentary Committee on Prices. Is the Minister concerned that, although saleyard prices for cattle have dropped, there has been no reduction in the price of meat to consumers? Is there any way in which this situation can be rectified? 2372 ISW ALP 1 0 WRIEDT, Ken Senator WRIEDT - It is true that in recent weeks there has been a drop in the price of meat at the saleyard and that all indications suggest that this reduction has not been reflected at the retail level. The Government obviously is concerned about this situation. If there is a reduction in the returns to primary producers, that reduction ought to be reflected to the benefit of the consumer. As a result of the current position, the Government has decided to ask the Bureau of Agricultural Economics, which is a section of my Department, to investigate the prices chain from the saleyard to the retail store. From this investigation we should be able to determine just where the price increases are being maintained. I hope that when this investigation is completed we will have a much clearer idea of which section of the industry is receiving benefits which, it would appear, should be flowing to the consumer. 2372 2372 KSN 0 0 MARRIOTT, John Senator MARRIOTT Doe s the Leader of the Government in the Senate recall advising me that he would seek an answer to my question, asked on or about 20 November, seeking the reason why on Saturday, 17 November, the Prime Minister travelled by VIP aircraft from Adelaide to Laucestou via Sydney—smal l fry compared with what the Minister for Immigration, Mr Grassby, intends to do on Australia Day? Is the Minister aware that, although I have not received an official reply, I have already commented on the answer which on Friday was conveyed to me by a member of the news media and that the answer and my comment, suitable to the occasion, have been published by the media? Is this likely to become the normal channel of communication between a senator and the Prime Minister in respect of the traditional parliamentary procedure of question and answer in the Senate? 2373 1L5 ALP 1 0 MURPHY, Lionel Senator MURPHY No, it is not likely to be the normal procedure. I accept the honourable senator's complaint that he should not receive his answer in that way. Normally, when a question is asked and I indicate that an answer will be obtained, the procedure is that officers go through the Hansard report or listen to the proceedings on the air and it is their duty to attend to such matters and to obtain the answer. Obviously, something in the machinery has broken down. I will see what can be done about it. I agree with the honourable senator that, when a question is asked formally in this place and it is said that an answer will be given, it ought to be given formally in this place. 2373 2373 KNU 0 0 HANNAN, George Senator HANNAN I direct a question to the Minister representing the Acting Minister for Foreign Affairs. Has the attention of the Minister been drawn to the complaint by the North Vietnamese Communist Charged'Affaires in Canberra that the Government's authority is charging North Vietnam excessive rental for its embassy and that it has applied to the authority for a reduction? Does this mean that the Whitlam Government's honeymoon with North Vietnam is now over? Will the Government inform the North Vietnamese that they are more than lucky to be here at all and, taking a leaf from the New Zealand Labor Government's book, inform them that they will have to depart unless they cease their current aggression in South Vietnam 2373 1L5 ALP 1 0 MURPHY, Lionel Senator MURPHY I do not know the circumstances of the affair. Assuming that what the honourable senator says is right, surely it is virtually a domestic matter as between governments. If such a question arises, it has to be sorted out. This kind of thing may occur anywhere in the world. I do not think, if there is some difference of opinion as to what is the appropriate rental, that that should be raised in the context of foreign affairs. Rather it ought to be left where it is to be sorted out between the officials concerned. 2373 2373 KAS 0 0 WEBSTER, James Senator WEBSTER I ask the Attorney- General whether it is a fact that Australian public servants have been told that they cannot visit Southern Rhodesia, even in a private capacity. Does he consider that the Government's proposal to adopt a Bill on human rights will preclude the Government from interfering in what is obviously a private right of Australian citizens? 2373 1L5 ALP 1 0 MURPHY, Lionel Senator MURPHY I do not know of any such instruction. I think that it would be bettter if we obtained the facts of the matter so that the honourable senator could have his answer dealt with on the basis of the real facts rather than hypothetically 2373 2373 JTT 0 0 DAVIDSON, Gordon Senator DAVIDSON In directing a question to the Minister representing the Minister for Immigration, I remind the Minister of a call which I made in a speech in the Senate last Thursday for a reactivation of the immigration program. In the light of statements made over the weekend in the same terms and because of the desperate need of industry for additional personnel and the worsening shortage of materials, will the Government reconsider its program in relation to a higher target and intake of new settlers? Can the Minister comment on whether the Immigration Planning Council has undertaken any study in relation tb the nation's needs? Are there any plans to restore recruitment centres in source countries overseas? 2373 KTA ALP 0 0 MCCLELLAND, Douglas Senator Douglas McCLELLAND Obviously, this is a matter for my colleague the Minister for Immigration in another place. Indeed, it concerns a matter of Government policy. I would therefore suggest to the honourable senator that he place his question on the notice paper. 2373 2373 2U4 0 0 CARRICK, John Senator CARRICK In directing a question to the Minister representing the Minister for Minerals and Energy, I refer to the growing energy crisis and to the fact that Australia currently depends upon imports for 30 per cent of its oil supplies. I refer also to informed predictions that, in the absence of further oil discoveries in Australia, Australian production will fall to 45 per cent of our requirements by 1980 and to under 10 per cent by 1990. In view of the urgency of initiating maximium oil exploration in Australia, requiring an investment of at least $250m a year, will the Government assure the Parliament that full incentives will be granted immediately to enable oil search of that magnitude be undertaken? 2373 ISW ALP 1 0 WRIEDT, Ken Senator WRIEDT I think that everybody is aware of the circumstances which have been outlined by Senator Carrick. His question is very similar to one which was asked of me previously this morning. A part of his question relates to Government policy. It certainly is not my responsibility to make any comment in respect of that matter. As to the other section of his question, I shall refer it to the Minister concerned and obtain an answer. 2374 2374 8G4 0 0 DURACK, Peter Senator DURACK I direct a question to the Minister representing the Minister for Immigration. Has the attention of the Minister been drawn to advertisements appearing in newspapers in Australia concerning the application of the new citizenship laws? In part, these advertisements state: All applications for Australian citizenship in future will be treated equally . . . . Distinctions which apply to British subjects will disappear after a transitional period. I ask: Is it not a fact that, with regard to British subjects, these advertisements are ambiguous and misleading? Why are the transitional provisions relating to British subjects not explained iu the advertisements? Is it not a fact that British subjects still retain and will retain their right to vote and be elected, irrespective of whether they apply under the new laws to become Australian citizens, or does the Government intend soon to withdraw these privileges of British subjects? 2374 KTA ALP 0 0 MCCLELLAND, Douglas Senator Douglas McCLELLAND During the last session of the Parliament there was a debate on immigration legislation with regard to rights of citizenship during which several matters raised by honourable senators were debated in this chamber. As I have not seen the advertisements to which the honourable senator refers, I do not know all the details involved. All I can do is undertake to refer the question to my colleague in another place and obtain a reply for the honourable senator. 2374 2374 KPA 0 0 KANE, John Senator KANE M y question is directed to the Minister for Repatriation. Is he aware that the waiting time for appeals against decisions of repatriation tribunals is from 4 months to 6 months? Would he agree that this delay has frequently caused considerable hardships to individuals who have launched such appeals? Finally, will he investigate methods of shortening the waiting period in question? 2374 K1Y ALP 1 0 BISHOP, Reginald Senator BISHOP Recen t figures show an improvement on the time referred to by Senator Kane. I will give him those figures. I might say that one of the recent decisions of the Government with regard to giving reasons for decisions has occasioned some changes that might have an effect on the position. All I can say beyond that is that I am awaiting a reply to another question on a similar matter asked by Senator Devitt the other day. When I have that information I will pass it on to Senator Kane. 2374 2374 KKD 0 0 JESSOP, Donald Senator Jessop M y question is directed to the Minister representing the Minister for Transport. Can he say whether the Government has received a report regarding the proposed amalgamation of Commonwealth and State rural railways, as foreshadowed earlier in the year? If he has not received that report, can he say when it is expected? In addition, can he say whether a decision has been made regarding the construction of the standard gauge railway line from Adelaide to Port Pirie and, if it has, when work on the line is likely to commence? 2374 K6F ALP 1 0 CAVANAGH, James Senator CAVANAGH I think that the honourable senator had better put this question on notice. I know that there have been discussions, especially between South Australia and the Commonwealth, on the question of taking over railways. To my knowledge, no firm decision has been made. I thought that decisions on the railway between Adelaide and Port Pirie had been taken earlier in the history of this Government, but I may be wrong on that. I suggest that the honourable senator put the question on notice and he will get a reply. 2374 2374 KBL 0 0 WOOD, Ian Senator WOOD I desire to ask the Leader of the Government in the Senate a question. Did he see the 'Current Affair' session on Channel 9 last night, and, if he did, did he hear the Prime Minister say, when asked by Mr Willesee about various differences of opinion between the Prime Minister and Mr Hawke, that there was only one difference that he had with Mr Hawke and that that was about Israel? Is it not a fact that the Prime Minister also had a strong difference of opinion with Mr Hawke with regard to the incomes question in relation to which the referendum will be held on Saturday? Also, is it not a fact that he had a strong difference of opinion with Mr Hawke over the matter of increased taxation, which Mr Hawke said the Budget should provide for and in relation to which the Prime Minister made a nasty remark about Mr Hawke? As the Prime Minister has said that the only question on which he differs with Mr Hawke is in relation to Israel, and as Mr Hawke is pro-Israel, does that mean that the Prime Minister is anti-Israel? Does this reply of the Prime Minister indicate a lapse of memory, or does the Leader of the Government in the Senate think that the Prime Minister should have a new pill known as the truth pill? 2375 1L5 ALP 1 0 MURPHY, Lionel Senator MURPHY No, I did not hear the program but I saw some report of it and I accept the honourable senator's statement that the Prime Minister said there was only one difference between him and Mr Hawke and that was in regard to Israel. The honourable senator also asked me whether there have been some differences previously between the Prime Minister and Mr Hawke in regard to the incomes referendum and taxation legislation. Whether we describe them as great differences or small differences I think the reality is that those things, judged in the general context of politics, are such that they did not even occur to the Prime Minister when he was dealing with the subject matter. If one wanted to ex- Elore the matter and go through what has een said one would probably find another half dozen cases. But what does it all matter? The fact is that the Labor Party is strongly united. Its members are free enough and courageous enough to voice differences of opinion whether they be great or small. Everyone is beginning to understand—an d I trunk the honourable senator understands—tha t this is how democracy should work. The people of Australia especially are appreciating a party which is able to air differences as they occur, thrash out things in public, come to democratic decisions and let the people know about them. That is how the Labor Party works. As to any difference of opinion about Israel, the policy of the Australian Labor Party in regard to Israel is quite clear. It is set out in the Elatform. Substantially it amounts to an even anded approach. That is what has been carried out by the Government. If there is some difference in emphasis or attitude by Mr Hawke, so let it be. But the policy of the Government is quite clear, we are adhering to it and I think we are supported by the Australian people. I should say further, Senator, that the Opposition would be much better occupied if it started to attend to the faults in its own house rather than trying to make mischief in the great Australian Labor Party. 2375 2375 KRU 0 0 LITTLE, John Senator LITTLE I s the Minister representing the Minister for Social Security now in a position to inform the Australian people whether the compulsory payment of 1.35 per cent of taxable income proposed to finance the Health Insurance Bill 1973 will itself be tax deductible? Are any other insurance commitments entered into to provide cover for private ward treatment in hospitals to be a deduction from income for tax assessment? 2374 KTA ALP 0 0 MCCLELLAND, Douglas Senator Douglas McCLELLAND I have sought from my colleague the Minister for SocialSecurity the additional information required by the honourable senator but as yet it is not forthcoming. All I can say to the honourable senator is that I provided him with an answer on behalf of my colleague last Wednesday and the honourable senator then raised the matter on the adjournment. In addition to that information with which I provided him I have sought additional information. As I said, that information, if any, as yet is not forthcoming. 2375 2375 KTZ 0 0 MCLAREN, Geoffrey Senator McLAREN Can the Leader of the Government in the Senate inform the Senate whether he has received any communication from the Leader of the Opposition notifying any change in the shadow portfolio of education as a result of the confrontation which took place last week in the Press office of the Melbourne 'Sun Pictorial' between Senator Rae and the honourable member for Wannon, Mr Malcolm Fraser. Further, has the Leader of the Government in the Senate read the report of this confrontation in this week's issue of'Nation Review'? 2375 1L5 ALP 1 0 MURPHY, Lionel Senator MURPHY I have not been given any communication by the Leader of the Opposition on this matter, and I can understand that. Perhaps he is in some difficulty sorting out the position on his own side as between the other House and this and the differences in opinion on this education question. No doubt when they have resolved their differences he will be able to tell me. 2375 2375 KBW 0 0 WRIGHT, Reginald Senator WRIGHT I direct a question to the Minister for Aboriginal Affairs. Am I correct in understanding his answer to a question asked of him this morning by Senator Withers, as to the retention of Dr Bustard as a director of Applied Ecology Pty Ltd, to be that Dr Bustard is to be retained as a director and that other directors, including Senator Georges, are to be removed from the board? If so, what other directors are to be removed and by what authority? 2375 K6F ALP 1 0 CAVANAGH, James Senator CAVANAGH The honourable senator understood my answer correctly. As I have stated, Applied Ecology Pty Ltd will be a scientific and research project; its future operations will be on-research work. The organisation which was established as a commercial undertaking is not the correct organisation for this purpose. The only 2 people who are now directors of the company and who meet the requirements of the recommendation for the setting up of a new company are one of the 2 departmental representatives and Dr Bustard. Therefore we have no reason to replace either of those 2 people. But four others will be dismissed as directors and an additional 2 scientists— 2376 K3R 0 0 BYRNE, Condon Senator Byrne - Does the Minister mean that their appointments will be terminated? 2376 K6F ALP 1 0 CAVANAGH, James Senator CAVANAGH Their appointments will be terminated. An additional 2 scientists and 2 businessmen will be placed on the board of the company. As the Australian Government is the sole shareholder in the company it is entitled to terminate the appointments of the 4 directors to whom I have referred and to make the new appointments. 2375 KBW 0 0 WRIGHT, Reginald Senator WRIGHT -I wish to ask a supplementary question of the Minister for Aboriginal Affairs. 2376 10000 0 0 PRESIDENT, The The PRESIDENT Doe s the honourable senator wish to do so on the ground that he has not obtained the information he sought? 2375 KBW 0 0 WRIGHT, Reginald Senator WRIGHT I could not go quite that far, Mr President, but I did not see anybody else rising to ask a question. I ask the Minister for Aboriginal Affairs whether he gave Senator Georges any notice, before answering a question on the matter this morning, that he was to be dismissed from the board of Applied Ecology Pty Ltd? 2376 K6F ALP 1 0 CAVANAGH, James Senator CAVANAGH The answer is no. 2376 2376 1L5 ALP 1 0 MURPHY, Lionel Senator MURPHY Mr President, I wish to correct an answer I gave to a question asked of me earlier today. Senator Hannan asked me about the rental paid by the North Vietnamese Charged'Affaires in Canberra. He stated that the rental was paid to the Australian Government and that the North Vietnamese considered it to be excessive and had asked for a reduction. I am now informed that the real position is that the North Vietnamese have rented a property in Red Hill from a private owner who is charging them approximately $200 a week. The North Vietnamese consider that to be excessive and have applied to the Minister for the Capital Territory to have a fair rent determination of the property under the provisions of the relevant Australian Capital Territory ordinance. That illustrates even more that it is not a matter to be taken into the context of our foreign relations. 2376 2376 7V4 0 0 GEORGES, George Senator GEORGES I ask a question of the Minister for Aboriginal Affairs. It follows answers he has given this morning to questions on the same subject. By way of introduction let me indicate that my position on the board of Applied Ecology Pty Ltd is of some concern but not of great importance to me. Is the Minister prepared to continue to support Dr Bustard's directorship of Apptied Ecology Pty Ltd or any reconstructed company if the reasons for Dr Bustard's dismissal are also reasons for his removal as a director of the company or would be an obstacle to his appointment as a director of any similar company? Is he prepared to wait until such time as the board of Applied Ecology Pty Ltd refers Dr Bustard's position as a director to the Registrar of Companies? 2376 K6F ALP 1 0 CAVANAGH, James Senator CAVANAGH Firstly , if anything can be shown as to why Dr Bustard should not be a director of the company because of the purposes for which the company is formed he will be replaced. As to that replacement I am prepared to wait until whatever report to the Registrar of Companies is prepared. However, we will try as quickly as possible to change the company in order to put into operation the recommendation to make it a research organisation. 2376 2376 KMX 0 0 GREENWOOD, Ivor Senator GREENWOOD My question is directed to the Minister representing the Prime Minister. Does the Minister recall that a meeting took place in Canberra on 11 October between the Prime Minister and the Premiers of the States which dealt with the position of local government in the Loan Council? Is it not a fact that subsequent to that meeting the Prime Minister instituted the particular referendum Bill to enable the Commonwealth to borrow on behalf of local government? With that remembrance, is it also a fact that proposals which the Government is now putting forward in that referendum Bill were not the subject of discussion at the meeting but have arisen only because the arguments of the States against local government representation on the Loan Council were overwhelming and unanswerable even by the Prime Minister? Will the Minister therefore lay on the table of the Senate for the benefit of the coming debate on this proposal, and before the debate takes place, the transcript of the meeting which took place between the Prime Minister and the Premiers? 2377 1L5 ALP 1 0 MURPHY, Lionel Senator MURPHY I cannot answer all of the honourable senator's question except to say that on my recollection— I was present at the meeting, I think—som e of what he says is quite incorrect. I will refer to the Prime Minister the request that the transcript be tabled. 2377 2377 KAS 0 0 WEBSTER, James Senator WEBSTER M y question is directed to the Minister representing the Minister for Social Security. Am I correct in saying that the Minister advised the Senate that the Government is unable to say at this time whether contributions to the national health insurance scheme will be tax deductible? Does the Minister realise the extreme importance of the questions raised by Senator Little—the y should greatly concern the public—especiall y as at this day the Labor Government is unable to say whether it will allow to be tax deductible the contributions to the health insurance scheme proposed by this Labor Government? 2377 KTA ALP 0 0 MCCLELLAND, Douglas Senator Douglas McCLELLAND -At the moment tax deductions are allowable for health insurance purposes. I have provided all the information that is immediately available to me to Senator Little by way of an answer by the Minister for Social Security to a question that he had placed on the notice paper. Additionally, on Wednesday, I gave Senator Little details that I had secured for him. 2377 KRU 0 0 LITTLE, John Senator Little - None of it was relevant to the question. 2377 KTA ALP 0 0 MCCLELLAND, Douglas Senator Douglas McCLELLAND 2377 2377 JXR 0 0 DRAKE-BROCKMAN, Thomas Senator DRAKE-BROCKMAN M y question is addressed to the Leader of the Government in the Senate in his role as Minister representing the Treasurer. Has the Government's attention been drawn to a suggestion by the Premier of Victoria that a permanent federal economic council be set up to fight inflation? Did the Premier suggest that the council represent Federal and State governments, industry, commerce and the trade unions? Would not such a representative council succeed where other piecemeal steps by this Government have failed? Will the Government give consideration to implementing the Premier's suggestion? 2377 1L5 ALP 1 0 MURPHY, Lionel Senator MURPHY The body which ought to be able to curb inflation in any rational system is the Australian Government. To do that it needs to be in the position of any other government, that is, to have the powers of economic management of the community. The honourable senator knows as well as everyone else that because of the defects in the Constitution no government, whatever its political calibre, can be in a position to manage the economy properly. This Parliament does not have constitutional power to pass laws to enable the Government to manage the economy properly. It is to be hoped that the people will on Saturday of this week vest the Parliament with at least some of the powers which are necessary to do this. 2377 2377 KBW 0 0 WRIGHT, Reginald Senator WRIGHT M y question is directed to the Minister for Aboriginal Affairs. What are the matters referred to the Registrar of Companies which may have effect upon the continuance or the replacement of Dr Bustard as a director of Applied Ecology Pty Ltd? 2377 K6F ALP 1 0 CAVANAGH, James Senator CAVANAGH I do not know. I was asked whether, if it could be proved that there was justification for the dismissal of Dr Bustard because he was not fit to be a company director, he would be replaced. My answer was yes. It has not been proved, I have no evidence of it, but apparently the company has some information which it wants to put to the Registrar of Companies. No action of mine will prevent the company from doing that. I still do not know the charges. I do not know what is alleged against Dr Bustard. 2377 2377 KTA ALP 0 0 MCCLELLAND, Douglas Senator Douglas McCLELLAND Earlier this morning Senator Greenwood directed a question to me concerning the Australian Broadcasting Commission program AM'. I have since had inquiries made of the ABC and I am now advised that it is true that on Friday morning in 'AM ' the subject of education was discussed. The speakers were Mr Lionel Bowen, the Acting Minister for Education, and Mr Bob Hawke. But on Thursday night in the program 'PM' the subject of school aid was discussed by Senator Rae and Mr Bowen. Then, later in the same program, in discussing the prospect of a double dissolution the comments of the Leader of the Opposition, Mr Snedden, were included. The Acting General Manager of the ABC feels that under these circumstances suitable balance has been given to the whole question. Of course, in any future discussion of the question balance will be maintained. 2378 bill High Commissioner (United Kingdom) Act Repeal Bill 1973. Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 1973-74. Appropriation Bill (No. 2) 1973-74. 2378 miscellaneous Senator MURPHY(New South WalesAttorneyGeneral and Minister for Customs and Excise)- For the information of honourable senators I present the annual report of the Department of Education and Science for the period 1 January 1972 to 19 December 1972. 2378 miscellaneous 2378 miscellaneous Senator MURPHY(New South WalesAttorneyGeneral and Minister for Customs and Excise)- Pursuant to section 134 of the Superannuation Act 1922-1973 I present the fifty-first annual report of the Superannuation Board for the year ended 30 June 1973. 2378 miscellaneous Senator MURPHY(New South WalesAttorneyGeneral and Minister for Customs and Excise)- For the information of honourable senators I present the first report of the Commission of Inquiry into Land Tenures. Because of the importance of the subject matter of the Commission, I take this first opportunity to lay the report before parliament and release it to the public. The contents of the report have not yet been considered by the Government but its views will be made known as soon as possible. 2378 miscellaneous 2377 KTA NEW SOUTH WALES ALP 0 0 MCCLELLAND, Douglas Senator Douglas McCLELLAND Fo r the information of honourable senators I present a report from the Australian Broadcasting Control Board dealing with the subject of payola in Austraha and overseas. 2378 miscellaneous Senator DOUGLAS McCLELLAND (New South Wales—Ministe r for the Media)—Fo r the information of honourable senators, I present the mterirn report of the Committee of Inquiry Into Aged Persons' Housing. This report was prepared by the Australian Government Social Welfare Commission. 2378 miscellaneous Senator WRIEDT (Tasmania—Ministe r for Primary Industry)—Pursuan t to the provisions of the Coal Industry Act 1946-1966, I present the Twenty-sixth Annual Report of the Joint Coal Board for the year ended 30 June 1973 together with the Auditor-General's report on the accounts of the Board. 2378 miscellaneous Senator MURPHYNew South WalesAttorneyGeneral) For the information of honourable senators I lay upon the table the Annual Report of the Australian Capital Territory Police for the year ended 30 June 1 973. 2378 miscellaneous 2378 2378 JYA 0 0 O'BYRNE, Justin Senator O'Byrne Mr President, I bring up the report from the Joint Committee on Prices on the price of carpet tiles. Ordered that the report be printed. 2378 JYA 0 0 O'BYRNE, Justin Senator O'Byrne I ask for leave to make a brief statement relating to the report. 2378 10000 0 0 PRESIDENT, The The PRESIDENT Is leave granted? There being no objection, leave is granted. 2378 JYA 0 0 O'BYRNE, Justin Senator O'Byrne This report on the price of carpet tiles, which has just been tabled, is the third report presented to the Parliament by the Joint Committee on Prices. The report shows the results of the Committee's first inquiry into a complaint from the public. As you know, this Committee has the unique role among parliamentary committees of receiving and investigating complaints from the public, in this case, of course, complaints about prices. The Committee intends to conduct more inquiries into individual complaints in the coming year to complement the larger inquiries such as those into the prices of frozen and canned vegetables, soaps and detergents and building materials which are under way at the present time. The Committee's objectives in conducting these smaller inquiries is to build up a fund of knowledge on pricing practices in Australia as well as to make recommendations concerning specific complaints. The recommended prices of carpet tiles allow a retail mark-up of at least 50 per cent. The Committee found that this was unnecessarily high. Although the mark-up for carpet tiles is similar to that for conventional carpet, retailers of carpet tiles are able to avoid many of the large overhead costs for storage, display and laying. This high mark-up has resulted from a situation in which recommended price lists are generally adhered to by conventional retailers and where these retailers are in a sufficiently strong position to insist that high mark-ups are embodied in the recommended prices. In addition to the mark-up, the Committee also paid attention to other factors influencing the price of carpet tiles, such as recommended prices, the degree of competition and the importance of manufacturers' discounts. The effect of price competition from discount houses would have a greater influence on the price of carpet tiles purchased from conventional retailers if the conventional retailers' prices were not recommended by the manufacturer. The Committee has recommended that government agencies and consumer groups do their best to make the public aware that by shopping around lower prices can be obtained on many items. The Committee also found during the inquiry that little was known of the efficiency and productivity of the retail sector. Much research has been done in Australia into efficiency of the manufacturing sector but the tertiary sector has been largely ignored. We will attempt to fill this gap in our knowledge within the limits of our resources. In the new year we intend to turn our attention to the retail sector with particular emphasis on the influence which retailing methods and customs have on retail prices. I commend the report to the Senate. 2379 miscellaneous 2379 2379 K1Y SOUTH AUSTRALIA ALP Minister for Repatriation and Minister Assisting the Minister for Defence 1 0 BISHOP, Reginald Senator BISHOP by which is to be made shortly by the Minister for Defence, Mr Barnard. It is titled 'Reorganisation of the Defence Group of Departments'. Copies of the statement, including the report by Sir Arthur Range upon which the statement is based, are now available. I seek leave to have the statement incorporated in Hansard. 2379 10000 0 0 PRESIDENT, The The PRESIDENT Is leave granted? There being no objection, leave is granted. (The statement read as follows)— 2379 K1Y ALP 1 0 BISHOP, Reginald Senator BISHOP I wish to inform honourable members of decisions that the Government has made concerning the future organisation, higher management and policy direction, of the Armed Services and of the departments and agencies which support them. The defence of this country is too important a matter to be administered by a demonstrably inefficient grouping of organisations whose objectives are not always the same, whose functions are sometimes duplicated and whose very existence as separate bureaucracies bedevils great affairs with unnecessary conflicts. As from last Friday the separate departments of Navy, Army and Air ceased to exist and a new Department of Defence was created. Within the framework of the Department of Defence the 3 Service boards will continue to operate on a temporary basis. The Minister for Defence will remain President of the Military Board and the Naval Board but the civilian members of all 3 boards will now be nominees of the Secretary of the Department of Defence. The Department of Supply continues in existence, financed from the Defence vote, under a directive from the Prime Minister (Mr Whitlam) maintaining at least for the time being a relationship with the Department of Defence through which the Minister for Supply (Mr Enderby) and the Minister for Defence collaborate in the execution of relevant defence policies. The Department of Supply will continue to participate in defence committees. All this is preliminary to the introduction—whic h can only occur after the drafting and entry into effect of necessary legislation and regulations—o f a new distribution of functions including those defence functions carried out in the Department of Supply. I wish to inform the House of the Government's intention in these legislative changes which will be brought in before the end of the autumn session in 1974. Firstly, the Government has decided to give legal status to its chief military adviser—the Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff Committee, an office created by an earlier Government in 1958 by administrative decision. We will create a new office with a statutory basis and with enlarged authority. It is proposed that this office should be entitled Chief of Defence Force Staff, a title based on Part III of the Defence Act describing the defence force, that he should be given command of the defence force and authority over the Chief of Naval Staff, Chief of the General Staff and Chief of Air Staff who will be the professional head of each Service. The Chief of the Defence Force Staff will be a statutory officer in the Department of Defence responsible directly to the Minister for Defence. He will continue to be a 4-star officer. The responsibilities of the Chief of Defence Force Staff will be: He shall be the principal rnilitary adviser to the Minister for Defence to whom he shall be responsible. He shall command the defence force in accordance with the provisions of the legislation. He shall be the Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff Committee. of Defence, he shall be responsible for providing advice to the Minister on matters in which there are joint responsibilities. And his detailed functions will be appropriate to his responsibilities and will be spelt out in a ministerial directive. The responsibilities and functions of the Chief of Staff of each Service will be: The Chief of Staff of each Service is to be the professional head of that Service. He shall command his Service, under the authority of the Chief of Defence Force Staff and subject to the provisions of relevant Acts, regulations and ministerial directives. He shall be responsible to the Minister for Defence, through the Chief of Defence Force Staff: For the implementation in his Service of prescribed or approved defence policies, directions and programs; For providing forces from his Service for assignment to joint operations, and for the planning and for the issuing of single Service operational orders and for the conduct of single Service operations. He shall consult the Chief of Defence Force Staff on major matters related to his Service. He shall advise, through the Chief of Defence Force Staff where necessary, the Minister for Defence on matters within his responsibilities. These changes carry the full recommendation of the Chairman Chiefs of Staff Committee, the Chiefs of Staff of Navy, Army and Air, as well as the Secretary of the Department of Defence. The Government has decided that it is no longer possible nor desirable in the single Department to administer 3 Services by separate boards of management with separate civilian staffs as at present. A central organisation is needed to advise the Minister on policy, and to administer what formerly fell to 5 departments and 3 boards—the effective use of resources put at the disposal of the 3 Services, and of their supporting facilities such as dockyards and science laboratories. Substantial authority will pass from Service boards to individual Chiefs of Staff and subordinate commands. They will manage supply and personnel activities under oversight, by the central department organisation, of the use of finance and manpower in conformity with approved strategic concepts and other policies of government. The staffs of the separate departmental organisations will be re-arranged in functional groupings in the Department of Defence supporting the 3 Services. As a result the Secretary of the Department of Defence will be responsible for advice to the Minister on general policy, and on the management and utilisation of defence resources. Some responsibilities will be shared between him and the Chief of Defence Force Staff. There will be arrangements which recognise the professional military interests of the Services: Firstly, the allocation of exclusive statutory functions to the Chief of the Defence Force Staff and the Chiefs of Staff, for example, for the command and discipline of members of the Services; secondly, directives by the Minister as to the responsiveness expected of the Public Service structure to the operational priorities of Chiefs of Staff, thirdly, the integration of Service officers into various parts of the Defence Department organisation; fourthly, a committee system to give proper distribution of representation of various responsibilities and to reconcile the competition among the Navy, Army, Air Force, scientific service and the production and civilian elements of resources. In corning to its decision the Government has had the benefit of a report prepared by the Secretary of the Department of Defence Sir Arthur Range. I present for the information of honourable members the report referred to, and copies are available. The Secretary of the Department was directed by me, on behalf of the Government on 19 December last year, to produce, after consulting with other responsible authorities, a plan of reorganisation which conformed to certain objectives and principles which I specified. These government directions are reproduced at the beguuiing of Sir Arthur Range's report. The Government has studied the report and it will be seen that the decisions which I have just announced are closely in accordance with his recommendations. We also endorse the more detailed departmental organisation which he recommends, subject to the usual scrutiny by the Public Service Board in order to give a classification structure and form to the purposes which the Government has laid down and which I am now conveying to the Parliament. As regards those functions of the Department of Supply other than scientific which the report recommends for transfer to Defence, the Government has decided to withhold decision on those particular recommendations until it receives the report of the Committee of Inquiry into Government Procurement headed by Sir Walter Scott. As regards the defence research and development activities the Government has agreed to their transfer to Defence at a later date which will be determined by the passage of legislation. This could not be much before mid-1974. The future disposition of civil work in these establishments will be reviewed taking into account the report of the Scott Committee and the requirements of civilian departments for assistance from the defence scientific service when those requirements are formulated. As the report indicates, Sir Arthur Range and the senior and experienced officer assisting him, Mr Bruce White, had extensive consultations with the Services, culminating in close discussion on many occasions collectively with the Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff Committee and the Chiefs of Staff of the 3 Services—presen t Chiefs and others lately retired. He has reported that the Chairman Chiefs of Staff Committee, Admiral Sir Victor Smith, the Chief of Air Staff, Air Marshal Read, the Chiefs of Naval and General Staff who were in office while the consultations were proceeding, Vice Admiral Sir Richard Peek and Lieutenant General Sir Mervyn Brogan, and their successors, Vice Admiral Stevenson and Lieutenant General Hassett, agreed that the organisation is workable, subject to reservations upon certain points which have been recorded in his report, and subject, in the case of the Chief of the Air Staff, and the present Chief of Naval Staff, to their reservations being satisfied. They were all agreed that experience may demonstrate that further modifications and changes are necessary. Sir Arthur added that the contents of the report, and the arguments, were submitted on his own responsibility. I made a point of discussing the report with the Chiefs of Staff before the Government reached its decision—particularl y those few aspects of the changed organisation about which they expressed uncertainties, I am satisfied that the recommended organisation should be put into effect. If experience shows the need for adjustment, adjustment will be made. I have made clear the Government's intention that Chiefs of Staff will always enjoy right of direct access to the Minister of Defence, in company where necessary of the Chief of Defence Force Staff. There are attendant financial benefits in this reorganisation. The report estimates that some 300 civilian positions will become redundant— mainly in administrative type activities—soo n after reorganisation; as wul a further 1,000 civilian positions over a longer period. Equally important, the continuing reorganisation now initiated will apply more effective scrutiny of the use of manpower, and achieve more manpower economies in the years ahead. Thus the new organisation not only promises greater effectiveness in the management of defence. It presents us with an opportunity to achieve this increased effectiveness at a reduced cost in the form of civilian wages and salaries. It is an opportunity to divert funds from overhead to military equipment. We will seize that opportunity. I have decided that the total reduction in civil manpower should not be less than 1,500. If Parliament adopts the new legislation before the middle of 1974, there is a good possibliity that the total reduction of 1,500 could be completed by June 1975—b y relocation of some public servants elsewhere and by not replacing some wastage. For too long, defence administration has remained entangled in cumbrous procedures, working in an atmosphere which encourages division and contest, because of the fatal error 16 years ago in not abolishing the single Service departments as was recommended even then. The new organisation will be the basis for more direct participation by officers from the Navy, Army and Air Force in the business of planning capabilities on a defence, rather than a single Service, basis to satisfy the country's strategic needs. I am confident that the concerns of individual Services will both be fully expressed and fully weighed in this new system. I am also confident that we will have a greater sense of joint endeavour, which is a prime objective. We will ensure that our strategic policies and defence relations are developed in close collaboration with the Department of Foreign Affairs. We shall certainly have a better application of all sources of advice—military , scientific, and other civilian— which ought to be brought to bear on recommending the total defence force of the country, its composition, its equipment and back-up, and the strategic concepts and the policy objectives that defence expenditure is to serve. 2382 K1Y ALP 1 0 BISHOP, Reginald Senator BISHOP I move: That the Senate take note of the statement Debate (on motion by Senator Withers) adjourned. 2382 Questions 2382 2382 1L5 ALP Attorney-General and Minister for Customs and Excise 1 0 MURPHY, Lionel Senator MURPHY by leave- I ask for leave to have incorporated in Hansard a statement on the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade Anti-dumping Code and the Brussels Definition of Value. 2382 10000 0 0 PRESIDENT, The The PRESIDENT Is leave granted? There being no objection, leave is granted. (The statement read as follows)— Honourable senators will recall my undertaking last week in response to a question without notice from Senator Guilfoyle that I would make a statement to the Senate on Australia's position in relation to the GATT anti-dumping code and the Brussels Definition of Value. On 3 July 19731 announced the establishment of an inter-departmental committee to report to the Government on the desirability of adopting both of these international agreements. I also invited representations from all interested parties and the Department of Customs and Excise issued information papers outlining the main features of the agreements. Over 2,300 copies of the papers were issued to manufacturers, industry associations, chambers of manufacture and commerce, importers and other interested parties. In addition the Department accepted invitations to address numerous meetings of interested parties and pursued an open door policy in relation to discussions on the implications of adopting the agreements. The committee itself also met with industry associations, customs agents and others for discussions in Canberra. I believe that the efforts made by the Department and committee are a classic example of the participative process in the formulation of advice to Government. The honourable senator requested an explanation of the grounds on which the Government has rejected industry's protests by deciding to adopt the GATT anti-dumping code. The Government's decision involved no such rejection. These protests comprised 6 written submissions raising points of concern which were shared by the Committee. These issues were subsequently resolved satisfactorily as a result of discussions by an officer of the Department with a number of overseas administrations with extensive experience of legislation based on the GATT anti-dumping code. After considering the Committee's report the Government was satisfied that adoption of the GATT anti-dumping code would not inhibit our ability to effectively counter injurious dumping and would allow the drafting of legislation that in a number of areas represents a very significant improvement on existing legislation. In addition, from the viewpoint of international trade relations the adoption of the code was desirable. The question of adoption of the Brussels Definition of Value has not yet been considered by the Government. A report from the committee is expected within the next few days but at this stage I cannot comment on the issues involved. In relation to the honourable senator's request to hold over any decision to allow for representations to be made I would point out once again that ample opportunity for discussions, representations and submissions was provided to all interested parties. Accordingly, on the basis of all information available—an d I understand that it is very comprehensive—the Government will make its decision; further delay would serve no useful purpose. However, I would add that any queries that manufacturing industry or any other interested sector may have in relation to the implications of change in these important areas may be discussed with officers of the Department at any time. In addition, because of the interest being shown in these matters, I now table the report of the Committee on the adoption of the GATT anti-dumping code for the information of honourable senators and will give consideration to the tabling of the report on the Brussels Definition of Value when the Government has considered it. I move: That the Senate take note of the statement. Debate (on motion by Senator Guilfoyle) adjourned. 2382 miscellaneous 2382 1L5 New South Wales ALP 1 0 MURPHY, Lionel Senator MURPHY - I wish to move that certain notices of motion and orders of the day be discharged. I understand that there has been a discussion among the Whips on this matter. If anyone who has not been consulted objects to the discharge of any item, he merely has to say so and that item will not be discharged. I move: That the following Government Business orders of the day be discharged from the notice paper- No. 49 Tourism Development-Papers; No.50 Federal Financial Relations- Australian National University Centre for Research-Ministerial Statement; No.53 International Affairs-Ministerial Statement; No. 54 The Queen and the Privy Council- Ministerial Statement; No. 57 Discrimination in Employment and OccupationPaper. Also General Business notices of motion No. 1, No. 4, No.5, No. 6, No. 7, and No. 12 and orders of the day- No. 1. United States Defence Installations in AustraliaMinisterial Statement; No. 2 Foreign Affairs- Joint Committee- Report on Australia 's Foreign Aid; No. 3 Royal Australian Air Force- Rules for use of VIP Aircraft- Paper- Ministerial Statement; No. 4 House- Standing Committee- Report, dated May 1 972, relating to provision of staff and other facilities for members of Parliament; No.5 National Rehabilitation and Compensation Scheme- Paper- Ministerial Statement; No. 6 Public Works-Joint Statutory Committee-35th General Report; No. 7 Commonwealth Parliamentary Association- 18th Conference 1972 -Report of the Australian Delegation -Paper, No. 9 Wage Levy for Non-Permanent Ports- Ministerial Statement-Papers; No. 10 Inter-Parliamentary Union- Rome Conference 1972- Report of the Australian Delegation; No. 11 Law of Privacy- Paper- Ministerial Statement; No. 12 Broadcasting and Television- Breaches of Advertising Standard- Paper- Ministerial Statement; No. 14 Regulations and Ordinances- Standing CommitteeReport on Commonwealth Scholarships and Awards Regulations; No. 16 Post Office Services and Charges- Papers; No. 17 Education, Science and the Arts- Standing CommitteeSecond Progress Report on all aspects of television and broadcasting, including Australian content of television programs. Question resolved in the affirmative. 2383 bill Bill presented by Senator Little, and read a first time. Second Reading Motion (by Senator Little) agreed to: That the second reading of the Bill be made an order of the day for the next day of sitting. 2383 bill Notice of Motion Senator MURPHY(New South WalesAttorneyGeneral and Minister for Customs and Excise)- by leave- I give notice of intention to bring in a Bill entitled the Superior Court Bill 1973. 2383 bill Notice of Motion Senator MURPHY(New South WalesAttorneyGeneral and Minister for Customs and Excise)- by leave- I give notice of intention to bring in a Bill entitled the Family Law Bill 1 973. 2383 bill Bill received from the House of Representatives. Standing Orders suspended. Bill (on motion by Senator Cavanagh) read a first time. 2383 2383 K6F South Australia ALP 1 0 CAVANAGH, James Senator CAVANAGH - I move: That the Bill be now read a second time. As the second reading speech in relation to this Bill was delivered in another place and has been circulated, I seek leave to have the second reading speech incorporated in Hansard. 2383 10000 0 0 PRESIDENT, The The PRESIDENT Is leave granted? There being no objection, leave is granted. (The speech read as follows)— This Bill represents an important step in the implementation of the Government's urban and regional development policy. Soon I expect to introduce three other Bills which together represent major initiatives in the Government's policy. This Government is committed to a direct and continuing involvement in cities, old and new. In the existing Australian cities, programs have been devised and expenditures set aside to overcome the sewerage backlog, purchase land for urban development, improve urban public transport, conduct area improvement programs and preserve and enhance the national estate. These initiatives are all designed to improve the life of ordinary Australians within our existing cities. Another major component of the Government's urban and regional policy is the new cities program. This program supplements and supports our policies in the existing cities. New cities are designed to reduce population pressure on existing cities and, at the same time, provide alternative living areas for future generations of Australians. There are two broad types of operation under the new cities program. The first is what we call regional growth centres. These comprise new city development at a substantial distance from existing metropolitian centres. The second may be called system dues. These are intended as substantially self-contained cities on the fringes of existing metropolitan areas. In formulating its policies on new cities, the Government has had the benefits of the recommendations of the Cities Commission. The basis of these recommendations is set out in the Commission's first 5 year report which I tabled in this House on 7 November 1973. It is fitting that the first Bill concerned with the new cities program to be introduced into this House should be the Albury-Wodonga Development Bill. This is not because the development of Albury-Wodonga as a regional growth centre will be the major component of the Government's urban and regional policy. Rather, it is because this operation has been the first time when the major principles of the new cities policy have been worked out. One of the most important of these principles has been co-operative federalism and I will be referring to this in a moment. Honourable senators will know that it was the Prime Minister (Mr Whitlam) who first proposed the accelerated development of Albury-Wodonga. As long ago as August 1969, Mr Whitlam, then Leader of the Opposition, said that Albury-Wodonga would be suitable for new urban development. This proposal was part of the policies which we presented to the people before the recent election. Since 2 December last year, events have moved quickly. On 25 January, the Prime Minister and the Premiers of New South Wales and Victoria met at Albury and announced their intention to jointly develop Albury-Wodonga as a growth centre. The Premiers stated on this occasion that the willingness, for the first time, of the Australian Government to make available significant financial aid for this development provided the means for action. On 25 January, the three heads of government agreed that Albury-Wodonga would be developed into a major city which will attract large numbers of Australians, which will attract industry, which will control pollution and protect the environment, and in which every attempt will be made to preserve the identity and character of the existing cities. This development was to be the task of a specially created statutory authority. On 23 October, the Prime Minister and Premiers met again, this time in Wodonga, to sign the agreement which forms the Schedule of the new Albury-Wodonga Development Bill. The nature of this agreement and the whole course of events since 25 January are an example of co-operative federalism at work. Differences of approach will inevitably arise when 3 Governments approach a joint task, but the important thing is that a spirit of goodwill and a will to co-operate should guide the governments. That spirit and that will have guided us! This Bill represents our achievement. Honourable senators have before them an Australian Government Bill and, appended to it, an agreement between the 3 governments. Complementary Bills, with the same agreement appended, will be introduced into the New South Wales and Victorian Parliaments in the near future. Hopefully by the end of this year, a development corporation will be established by the 3 Governments. The task of this corporation will be to plan and organise the development of the growth centre. The present Bill is concerned, therefore, with the steps required by the Australian Government to establish the organisational structure of the Albury—Wodong a growth centre and the legal framework within which this will operate. The structure appears complex. Such complexity is the result of the constitutional relationship between the 3 governments concerned and the role that each Government has agreed to play. In essence, the arrangement provides for each government to continue its normal functions in Albury—Wodonga . Over and above this, the Australian Government will make a major financial contribution towards the cost of land acquisition and the development of infrastructure which arise directly from the decision to stimulate accelerated growth. The development structure provides for a ministerial council of the 3 governments to oversight development. A statutory authority will carry out that development. This authority will comprise a development corporation established by the Australian Government and a State corporation established by each State government. The functions of the Development Corporation, conferred on it by the Federal and State governments, will include urban and regional planning and development, construction in designated areas, growth centre promotion, negotiation with Federal, State and local government agencies, the protection of the environment and the involvement of the local community in the planning process. The functions of the New South Wales and Victorian corporations will be the acquisition, holding management and provision of land, the provision of municipal type services and the levying of charges in new urban areas. The membership and staff will be common to the 3 corporations. We are confident that this apparently complex arrangement will not adversely affect the working of the development machinery. Not only will the membership and staff be common to the 3 corporations and therefore work as one. The task of the corporations working as one will be clearly defined. They will be responsible to the one body, namely the Ministerial Council. The development structure also includes two other important provisions. The first is a consultative council to ensure public participation. On this consultative council will be representatives of local government and other community interests. The functions of the council will be to advise the Development Corporation on matters of concern to the local community. The second provision is for strong and continuing links between the Development Corporation structure and the exisung agencies of the Australian and State governments. The Bill and the agreement arise from detailed discussions between the 3 governments at which a range of important principles and policies have been arrived at. Those concerned with the structure of the development organisation are included in this BilI and agreement. An understanding has been reached between the 3 governments on the principles and policies which will govern the implementation of the agreement and the operation of the development organisation. The most important of these are: The general financial arrangements provide for each Government to continue to provide funds for faculties and services which it ordinarily provided to the population of Albury and Wodonga In addition, the Australian Government will make special funds avaliable to the States for on-payment to the appropriate corporation for land acquisition land development, including headworks; municipal type facilities; selected building works. The funds to be made avaliable each year by the Australian Government will be in accordance with an agreed development plan. Funds made avaliable for land acquisition will be either loan funds or non-repayable grants on the matching basis under conditions which will be set out in the Albury-Wodonga Appropriation Bill. Funds to be made available to the Development Corporation for land development and selected building works will normally be loan funds. Provision is made for current practices to be observed in fixing the terms of the loans and for payment of interest to be deferred in some cases. Funds to be provided for municipal type services will take account of existing State practices and sources of funds normally available to local government authorities. In addition, during the early years of the development, the Australian Government will be prepared to provide special financial assistance to the States to assist them in providing facilities which are normally their responsibility but which could not be provided without such special assistance. We have made this offer because we accept that it might not be practicable for a State during the next few years to take special measures at Albury-Wodonga without affecting existing State-wide priorities. The 3 governments have agreed, however, that after this transition period each will provide from its normal sources the services and facilities it would ordinarily provide to the population of Albury-Wodonga. The administrative expenses of the Development Corporation will be shared equally by the 3 governments. As agreed on 25 January and 23 October, the Development Corporation will follow a policy of providing fully serviced sites for development on a long term leasehold tenure unless there are exceptional circumstances. In the case of residential land, the form of land tenure will be decided by the 3 governments in the light of the report of the Commission of Inquiry into Land Tenures. The price of land to be acquired under the terms of appropriate State land price stabilisation legislation will be based on the market level of prices prevailing at 3 October 1972. Adjustments will be made for land price changes —du e to factors other than the announcement of the development of the complex—durin g the period up to the date of actual purchase. Land to be acquired under these conditions is to be designated not later than 30 June 1974. In the timing of acquisition deference will be paid to any special cases of individual hardship which may occur. All 3 governments have agreed that land price stabilisation is essential for the success of the growth centre. Without a supply of raw land at prices uninflated by speculative action, neither industry nor people will be prepared to move to the growth centre. As a first step, the Development Corporation wiU, with the assistance of the private sector, become a developer within the existing municipal boundaries of the city of Albury. The development will be on lands which are outside land within the city of Albury, which are presently zoned urban, or lands to be zoned urban in the recendy exhibited interim development order. Likewise, the Development Corporation will become a developer of lands within the defined urban boundaries of the city of Wodonga but which are outside those lands for which all planning consents required for urban sub-division have been granted. All lands in those areas within which the Development Corporation will become a developer, and which will need to be rezoned urban for purposes of the growth complex, will be publicly acquired. In the areas presently zoned urban, there will be extensive opportunity for private developers to operate by themselves rather than in co-operation with the Development Corporation. In the development of the new growth complex, special attention will be given to control of pollution, including effluent disposal. Special attention will also be given to protection of" the environment, not only of the centre itself, but also of areas which will be affected by the establishment of this new growth complex. In the planning of the new growth complex, every attempt is to be made to preserve the identity, character and vitality of the historic centres of Albury and Wodonga. I turn now to the Bill itself. Honourable senators will note that in Part III the Bill establishes the Albury-Wodonga Development Corporation as a body corporate and with the usual powers of such a body corporate. Clause 8 of Part III of the Bill sets out the functions and powers of the Corporation. It will be noted that Clause 8(1) sets out those functions of the Corporation which it is for the Australian Government to confer on it. The States have agreed that in their legislation they will confer such State powers on the Corporation as are necessary for that Corporation to carry out the planning and development tasks which have been entrusted to the Corporation by the three Governments. Sub-clauses (3) and (4) of Clause 8 provide for this. Part IV of the Bill deals with the constitution and meetings of the Corporation. A chairman will be appointed for a term not exceeding 7 years. Two Deputy Chairmen will be appointed for a period not exceeding 5 years. Two other members shall be part-time and appointed for a period not exceeding 3 years. The Chairman will be appointed on the nomination of the Australian Government. Each of the State governments will nominate one of the Deputy Chairmen. The two part-time members of the Corporation will be appointed on the recommendation of the Ministerial Council with a view to ensuring the representation of local interests on the Development Corporation. The provisions relating to appointment, termination of appointment, disclosure of interest, and acting appointments are in keeping with those of other Commonwealth statutory corporations. Part V of the Bill refers to the powers of the Corporation to appoint staff. These provisions are once again similar to those of other Commonwealth statutory authorities with the specific understanding that the employment by the Corporation of officers of States will be facilitated as far as possible. Part VI of the Bill sets out the provisions with regard to finance. The Agreement sets out in more detail the form of physical and financial programing which will constitute the basis of the annual financial estimates of the Development Corporation. This programming procedure is very important and I refer honourable senators to Part III of the Agreement. The Corporation will be empowered to borrow money from the State or other approved lenders. Part VII of the Bill includes the requirement that the Corporation report annually and that it meet the audit requirements of the Auditor-General. It will be noted that this section of the Bill also provides that the Governor-General may make regulations for carrying out or giving effect to this Act. I turn now to the agreement scheduled to this Bill. As the preamble makes clear, this Agreement springs from the intentions of the 3 governments that a Development Corporation will bring about in Albury-Wodonga a city with a high quality of environment, appropriately planned and developed, with full regard to human requirements and the involvement of the public. Furthermore, in its operation the Corporation will involve, as far as possible, the established Australian, State and local government authorities in the development of the growth complex. Honourable Senators have received an explanatory memorandum of the agreement which is scheduled in this Bill. In concluding I would like to take the opportunity of thanking Mr Murray Byrne, the Victorian Minister for State Development and Decentralisation, and Mr John Fuller, the New South Wales Minister for Decentralisation and Development. Their willingness to work hard, to co-operate and to compromise has been a very pleasing feature of this whole operation. Not only that, they have encouraged their officers in the respective State departments to work hard and sometimes under great pressure in order to achieve this program. Credit is also due to the officers in the Cities Commission and in the Department of Urban and Regional Development, and officers of other Australian Government departments, particularly Attorney-General's and Treasury, for their continuing efforts over the past ten months. I would be the first to recognise that the total concept of what we are setting out to do in Albury-Wodonga is a difficult one to grasp. It is a new concept. One of the most rewarding features of the Albury-Wodonga agreement is that in a very short space of time we in the Australian Government have been able to develop and explain this new concept to State politicians and administrators. With the understanding that they have acquired we have been able to formulate this Agreement. Let there be no mistake about this. It is an historic Agreement. Moreover, we have reached the Agreement with a high level of enthusiasm. I commend the approach of the State politicians in New South Wales and Victoria and their administrators to honourable senators opposite. We have not tried to force concepts on to the States; we set out to persuade them of the validity of our case. Once they understood it, I believe they welcomed it. Might I say, Mr President, it was a warm welcome. I believe that the understanding that we have reached amongst three levels of Government on the principles to be applied to this growth centre provides us with a basic approach to the other areas this Government will want to develop in co-operation with these and other States. Indeed, at a ministerial meeting with representatives from all States last month, we were all able to reach accord on the same principles. I will be speaking about the principles underlying our approach to growth centres and our approach to land commissions when I introduce further Bills into the House. There is no doubt in my mind that with the goodwill and enthusiasm of State and local governments we can formulate and implement policies in urban and regional development which will be of great benefit to all the people of our nation. The tasks ahead of us are enormous. But in ten months we have been able to achieve a great deal. Albury-Wodonga is only the beginning. It is a first step in a continuing program of involvement by the Australian Government in our cities, old and new. On present growth rates, there will be an additional 7 million people in our country within the next 30 years. We cannot afford to allow Sydney and Melbourne to cope with such a rate of increase. These 2 cities are suffering from all the ills of overcrowding, mismanagement, neglect and haphazard planning which the previous Government ignored or tacitly accepted. For 23 years those on the opposite side of this House not only allowed the present ills of Sydney and Melbourne to accumulate; they positively added to them by their uncoordinated and short-sighted approach to urban development. This Government cannot solve the problems of 23 years overnight. These are still early days. Yet our achievements in the fields of urban and regional developments so far show our determination, not just to overcome past mistakes, but to create new opportunities for Australians to live in urban areas that are comprehensively and attractively planned. There can be no doubt that this Government has done far more to create new cities than the previous Government even thought of doing during its 23 years of office. Under its administration, the population of the non-urban areas in Australia declined from 31 per cent to 14.7 per cent of Australia's total population. This Albury-Wodonga Development Bill and agreement symbolises an important first step. I am confident that our future initiatives will be welcomed by the people in our cities and regions. I commend the Bill to the Senate. Debate (on motion by Senator Withers) adjourned. 2387 bill Bill received from the House of Representatives. Standing Orders suspended. Bill (on motion by Senator Cavanagh) read a first time. 2387 2387 K6F South Australia ALP 1 0 CAVANAGH, James Senator CAVANAGH - I move: That the Bill be now read a second time. Again, as the Bill was introduced in the other place and the second reading speech has been circulated, I seek leave to have the second reading speech incorporated in Hansard. 2387 10000 0 0 PRESIDENT, The The PRESIDENT Is leave granted? There being no objection, leave is granted. (The speech read as follows)— The purpose of this Bill is to appropriate $9m in 1973-74 for a growth centre at Albury- Wodonga. In the Budget, the Government announced its intention to allocate $33m for the new cities program. The remaining $24m will be directed to other growth centres and related projects. On 23 October 1973 the Prime Minister (Mr Whitlam and the Premiers of New South Wales and Victoria signed an agreement on the development structure to be established for the Albury-Wodonga growth centre and the legal framework within which this will operate. This Bill is designed to provide financial assistance to these States on the basis of that agreement. The moneys appropriated by this Bill will be applied in accordance with the relevant provisions of the Albury-Wodonga Development Bill 1973 and the Albury-Wodonga Area Development Agreement which have also been introduced into the House yesterday. As the title of this Bill makes clear, its purpose is to provide financial assistace to the States of New South Wales and Victoria in the current financial year for purposes connected with the development of Albury-Wodonga. Clause 4 of the Bill provides that when a State has incurred expenditure this financial year in accordance with an approved program, it is then entitled to financial assistance. Clause 8 of the Bill qualifies Clause 4 by providing that the States' entitlement to financial assistance is subject to conditions set out in the Bill and to such other conditions as are agreed between the 3 governments. Clause 10 provides for financial assistance in respect of land for urban use by way of loans. Sub-clause (2) provides for interest to' be at the long-term bond rate or at such other rate as the Treasurer, with the concurrence of the Minister, determines. This sub-clause therefore allows for some flexibility in financial arrangements. Each advance is repayable over a period of up to 30 years. Sub-clause (3) of clause 10 provides for a deferment period for the commencement of repayments of principal and payments of interest. This deferment period is not to exceed 10 years. During this time, the interest is to compound half-yearly. When a deferment is granted, repayments will still be completed 30 years after the first advance. Under Clause 11, financial assistance for the acquisition of land for buffer zones, conservation areas and major recreation space can be made by way of non-repayable non-interest bearing grants. This is subject to a matching grant by the State of such proportion as the Minister, with the concurrence of the Treasurer, determines. Honourable senators will recall that the Albury-Wodonga Development Bill, which I have already introduced into the Senate, has an attachment—the Albury-Wodonga Development Agreement. Part III of this Agreement sets out the basic financial arrangements for the development of the growth complex. Clause 14 of this present Bill requires a copy of every future amending agreement to be tabled in the Senate. I need not delay honourable senators any further with the provisions of this Bill as my second reading speech on the Albury-Wodonga Development Bill fully covered the various aspects of this important growth centre project. I refer honourable senators to the text of that speech and the explanatory memorandum of the Agreement which accompanied this Bill. I commend the Albury-Wodonga Development (Financial Assistance) Bill 1973 to the Senate. Debate (on motion by Senator Withers) adjourned. 2388 bill Bill received from the House of Representatives. Standing Orders suspended. Bill (on motion by Senator Cavanagh) read a first time. 2388 2388 K6F South Australia ALP 1 0 CAVANAGH, James Senator CAVANAGH - I move: That the Bill be now read a second time. Mr President,as the same conditions apply to the second reading speech of this Bill as applied to the second reading speech of the previous Bill, I seek leave to have this second reading speech incorporated in Hansard. 2388 10000 0 0 PRESIDENT, The The PRESIDENT Is leave granted? There being no objection, leave is granted. (The speech read as follows)— The purpose of this Bill is to appropriate $24m in 1973-74 for the growth centres program announced in the Budget. The $24m is the balance of the appropriation for that program after subtracting the $9m approved for expenditure in Albury- Wodonga. This Bill is basically concerned with financial conditions. Funds will generally be made available to the States upon agreement to the terms of finance, and to conditions relating to development corporations, where appropriate, and the introduction of legislation permitting a system of land acquisition at fair prices. The Bill only sets out conditions relating to the terms of finance. Clause 9(1) provides that other conditions may be agreed between the Australian and State governments. These other conditions will be set out in the financial agreements. Clause IS of the BilI requires these agreements to be tabled. Many of the detailed provisions in this Bill are the same as provisions for the Land Commissions (Financial Assistance) BilI which is on the notice paper, and I shall speak on it later today in some detail. However, for the purposes of this Bill, I will outline some of the more important provisions. Clause 4 of the Bill provides for approved programs of urban and regional development which includes land acquisition, development, other works, and studies. Subclause (3) requires that where land is to be acquired it should be identified as intended for urban use, or otherwise. This is because the terms of finance for these two categories are different. Clause S is the operative section. When a State has incurred expenditure this financial year in accordance with an approved program it is then entitled to financial assistance. Clause 9 qualifies Clause 5 by providing that a State's entitlement to financial assistance is subject to conditions set out in the Bill and also to such other conditions as may be agreed upon between the Australian and State Governments. Clause 10 provides that, in respect of land for urban use, financial assistance will be through loans. Under Clause 11, financial assistance for the acquisition of land for buffer zones, conservation areas and major recreation space can be made by way of non-repayable grants. This is subject to a matching grant by the State. Mr President, I shall deal with the more detailed arrangements for this assistance in introducing the next Bill which is concerned with financial assistance for land commissions. Mr President, in the schedule attached to this Bill is a list of the areas covered by the Bill. There are 3 areas in New South Wales: Bathurst-Orange, Holsworthy-Campbelltown and Gosford- Wyong. The Cities Commission has been working closely with the New South Wales authorities in their efforts in Bathurst-Orange. In Holsworthy- Campbelltown the Cities Commission has been conducting detailed investigations into the problems of unexploded munitions and now believes that these problems can be solved at reasonable cost with the aid of sophisticated techniques already in use in European countries. Land to be publicly acquired with funds allocated for 1973-74 has already been defined. We are now considering proposals for the management of the first pilot stage of development. In Gosford-Wyong, the Commission is conducting studies into land to be acquired in 1973-74. In Victoria 2 areas come into this Bill. In Geelong, we are comnussioning studies for the development of a planning strategy. In Melbourne's south-east sector a task force has begun work, in co-operation with the appropriate State authorities, to define the land to be acquired with Federal finance in 1973-74. The land to be acquired in Melbourne's south-east sector is not for development, but to protect areas from development. The need for recreation land near Melbourne is particularly important. Moreover, the preservation of the Mornington Peninsula and the Dandenongs is a matter of some urgency. We are providing $3m in grant money this financial year for this task. We want to protect this area in co-operation with the State authorities. Together we can prevent this valuable area from being spoiled by development. Following discussions with Queensland officials, the Cities Commission has been able to draw up study programs in the Moreton, Townsville and Fitzroy regions. The South Australian Government has pushed ahead with legislation and planning for Monarto. We have reached agreement with the South Australian Government on major policy issues. Final negotiations are under way between the Australian and West Australian governments on policies to be adopted in the Salvado growth centre. The land for which Federal assistance has been allocated has been defined. In addition, a major study of port location and water supply in the Salvado region has been prepared. Finally, Mr President, good progress has been made in discussions between the Tasmanian authorities and the Cities Commission on future proposals for studies and land acquisition in Tasmania. Naturally, all these studies and negotiations on future land acquisition are being carried out in close co-operation with the appropriate State authorities. Mr President, apart from Canberra, this is the first time in the history of our nation that the Australian Government has made direct budgetary appropriation for new city development. After studies by the Cities Commission, we have selected and are promoting a certain number of growth centres. We have committed $24m in this first year to our growth centres program. Our growth centres program is only one part of our overall urban and regional development strategy. It is an essential part. The growth centres referred to in the Bill, and future growth centres, will help reduce population pressure on existing cities, particularly Sydney and Melbourne. At the same time, growth centres will provide alternative living areas for future generations of Australians. I commend the Bill to the Senate. Debate (on motion by Senator Withers) adjourned. 2390 bill Bill received from the House of Representatives. Standing Orders suspended. Bill (on motion by Senator Cavanagh) read a first time. 2390 2390 K6F South Australia ALP 1 0 CAVANAGH, James Senator CAVANAGH - I move: That the Bill be now read a second time. Mr President,as the same conditions apply to the second reading speech of this Bill as applied to the second reading speeches of the 2 previous Bills, I seek leave to have this second reading speech incorporated in Hansard. 2390 10000 0 0 PRESIDENT, The The PRESIDENT Is leave granted? There being no objection, leave is granted. (The speech read as follows)— The purpose of this Bill is to appropriate $30m in 1973-74 for the land commissions program as allocated in the Budget. The rapidly rising price of land in our capital cities is something which disturbs this Government and distresses the young people saving for a home. Our policies on land form part of our urban policies. No one can deny the need to change the haphazard system of urban development which has been carried out over the past 23 years. Urban development needs to be planned so that it does not take place simply as the consequence of pressure by major landholders for rezoning. Australia's cities have grown tremendously in the past 20 years. Escalating land prices, inadequate urban services and transport facilities, poor urban design and under-privileged communities have all been the products of urban development of the post-war years. The Australian people face major expenditures to overcome the backlog in urban services in our major cities. In short, too often the product is poor, the price is too high and the bills have not been met. Let me give some figures with regard to Sydney for the period September 1970 to March 1973. The increase of the consumer price index in all groups was 18.2 per cent. Average weekly earnings rose 29.5 per cent. The wholesale price of building materials for houses rose 21.4 per cent. However, the minimum price of home sites in urban fringe areas rose an astounding 157 per cent. This is a national disgrace and one which points to the need for action by the State governments as well as the Australian Government. Yet, throughout the whole development process of the last 2 decades, a number of individuals have amassed large fortunes from increases in the value of land. The investment of public funds in services and facilities such as highways, sewers, schools and hospitals increases the value of land, but the people as a whole recover little or none of the increases. Rezoning can, overnight, cause large increases in the value of land owned by those whose property lies within the path of urban development. Sometimes individual owners withhold their land from the market in the hope of further land price increases. The result is many families today are unable to afford a house on their own block of land. One of the chief characteristics of the growth of our cities is that often the sequence of development is private initiative for profit followed by a harried and strained public investment in basic infrastructure. So, there is a great need for Governments to be able to co-ordinate the provision of services to developing areas. In order to get an efficient co-ordination and provision of services, Governments ought to be able to identify specific areas for development. These areas must then be acquired at prices which have not been forced up by the announcement of intended urban development. The present planning system is a blueprint for speculators. This is one major reason why we must change the rules of the game. Public acquisition defeats speculators who withhold large parcels of land from the market. Land commissions and the legislation to enable acquisition at fair prices which we are encouraging the States to implement are essential if better co-ordination and better planning are to be achieved. Ultimately, they are the means by which we will enable young people to enter the land market at a cheaper price. Let there be no mistake about this: The present Australian Government believes that excessive profits have been made in land speculation and this should not continue. There are 3 major objectives underlying the operations of the land commission structures: Firstly, we want to allow areas to be comprehensively planned and developed; secondly, we want to make land avaliable at fair prices; thirdly, we want to retain, for the benefit of the whole community, some of the increase in value which results from the process of urban development. This Government believes that a great majority of Australians accept and welcome these objectives. Therefore, the Australian Government has encouraged the States to set up land commissions or to re-organise their existing structures so that these objectives can be achieved. The financial assistance offered to the States is subject to two main types of condition: The first type deals with the usual range of conditions on terms of finance. I will deal with these more fully in a moment when I am considering specific parts of the Bill. The second main type might broadly be called 'performance conditions'. There are 2 major performance conditions: Firstly, each State should carry out its land acquisition program through an organisation structure agreeable to the Australian Government; secondly, the State should implement legislation to acquire the land at prices unaffected by announcements of intended urban development. Honourable senators should know that the aim is not to freeze land prices. Nor is the aim to reduce the capital value of the asset. Rather, the aim is to ensure than any inflation caused by the announcement of any government is not borne by the purchasers. I hope this is perfectly clear to honourable senators. There have also been some misunderstandings in regard to the question of land tenure. Let me make clear the process of urban development as we envisage it. Firstly, there is a decision by Governments that a city will expand in a certain area. Secondly, and as soon as possible, there is an announcement that the price paid for land acquired in the general will set aside increases deriving solely from the Government decision. Thirdly, after studies have been carried out with full public knowledge and involvement, a decision is made on the exact area to be zoned urban. Fourthly, the land commission authority acquires that part of the new urban area where it is to supervise development. Fifthly, the area is physically developed. This operation would usually be undertaken by developers in accordance with reasonable conditions agreed upon with the Government. Sixthly, the land is disposed of to individuals, groups, companies and government authorities—fo r houses, flats, factories, shops, offices, schools, parks, roads and all the things which go to make up an attractive and complete community This is the end of the first phase of urban development. The question then to be answered is what form of tenure should be adopted for this disposal. There have been discussions with the States on this question and the Government is awaiting the report of the royal commission inqtury into land tenures. The Government is not dogmatic on this question of residential land tenure. I believe that all State governments understand this and that detailed questions of land tenure are not a barrier to commencing the process of land acquisition and development I have just described. I turn now to the detailed provisions of this Bill. The Bill provides in clause 4 for the Minister to approve programs of land acquisition and, in consultation with the Treasurer, to agree upon the amount and terms of financial assistance to be provided to carry out the program of land acquisition. In each case, negotiations will be with the appropriate Minister of the State defined in clause 3. This is a general Bill which allows for flexibility in the determination of programs of land acquisition and setting the terms of finance. Clause 15 of the Bill provides for the financial agreements to be tabled. Dealing first with the programs of land acquisition, clause 4 provides that the programs are for purposes connected with urban expansion. Clause 3 defines urban expansion to include redevelopment, and setting aside land in or near urban areas for public recreation purposes or for conservation. Subclause (1) of clause 4 requires that the programs be carried out by an approved authority. Clause 3 defines an approved authority as either the land commission of a particular State or an authority of that State approved by the Minister with the concurrence of the Treasurer. Under subclause (2) of clause 4, the land to be acquired will be specified as intended either for urban use or alternatively, for public recreation space, for buffer zones or for conservation areas. These latter areas of land will be large tracts returning relatively little income. Clause 11 provides that in these cases, Australian Government assistance will be non repayable grants subject to a matching grant provision. Where land is intended for urban use, and this includes not only land for houses, offices and factories, but also land for schools, community faculties, transportation routes and urban parks, Australian Government assistance will be in the form of interest bearing loans. Clause 10 provides for these loans to be repayable over a period up to 30 years. Interest is to be payable half-yearly on the outstanding balance. The interest rate is to be the long-term bond rate or such lower rate as the Treasurer with my concurrence determines. Sub-clause (3) of Clause 10 provides for a period of deferment of up to 10 years. This will be agreed with the State before payments in respect of a particular program commence. The deferment period is a period during which there are no repayments of principal or payments of interest. The outstanding principal will compound on half-yearly rests during the deferment period. After the deferment period, the principal and accrued interest is treated as a principal sum which is then repaid with interest over the balance of the term. The deferment period is offered so that States accepting financial assistance can ensure that the process of development of the land generates funds to service loan requirements. There will be a period after acquisition when the land is not returning any income to the approved authority which carried out the acquisition. The deferment period will allow the State to plan the cash flow for each project so that funds are available to service borrowings as required. The Australian Government has also decided that there will be a review of the terms of finance. I will propose to the States that the review should be carried out within 5 years and in any event, before the end of the deferment period. The review will take into account the cash flows for each project or group of projects so that they can be self-financing as far as possible. The flexibility in the terms of finance allowed by the Bill will permit the Australian Government to tailor a program of urban development to suit conditions in each State and region. Mr President, in describing the type of land involved in this program, I have referred to some of the terms and conditions under which financial assistance will be provided. As I said earlier, there are 2 types of conditions involved. There are the performance conditions relating to the operation of land commission structures and land price stabilisation legislation. There are also the conditions as to interest, terms and repayments and so forth which are set out in the Bill. The Bill contains other machinery conditions. There are provisions in clauses 6, 8 and 13 requiring the supply of information and in clause 14 there is a provision that the Australian Government's consent is to be given to any major change of land use. The section in the Bill which connects the 2 types of conditions is clause 9. That clause provides that advances are to be subject to conditions set out in the Bill and to such other conditions as the Treasurer and the Minister for Urban and Regional Development determine. Through that clause, the conditions relating to land commission structures and land price stabilisation legislation will be made effective. Mr President, this Bill provides for $30m to be spent this financial year under our land commission program. It is a first step in a continuing involvement by the Australian Government in order to provide more attractive and better planned communities. Land commissions are one part of an inter-connected package of programs in urban and regional development. This Government recognises that the various investments which the Australian Government has made in the past coupled with the initiatives we are now taking, are all inter-connected. These investments range over the whole field—land, housing, roads, sewerage, transport. These investments must increasingly be seen as an inter-connected parcel of policies, not as isolated programs. The Australian Government seeks the cooperation of the States to work as a partnership in this venture. Already South Australia has estabilshed a land commission. Western Australia has introduced a Bill to establish a land commission. The Minister for Urban and Regional Development has been engaged in detailed discussions with the Victorian Minister for Local Government for some months. Discussions are continuing with Ministers and officials in other States, particularly Queensland. We seek the co-operation of the States Together the Australian and State governments can achieve a more efficient allocation of resources. Together the Australian and State governments can achieve a more equitable form of urban development. Together the Australian and State governments can achieve what all Australians would want them to achieve—t o give Australian families access to land and housing at fair prices. There are no immediate solutions to our urban problems. There are no instant coffee solutions to the land crises. But the land commissions are a beginning. They are an alternative. They provide an alternative method which will enable Australians to receive the benefits of more efficient and more equitable urban development. I commend the Bill to the Senate. Debate (on motion by Senator Withers) adjourned. 2392 miscellaneous Motion (by Senator Byrne) agreed to: That there be referred to the Senate Standing Committee on Finance and Government Operations for inquiry and report the following matter- 1 ) The operation, control and conduct of the following companies: Applied Ecology Pry Ltd, Aboriginal and Islander Products Pty Ltd, and Aboriginal and Island Marketing Pry Ltd, companies incorporated in the Australian Capital Territory and having their registered offices at Woden Towers, Woden, A.C.T.; The degree of Ministerial control over and Ministerial responsibility for expenditure from the Aboriginal Advancement Trust Account, the Aborigines Benefit Trust Fund and the Capital Fund for Aboriginal Enterprises; (a) Whether departmental and projects, or particular projects for which financial assistance is or has been sought, and for which funds have been or would be made available from the Capital Fund for Aboriginal Enterprises, have been adequately investigated by the Department of Aboriginal Affairs and by the Department of the Treasury, and Whether expenditure on and the execution of approved programmes and requests have been adequately controlled and supervised by the appropriate departments and in compliance with Treasury procedures and departmental requirements; and The circumstances surrounding the purchase of land, buildings and equipment for or by aboriginal communities with money provided from the capital fund for Aboriginal Enterprises and, in particular, whether such purchases were made at prices in excess of Treasury valuation. 2393 miscellaneous Motion (by Senator Maunsell) agreed to: That there be referred to the Senate Standing Committee on Social Environment for inquiry and report the following matter Whether adequate consideration is being given to the environment and ecological factors in aboriginal advancement programs financed from the Aboriginal Advancement Trust Account and the Capital Fund for Aboriginal Enterprises; Whether the above Committee should report on the social and environmental aspects of all future aboriginal enterprises financed by the Australian Government. 2393 miscellaneous 2393 Debate resumed from 20 November (vide page 19 1 1 ), on motion by Senator Murphy: That standing order 242 be suspended to enable the third reading of the Constitution Alteration (Simultaneous Elections) Bill, the Constitution Alteration (Democratic Elections) Bill and the Constitution Alteration (Local Government Bodies) Bill and the Constitution Alteration (Mode of Altering the Constitution) Bill to be passed in each case without a call of the Senate. 2393 KBW Tasmania 0 0 WRIGHT, Reginald Senator WRIGHT - I suggest that this motion to suspend standing order 242, moved by the Leader of the Government (Senator Murphy), has been moved in extraordinary circumstances. As we know, standing order 242 is an expression of opinion by the Senate, through its Standing Orders, that any Act to amend the Constitution should be treated with somewhat more consideration than a mere dog Act and that therefore every senator, representing as he does, with equal voting strength, one of the 6 States, should be given a special opportunity to be present when the third reading of a Bill to alter the Constitution is moved. This would call for 2 1 days notice to be given, and it would follow the spirit of section 128 of the Constitution which places added importance on Bills that alter the Constitution. Section 128 provides that such a law shall be passed by an absolute majority, and that not less than two nor more than 6 months after its passage the proposed law is to be submitted to the electors. Therefore, the Constitution ensures an interval of at least 2 months. This section provides also that if both Houses of Parliament are not in agreement, one House may have the amendments submitted to the people if it passes a Bill which the other House rejects- and the interval between the 2 decisions has been 3 months- either in the same session or in the next session. Therefore, the Constitution ensures full deliberation on a Bill that either commends itself to both Houses or to one House. Special conditions are put forward as conditions precedent for the holding of a referendum. So the Standing Orders provide that the third reading of such a Bill shall be upon a call of the Senate after notice of not less than 21 days. I should have thought that unless some urgent and imperative reasons were given this was a short and not inappropriate time to give senators an opportunity to make their arrangements. One has only to survey the individual circumstances of those senators who are absent from the chamber today to realise that they are entitled to specific notice and, in connection with a Bill to alter the Constitution, they have a specific responsibility. The second point I take is that of course, as in all things that Senator Murphy does, there is no inhibition on his part to putting all 4 Bills into one rag bag and dealing with the whole lot as if he were tossing it into a garbage truck that was passing by. Senator Murphy is not daunted in any way by putting the 4 Bills into one can and saying: 'Let us dispense with a call as to the whole four'. The next point I take is that before the second reading debate has taken place on these Bills Senator Murphy seeks to impose upon the chamberhis impetuous view that there should be no call for the third reading. The mere recital of the short titles of the 4 Bills- the first concerns simultaneous elections, the second concerns so-called democratic elections, the third concerns local government bodies and the fourth concerns the mode of altering the Constitutionwould indicate to anybody with the slightest acquaintance with the Constitution the variety of considerations that these Bills will evoke in debate as to whether they are appropriate matters to be put to a referendum. Therefore, I think it is bordering on the unreasonable to suggest that at this stage, before the second reading debate has taken place, we should consider whether it is appropriate to dispense with a call in regard to all or any one of these Bills. The course that may be taken by the Senate in the debate on any one of these Bills may vary from that taken in the debate on any of the others. I suggest that we should make up our minds as to whether to have a call on the basis of how the Senate treats each of those Bills. It bemuses me to think that we can be asked to consider a call for the third reading before the Senate has decided to accept, reject or otherwise treat these Bills. I hope that the Senate will reject the motion. 2394 KUD Victoria Leader of the Australian Democratic Labor Party 0 0 MCMANUS, Francis Senator McMANUS - The Australian Democratic Labor Party made decisions in regard to the Bills to which the motion now before us relates. Those decisions put the passage of the Bills very much in doubt and in our view make a debate on this motion rather perfunctory or unnecessary. We will not oppose the motion, but we do not think it will operate. 2394 KAS Victoria 0 0 WEBSTER, James Senator WEBSTER -The issue with which the Senate is dealing at the moment is a motion for the suspension of standing order 242. A similar motion was debated earlier this year. On that occasion the motion was passed because the Australian Democratic Labor Party joined with the Australian Labor Party. As a result, on 8 December, which is next Saturday, 2 questions relating to alterations to the Constitution will be put to the people. As I understand it, standing order 242 was adopted by the Senate early in Federation. The reasons for its adoption are fairly important to me. It was considered desirable that, when an alteration to the Constitution was thought necessary and a Bill proposing the alteration was required to be passed by the Houses of Parliament, there should be a 3-week delay for a call of honourable senators so that the issue could be properly debated before it was submitted to the people. Mr Odgers, in his very important work Australian Senate Practice', states that the Standing Orders make provision for a call of the Senate in only one set of circumstances; that is, in relation to the very important matter of a change in the Constitution. Apparently, in the past there have been several occasions on which standing order 242 has been suspended. It is my view that the Bills that are now before the Senate are of such importance that standing order 242 should not be suspended. It is my understanding that the original standing order 242 was copied from the Standing Orders of the South Australian House of Assembly. In 1885 the Clerk of that House, Mr E. G. Blackmore, who later became an early Clerk of the Senate, wrote a book entitled 'The Practice of the House of Assembly' in which he said: When any question of unusual importance is engaging the attention of the House it is thought desirable that any decision thereon whenever taken should represent the sense of the House at large. It is ordered on motion duly made that the House be called over on a certain day. There we see the first proposal that matters of great importance should be announced and called for on a certain day. It should be noted also that Mr Odgers points out his book that a call of the Senate does not necessarily fulfil the objective for which it is made, in that there is no power to compel senators to vote. But the general reasons for the calling of the Senate have been made quite clear. A call of the Senate is made in regard to issues of great importance. A call of the Senate can be made on an issue which requires our consideration and in respect of which we should have regard to our normal practice of seeking and receiving advice from members of the general public. I believe that we should seek their advice on a matter of such importance as the alteration of the Constitution. We know that the Senate previously has supported the suspension of standing order 242. I was disappointed to hear Senator McManus indicate that he sees no reason why standing order 242 should not be suspended. He indicated that he will support the Government's proposal to suspend standing order 242. 2394 KRU 0 0 LITTLE, John Senator Little I do not know how we can support it when it does not answer our questions. 2394 KAS 0 0 WEBSTER, James Senator WEBSTER I think that Senator Little has every reason to be concerned. I hope that he is concerned about the action that his Party is taking in this instance. Mr Odgers in his book states: lie records of the Parliament give no definite explanation as to the reasons which actuated the early Senate in adopdng a rule that there should be a Call of the Senate before the third reading of Bills to alter the Constitution. It is generally agreed, however, that the provision for a call was inserted to— This should make some impression on those who are voting on this matter- (i) prevent the rapid passage of a Bill to amend the Constitution and, by the provision that the Call shall not be earlier than 21 days from the day on which the Order is made, afford time for relection and deliberation; (ii) ensure that all Senators would, through notice of the Call, be advised of the proposed third reading of a Bill to alter the Constitution; and (iii) afford all Senators, by reason of the duration of notice of the Call, sufficient notice to enable them to be present to cast a vote on the third reading of the Bill, for which an absolute majority of affirmative votes is required. 2395 KRU 0 0 LITTLE, John Senator Little - Transport problems in those days might have had something to do with the 21 -day period. 2395 KAS 0 0 WEBSTER, James Senator WEBSTER Our reading of Mr Odgers' work is the same, Senator Little. I understand that that is possible. We know that Mr Odgers has suggested that the period of 21 days laid down for the call of the Senate could be reduced. Perhaps it could be reduced to 7 or 14 days. But wisdom certainly was shown for the inclusion of the provisions of standing order 242 in the Standing Orders. Any support by the Australian Democratic Labor Party for its suspension will not receive my commendation. I think it is of particular importance that there be a call of the Senate in relation to any matter involving alteration of the Australian Constitution. There are before the Senate 3 Bills which seek to alter the Constitution. 2395 1L5 ALP 1 0 MURPHY, Lionel Senator Murphy - Four. 2395 KAS 0 0 WEBSTER, James Senator WEBSTER Four Bills. Those 4 Bills are of the utmost importance. The subject matters to be debated are of such importance that all honourable senators should be present to express their views upon them. I know of nothing more important insofar as debates in this House are concerned. The 3 Bills to which I believe we should give close attention in relation to this matter are— 2395 KRU 0 0 LITTLE, John Senator Little - Do they not have to be passed before they can be read a third time? 2395 1L5 ALP 1 0 MURPHY, Lionel Senator Murphy We are not debating the Bills yet. 2395 KAS 0 0 WEBSTER, James Senator WEBSTER I have been interrupted by 2 honourable senators. I heard Senator Murphy say: 'We are not debating the Bills yet'. The very content of the Bills is the reason that we need to look carefully at this matter. To save Senator Murphy from any problems, instead of my referring in detail to the 3 Bills which I feel are most important let me say that I understand that it is in actual fact the long titles of the Bills which are to be put to the people and upon which they will have to vote. I have been led to believe by the Clerk of the Senate and from speaking to one or two honourable senators that it is the wording of the long title to the Bills that is to be put to the people. I do not doubt that some lie is being presented to the people by the Government in relation to the long titles which have been given to the various Bills. Let me say in relation to the referendums that are to be held next weekend that we are all of the view that the Government has put up proposals in relation to incomes control and prices control, but the wording of the long titles of the 2 Bills in relation to those matters is different. As I recall it the wording of the prices control proposal is 'for control over prices' but that the proposal in relation to incomes is worded 'in regard to incomes'. 2395 KBW 0 0 WRIGHT, Reginald Senator Wright - With respect to incomes. 2395 KAS 0 0 WEBSTER, James Senator WEBSTER I thank the honourable senator. The wording is 'with respect to incomes', which is totally different. There is an unwritten lie in the questions which are being put in those terms. 2395 5U4 ALP 0 0 MCCLELLAND, Jim Senator James McClelland - What is the point of the honourable senator's argument? 2395 KAS 0 0 WEBSTER, James Senator WEBSTER I do not doubt that Senator James McClelland is well aware of what I am getting at as in many instances I have heard him putting forward arguments that are not quite the truth. 2395 5U4 ALP 0 0 MCCLELLAND, Jim Senator James McClelland - Mr President,I ask for the withdrawal of that statement- that gratuitous insult. 2395 10000 0 0 PRESIDENT, The The PRESIDENT I heard Senator Webster use the word 'lie' and I was turning over in my mind whether the word 'lie' could be used in the terms of chicane or an untruth and I saw nothing objectionable up to that stage. But I think Senator Webster is out of order in accusing Senator James McClelland of telling an untruth. I think Senator Webster will withdraw the words he used in that respect. 2395 KAS 0 0 WEBSTER, James Senator WEBSTER I withdraw them immediately. The fact is that the questions which are being put to the people by the Government represent an untruth in the manner in which they are being put. Let me cite an example. I refer to one of the Bills in relation to which the Democratic Labor Party is siding with the Government on the suspension of standing order 242 so that a call of the Senate does not have to be made. It involves a matter with which one would think the people of Australia would readily agree. The long title of this Bill reads: To alter the Constitution so as to ensure that the Members of the House of Representatives and of the Parliaments of the States are chosen directly and democratically by the people. That suggests that there is a need to make some alteration to the Constitution to ensure that democratic elections are held in this country. I say that that is false. 2396 1L5 ALP 1 0 MURPHY, Lionel Senator Murphy - Does the honourable senator know anything about the New South Wales Legislative Council and does he support what is happening with respect to it? 2396 KAS 0 0 WEBSTER, James Senator WEBSTER I think Senator Murphy has, by interrupting, just implanted the he. The first words of the long title to this Bill state that it is in relation to Members of the House of Representatives. In his view there may be undemocratically elected parliaments in various States, but does that apply insofar as the House of Representatives is concerned? 2396 1L5 ALP 1 0 MURPHY, Lionel Senator Murphy - Of course it does. 2396 KAS 0 0 WEBSTER, James Senator WEBSTER That is not the point which the Government is seeking to make in regard to this matter. What the Government is attempting to argue in relation to the holding of democratic elections is that it wishes to see every person in this community have a vote of equal value. The Federal Government, because of its centralist attitude, wishes to control the various State parliaments. Of course this is directed to that control. Senator Murphy said that the House of Representatives is, in his view, not democratically elected. The Labor Government is attempting to put forward the view, which is undoubtedly gradually seeping into the public mind, that there is some principle behind every vote for every person in Austraha. 2396 KBW 0 0 WRIGHT, Reginald Senator Wright - That is not the principle. 2396 1L5 ALP 1 0 MURPHY, Lionel Senator Murphy An d you do not want that, Senator Webster 2396 KAS 0 0 WEBSTER, James Senator WEBSTER I do not want that 2396 10000 0 0 PRESIDENT, The The PRESIDENT I would suggest to honourable senators that they should not debate the Bills but that they should debate the question of whether there should be a call of the Senate in relation to the Bills. 2396 KAS 0 0 WEBSTER, James Senator WEBSTER I note your interruption, Mr President, but you will agree with me when I say that in other instances— 2396 10000 0 0 PRESIDENT, The The PRESIDENT I have interrupted only once 2396 KAS 0 0 WEBSTER, James Senator WEBSTER I note your prompting. I also note that when a point of order was taken against Senator Douglas McClelland in an earlier debate on this matter the occupant of the Chair did not interrupt him to suggest that he debate the question and not debate the prices and incomes Bills. 2396 10000 0 0 PRESIDENT, The The PRESIDENT I do not think that is relevant, senator. 2396 KAS 0 0 WEBSTER, James Senator WEBSTER I think you have taken my point, Mr President. I could quote from Hansard what happened in this respect. In actual fact Senator Greenwood attempted on 2 occasions to take points of order and was overruled. I am anxious to ensure that honourable senators are aware of what happened in this respect. The long title of another Bill states: To facilitate alterations to the Constitution and to allow Electors in Territories as well as Electors in the States to vote at Referendums on Proposed Laws to alter the Constitution. If ever a falsity has been put forward by the Government in relation to any matter it is in relation to this matter. Senator Murphy will agree with me when I say that a he is being perpetrated by the Government on the people in putting that question to them. I have read that under this Bill the question that will be put to the people will be whether they want electors in the Territories to have a vote. We would all agree with that. 2396 1L5 ALP 1 0 MURPHY, Lionel Senator Murphy - I rise on a point of order. The motion before the Senate is simply to deal with the suspension of standing order 242. The following proposals are to deal with various Bills. Surely the ordinary rule that one should keep to the subject matter is emphasised in this case. The moment that this motion is disposed of one way or the other we shall move forward and Senator Webster will have an opportunity to say whatever he wants to say about the contents of the Bill. 2396 10000 0 0 PRESIDENT, The The PRESIDENT That is right. I tried to indicate that to the honourable senator. 2396 KBW 0 0 WRIGHT, Reginald Senator Wright - Mr President,would you permit me to make an observation on the point of order? 2396 10000 0 0 PRESIDENT, The The PRESIDENT Yes 2396 KBW 0 0 WRIGHT, Reginald Senator Wright - I suggest that Senator Webster is not debating the Bill. He is debating the title of the Bill and its veracity as a true description of the contents. As we know, it is the title that goes into the ballot paper. That point, which is basic to the integrity of the vote, would be very germane to the interval for which a call was required. On the third reading the title may appear not to be appropriate. I suggest that so long as Senator Webster's point is on the question of the propriety of the title he should be permitted to address debate to it. 2396 10000 0 0 PRESIDENT, The The PRESIDENT I agree. I would not move away from that under any circumstances. However, the substantive nature of the Bills should not be debated. I call Senator Webster. 2397 KAS 0 0 WEBSTER, James Senator WEBSTER Under the Referendum Constitution Alteration Act 1906-1965 the question to be approved by the people is as is set out in the title of the proposed law. I appreciate the observation made by Senator Wright. I make the point again that in one of the Bills the wording of the title is purely to facilitate alterations to the Constitution and to allow electors in Territories as well as electors in the States to vote at referendums on proposed laws to alter the Constitution. I think that you, Mr President, would agree that if that question is put to the public in the way that it is worded complete falseness is created by the Government because if the legislation is approved by the people, it will allow for a major alteration in the passing of referendums in the future. In clause 2 of the Bill to which I have referred, paragraph (c) has these words: By omitting the words 'in a majority of the States' and substituting the words 'in not less than one-half of the States'. Could any greater he be perpetrated on the public than is being perpetrated by the Labor Party in this instance? The importance of a 21-day call of this Senate is well instanced in this Bill. I do not want to hold up the Senate with debate on all the matters— 2397 KVK 0 0 MULVIHILL, James Senator Mulvihill - That is an understatement. 2397 KAS 0 0 WEBSTER, James Senator WEBSTER The honourable senator says it is an understatement. The Opposition gave the Government leave to incorporate in Hansard at least half a dozen second reading speeches which I would dearly have liked to be read in this Senate if the Senate is to show any interest in those matters. But in the interests of hurrying legislation through, we granted leave for incorporation. I think it is unfair of Government senators to take this view. They must see the importance of the matters that I am raising. They squirm in their seats when they realise the falsity of what they are putting forward in those 3 measures. Undoubtedly a 21-day call of the Senate is essential. Another matter of great importance is to alter the Constitution to ensure that the Senate elections are held at the same time as House of Representatives elections. For senators to consider this only cursorily and to agree to the suspension of standing order 242 is to fail to understand that here is the basis whereby the Senate and its power will be eroded by this request to fall in line with every election to the House of Representatives. It can be imagined that that is the most important of these pieces of legislation which are put forward to alter the Constitution. I plead with the Democratic Labor sought to be passed by suspension of standing order 242, the wording suggests that the people of the Territories be permitted to vote but there is a basic falsity in a later part of the Bill, which will be proved— 2397 KRU 0 0 LITTLE, John Senator Little - We will consider that when it comes before us. 2397 KAS 0 0 WEBSTER, James Senator WEBSTER We will see whether that occurs. But the matter is important. If the Democratic Labor Party has taken the advice of the public about allowing for suspension of standing order 242,1 will welcome its comments. But to ensure that Senate elections are held at the same time as the House of Representatives elections is of such great importance that standing order 242 should not be suspended. I would support the recommendation of the Opposition that that motion be disallowed. 2397 1L5 New South Wales ALP 1 0 MURPHY, Lionel Senator MURPHY - The Government suggests that this Standing Order be suspended. The Constitution makes clear that there must be an absolute majority of the Senate to pass any of the referendum proposals unless it is by way of the subsequent provisions which the Senate rejects or fails to pass. So for all these Bills there must be an absolute majority. It is quite democratic that this be done. If any persons are not present, this cannot affect the position that an absolute majority of senators must approve the proposal in the way it has been dealt with at the moment. Nothing is to be achieved by a call of the Senate. In fact, I would suggest that we could very well do without it. If we think that any measure requires some deliberation, we can take the deliberation. But why we should have to have this call of the Senate for such a proposal is beyond me. The logical position which the honourable senator suggests is that notwithstanding that there is an absolute majority ready to pass the matter we should stand this over until Christmas Day- 2 1 days from today- and all assemble here and deal with it then. I do not think that that is a very rational way of dealing with the issue. Nor do I think, as Senator Wright suggests, that we should postpone all this legislation. Why not deal with these matters? Why not suspend the standing order, as it ought to be suspended, and then we can go on to debate the issue, and find out whether an absolute majority of senators supports any of the proposals? It seems to me to be perfectly sensible and democratic. Each of those matters has been allowed to stand for some time. They have been here from 20 November, except one which came here on 2 1 November- and before that, they were debated in the House of Representatives. I would suggest, with respect, that the commonsense thing to do is to suspend the standing order. Question put: That the motion (Senator Murphy's). be agreed to. The Senate divided. (The President- Senator Sir Magnus Cormack) 27 23 Majority....... 4 AYES NOES Question so resolved in the affirmative. Sitting suspended from 1.4 to 2 p.m. 2398 bill 2398 Debate resumed from 20 November (vide page 1908), on motion by Senator Murphy: That the Bill be now read a second time. 2398 DV4 Western Australia 0 0 WITHERS, Reg Senator WITHERS - Mr President,the matter before the Senate at the moment is a Bill for an Act to alter the Constitution so as to ensure that the Senate elections are held at the same time as the House of Representatives elections. That is a very noble aspiration. But the initial question one should pose is: Why is this necessary? Why is it necessary to alter the Constitution permanently to bring this about? I believe that this Bill, like so many other actions of this Government, is nothing but an exercise in deception in which the Government is deliberately attempting to deceive the people of Australia. When this Bill was called on for debate in the other place it was said that the title of the Bill was a fraud. In fact, it was said there also that the title did not reflect in any way the intent of the Bill. Once upon a time, of course, the long title of a Bill to amend the Constitution set out what the referendum proposal was to be. But that is not the case in this Bill; neither is it the case in the 3 Bills that are to follow. I commenced by asking: Why is this Bill necessary? I believe it is not necessary. There is no need for a constitutional referendum to ensure that simultaneous elections are held. They may be held by 2 means. Firstly, we can have simultaneous elections at any time that the Prime Minister (Mr Whitlam) likes to go and see the Governor-General because in section 57 of the Constitution there is provision for a double dissolution if there is a disagreement between the 2 Houses. If my memory serves me correctly, there has been the opportunity for the Government to request the Governor-General to grant a double dissolution ever since August or September. A double dissolution would bring about simultaneous elections of the whole of this chamber and of the House of Representatives. But, Mr President, it is not even necessary to hold a double dissolution to bring the elections for the Senate and the House of Representatives back to the same date. The Government could, if it wished to do so and if it had the courage to do so, take out the House of Representatives at the next Senate election- that is, when those honourable senators who are due to retire at 30 June 1974 have to face their electors. There is no constitutional or legal reason why the Government should not take out the House of Representatives at that time. I should point out that it is not the Senate which is out of step with the House of Representatives but rather the House of Representatives which is out of step with the Senate. 2398 K19 0 0 POKE, Albert Senator Poke That was caused by Sir Robert Menzies. 2398 DV4 0 0 WITHERS, Reg Senator WITHERS I know that. I was about to say that in 1963, as the Senate will recall, Sir Robert Menzies called an election for November or December that year although the House of Representatives need not have gone to the polls until about that date in 1964. The Senate did not cause the House of Representatives to go to the polls one year early in 1963. Therefore, it is not the fault of the Senate that there is this present imbalance between the 2 chambers. The Government can hardly be blamed if it thinks that we regard this Bill with some suspicion. I always have very much in the forefront of my mind the fact that it is part of the platform of the Australian Labor Party to abolish this chamber. I am more convinced, as I see the Government's referendum proposals unfold, that this Bill is but the first step towards carrying out that plank of that platform. As I see it, the whole purpose of this Bill is to lower the status and to weaken the independence of this chamber. I think we ought to remind ourselves occasionally that section 53 of the Constitutionstates: Except as provided in this section, the Senate shall have equal power with the House of Representatives in respect of all proposed laws. I believe that those words ought to be pinned to the front of every member of the Government Party, and especially the Prime Minister and every member of his Cabinet, because the Senate is not meant to be and was never meant to be the junior House of the Parliament. It was never intended to be dependent upon the will of the House of Representatives and, as far as this Party is concerned, it never will be. Without the Senate there would never have been a Commonwealth. We all know that the States never would have agreed to the establishment of the Commonwealth without making provision for a body which would take note of and protect the States and give the people of the less populous States enduring constitutional rights. That is the purpose of the Senate. It was to be the purpose of the Senate in the 1890s and it is still the purpose of the Senate in the 1970s. It was rather hard to listen to the Leader of the Government in the Senate (Senator Murphy) when he introduced this Bill. Senator Murphy has, for long, projected himself as the champion of the Senate, but I believe that he was in cahoots with the Prime Minister in an attempt to put into operation a proposal contained in the platform of the Australian Labor Party—namely , the abolition of the Senate. The intent is hidden behind this Bill before us, but it is a mark of the Government's true intentions in the same way as the Electoral Bill, which we defeated in August, was but a mark of its true intentions. In that Bill, as honourable senators may recall, the Government claimed to seek one vote one value; but in another Bill, which we will be discussing here soon, the Government, through a referendum, will seek to incorporate in our Constitution not an electoral system which represents one vote one value but one which talks of having equal numbers of people in electorates instead of equal numbers of electors in electorates. The slogan 'one vote one value' has been a phony slogan ever since the commencement of this Parliament in February. By this stage we ought to be used to the way in which this Government works. It attempts to deceive the public and it is attempting a referendum fraud upon the electors. We members of the Opposition Party in this chamber will have no part in that deception and fraud and we will expose measures, such as this, which are simply a front designed to achieve the Labor Party's platform. The partiamentary process is enhanced by the Senate. We know that this is the House of the Parliament which gives real meaning to the word 'Parliament'. In this chamber amendments have been moved to legislation which, because of the highly political character of the House of Representatives, would not have been possible in that chamber. The Senate has provided a forum for partiamentary action. We know that this is something which the present Government would like to destroy. The present Government wants to downgrade the Parliament, especially the Senate, because the Senate today is giving real meaning to the parliamentary process. Parliament to the Labor Party is meaningless. Its orders and actions are dictated by its Federal Executive or its Caucus, and what occurs in the parliamentary forum is irrelevant to the present Government. Members of the Government Party are unable to vote on any matter according to their consciences or according to the wish of their electors. They do not even have a conscience unless Caucus decides that they do. Honourable senators on the Government side should stand and say whether they believe in the Senate. If they do they will be the first to oppose this insidious measure which is aimed at downgrading it and which is the first step on the way to its abolition. Honourable senators in the Labor Party who do not believe in the Senate should not be here, receiving payment for services in a chamber which they do not support. They ought to be ashamed of themselves, especially when one reason put forward by the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Government in the Senate for a referendum on this subject is the cost saving in not having to hold separate Senate elections. One ought to recall that the cost of a separate Senate election is approximately the same as purchasing 'Blue Poles', that by now well known piece of art by either one or more sober or otherwise artists. Therefore, it is easy to see how highly democratic procedures are valued by this Government when it complains of the cost of an election. Yet the cost of election is infinitesimal when compared with this Government's spending. I would have thought that a government which claims to be democratic would have welcomed elections, because democracy cannot be measured in monetary terms. A lot is being said today about the honesty of the Government in seeking referendums, and a matter of honesty can be seen in the second reading speech in the other place of the Prime Minister on this Bill when he said: . . it takes up the unanimous recommendations, dating back as far as 19S8, of the Joint Parliamentary Committee on Constitutional Review. Needless to say, when the Bill was introduced into this place the Leader of the Government in the Senate deleted the reference to 'unanimous' for, as he and others, especially the Prime Minister, who sat on that Committee would be aware, Senator Wright who sat on that Committee put in a dissenting report. I believe that that example was but another example of the underhand tactics not of Australia's Cassius Clay but rather of Australia's General Amin, as one learned academic has referred to the Prime Minister. I am quite certain that Senator Wright will be able to speak for himself and give the reasons which he advanced in the report of the Joint Par-liamentary Committee. The Senate is not an echo, nor was it intended to be. Senators are elected for a 6-year term. When one considers the megalomania of the present Government one can see the wisdom of those who drew up the Constitution. It is the Senate, and the Senate alone, which stands between the complete arbitrary power which is being sought by this Government and the individual rights and liberties of the Australian people. Any attempt to destroy the Senate's independence as a chamber of this Parliament must be opposed for the good of the Australian people. This Bill is far too important to be decided upon by the Senate as a result of a debate in the last few weeks of a busy parliamentary year. The Bill affects the future of this chamber. It ought to be examined in depth by senators, both as to its constitutional imputations and as to its effect upon the working of this chamber. Referenda Bills have been coming in and out of the place as the Prime Minister has thoughts about them. In spite of the fact that there was a Constitutional Convention, which was set up in co-operation with the State governments and in co-operation with all parties in this Parliament, to investigate in depth and in detail the previous 70 years working of the Constitution, to see whether the Constitution ought to be amended, to see what powers ought to be transferred either up or down between the Commonwealth and the States and to see what ought to be the new structure to take Australia into the next century and in spite of the work that is being done, the Prime Minister and his Government, whenever the spirit moves them, rush another Bill into this Parliament. This Bill is not all about whether the 2 Houses ought to come together for election on polling day; it is much deeper than that. I believe that the Senate would not be doing justice to itself if it voted at this stage either for or against the Bill. The Bill has very long term imptications for the Senate and for the Constitution as such because it does not deal with something which will be temporary, it deals with something which will be written into the Constitution, which will be permanent and which will remain if carried by a majority of electors in a majority of the States until another referendum is held. I do not believe that the people of Australia ought to be asked to vote upon a matter of this substance without their having a proper opportunity to realise the implications contained in this referendum proposal. It is for those reasons that in relation to the motion that the Bill be now read a second time I move: Leave out all words after 'That', insert 'this Bill be referred to the Standing Committee on Constitutional and Legal Affairs for inquiry and report to the Senate as soon as possible, but not later than the first sitting day after 1 February 1974.' 2400 K1F 0 0 POYSER, Arthur Senator Poyser - How cheeky can you be? 2400 DV4 0 0 WITHERS, Reg Senator WITHERS I fail to see how it is cheeky for the Senate, by the vote of a majority of senators, to send a Bill to a committee which was set up as a result of a motion by the Government when in Opposition—se t up as a result of a motion by the honourable senator who projected himself as Mr Senate—an d which should do what I am proposing that it ought to do. One would have thought that one of the ideas of the standing committees of the Senate would be that they would deal with such proposals, that they would provide a forum at which people could put varying views and at which the media might have an opportunity to see the arguments for and against proposals. This Bill is not a piece of legislation of minor importance. It is a Bui for an Act to amend the Constitution. For some reason or other the Government appears to have the idea that these Bills are not of great public importance. They are the most important Bills which could be introduced into this Parliament. Any Bill which seeks to amend the Constitution will alter and will affect the lives of Australians for generations to come. It is for that reason and for the others which I have given that I have moved the amendment. I commend the amendment to the Senate. 2401 10000 0 0 PRESIDENT, The The PRESIDENT Order! Is the amendment seconded? 2401 KQN 0 0 LAUCKE, Condor Senator Laucke - I second the amendment. 2401 KUD Victoria Leader of the Australian Democratic Labor Party 0 0 MCMANUS, Francis Senator McMANUS -This Bill has as its objective the coordination of elections for the Senate and the House of Representatives. It is a most important Bill because it could affect, firstly, the independence of the Senate and, secondly, its existence as a House of review. I point out that it is possible for the Government to co-ordinate the election of both houses without a referendum and without constitutional change. What more ideal moment could there be than the present moment when the Government states that it is being obstructed by the Senate, when the Government has announced that if the Senate attempts to make the Prime Minister (Mr Whitlam) carry out his promise to preserve basic grants for all schools the Government will deprive the children of Australia of hundreds of thousands of dollars of educational aid and when the Government says that it believes that this issue is so vital that it wants to hold an election? What more ideal moment than the present to co-ordinate the election of the 2 Houses by a double dissolution and an election within the next two or three weeks? I cannot understand the silence from the Government benches. This is the Government's ideal opportunity. It is not prepared to take the opportunity. Instead it proposes to spend hundreds and thousands of dollars on an election and on a referendum when there is no real need for it. There could have been an election if we had defeated the Appropriation Bill only last week. 2401 K1F 0 0 POYSER, Arthur Senator Poyser Wh y did not you defeat it? 2401 KUD 0 0 MCMANUS, Francis Senator McMANUS I did not defeat the Appropriation Bill because the Leader of the Government in the Senate (Senator Murphy) said that he wished us to pass the Bill because the Government would not pay wages if we defeated it. Therefore I was looking after the wage earners in the community. I hope that Senator Poyser is not so far from concern with the wage earners in the community that he does not agree with what the Labor Government did. The Government could have had an election and co-ordinated the elections of the Senate and the House of Representatives. But what did it do? It was so frightened that we might not pass the Appropriation Bill that it did not bring on the Appropriation Bill for debate until the last possible moment. The Government came to us and said 'If you do not pass it now the workers will not get their wages. So you will have to pass it'. Now we have this proposition put to us by people who say that they want the Senate and the House of Representatives to go to an election at the same time, but they do everything they possibly can to prevent it from happening and say: 'We will ave a referendum'. We all know that it is not easy to get Australians to vote affirmatively at referenda. To bring about simultaneous elections by referendum is difficult, but the Governmentcould do it in Cabinet this afternoon without any referendum and without any big sums of money being expended. I say straight out that the Government has not got the intestinal fortitude to have an election and bring the elections of the 2 Houses together. It is plain scared. I was on a platform in the Melbourne Festival Hall and heard the Prime Minister promise that under a Labor Government no school would receive any less aid than it was getting at that time and that the basic grants would be continued. He got a tremendous ovation and, God forgive me, I cheered with the rest. What is he doing today? The same Prime Miuister who promised amid the applauding thousands that he would retain the basic grants has sent a telegram to the States informing them that if the Senate tries to make him keep his promise he will take hundreds of thousands of dollars away from the ordinary Australian school cluid. I cannot understand honourable men on the Government side—ther e are men there who are honourable and believe in keeping their promises—refusin g to make the Prime Minister keep his promise. There are stories about that he even wrote to the Karmel Committee telling it to break his promise. He has been asked the question whether he wrote to the Karmel Committee and asked it to break his promise, and the only reply that can be got from him is that he will neither confirm nor deny it. Now we are told that the Prime Minister has a very special reason for co-ordinating the elections of the Senate and the House of Representatives. The reason given by a gentleman in the House of Representatives who has an outstanding sense of honour—Mr Daly—i s that that is the only way in which to stop the Senate from obstructing the Government. We have heard wonderful claims about the co-operation that Labor oppositions always give. I would like to refer to the Sydney 'Sun' of 26 May 1967 where the following article appeared in connection with this question whether we should co-ordinate the elections of the 2 Houses in order to stop obstruction of an elected government. The writer, a respected correspondent, Mr Allsop, began: The Labor Party is flirting with danger in its aggressive policy of interfering with Government legislation in the Senate. The Prime Minister, Mr Holt, is gradually manoeuvring Mr Whitlam's party into a position where he can force a double dissolution of both Houses of Parliament in order to secure control of the Senate. The Government has lost control of the Senate . . . Mr Holt warned the Senate Opposition on Wednesday it was on a 'collision course' with the Government and the House of Representatives. This was building up into a 'constitutional issue of major dimension between the two Houses,' Mr Holt said. The Government is building up an impressive dossier against the Opposition to demonstrate how it is being frustrated by the Senate, despite its sweeping victory in the House of Representatives last November. The Senate's rejection twice of the Postal Charges Bill is not likely alone to justify Mr Holt . . . forcing the double dissolution. The article continues: In the first sittings of the new Parliament just concluded, the Senate stood the Government up on several pieces of legislation. The article states that the Senate obstructed the Government on the Postal Charges Bill, the Aged Persons Homes Bill and the Home Savings Grant Bill. It states further that the Senate disallowed the regulations increasing the charges for telephones and overseas mail. The article then continues: Mr Holt is carefully cataloguing all this. Just like Gough is doing today. The article goes on: In his efforts to impress, the new Opposition leader in the Senate, Senator Murphy, may be unwittingly playing into Mr Holt's hands And preparing the way for a double dissolution. If we change the names we will have exactly what we are being told here today. We all know that it is bluff. We all know that the Senate has the right at any time to declare its views on legislation before it, and we propose to continue doing that. The Bill before us is a Bill to downgrade the Senate. I think there are some men on the Government side who know it and regret it. They are not all like a distinguished former member of this Senate who sat here with great satisfaction for more than 30 years and on the day that he retired made a speech demanding the Senate's abolition. I think the gentlemen on the other side are more like the Labor senators who years ago moved for the abolition of the Senate. When I attended as a delegate the Australian Labor Party Federal Conference in Adelaide that snake among the chickens, Tom Dougherty, moved that any Labor government should immediately abolish the Senate. Within a few hours we had Labor senators there from all over Australia. I had rheumatism in both shoulders from the tears that they shed at this suggestion that the Senate should be abolished in accordance with Labor pohcy. But everything was right. The well known fixer produced out of the hat a motion that the next Labor Government should abolish the Senate but at the appropriate time. As all the Labor senators said to me that evening: 'We all know there will never be an appropriate time'. They all want to abolish the Senate, but not in their time—a t some other time. Not all of the arguments are against a system in which a Senate election is held between elections for the House of Representatives. There is a good deal to be said for what is called a midterm judgment at a time such as this, for example. It would not be a bad idea if round about next May we have a mid-term judgment on the performance of the Whitlam Government. If we do that the people will be able to show what they want. Instead of having all these wrangles from the Government to the effect that we ought to pass all Government legislation because we should concede that it has a mandate, let us have the election for the Senate in May. If we win it will prove that the people do not want the legislation of the Whitlam Government. If the Whitlam Government wins, it will prove that they do want it. But we will know where we stand. I want to say this: I think that there are differences in the purposes of the 2 Houses of Parliament. Those differences ought to be taken into account. I believe—an d it is generally accepted— tha t the lower house claims that it is the House of government. The Senate is the House of review. There are a lot of arguments against tying the election date of the Senate to that of the House of Representatives. I believe that in their hearts most of the senators on the Government side accept those arguments. The only thing that is forcing them to support this Bill is Party loyalty. I believe that the proposal contained in the Bill would destroy the independence of the Senate. How could we be independent in our determinations if another place, not associated with us, was able to call on us to hold an election at any time that members there had a wrangle and wanted to involve us in it? It would weaken the federal structure. As Senator Withers has said, if a number of the proposals being made by the Labor Party at the present time had been before the convention of the founding fathers in 1900, there would have been no federal government and there would not have been a senate. Six-year terms for senators could be reduced to less than 18 months by mid-term dissolutions of the House of Representatives because of its own internal differences. This occurred in 1929 in another place 7 months after the first meeting of the House. The continuity of the Senate could be destroyed because every time there was a House of Representatives election, 30 senators would go out of office for 3 months while the election took place, whereas under the present arrangements, there are always 60 senators. This constitutes one of the strengths of the Senate. If the Senate lost 30 senators for 3 months every time there was a House of Representatives election, the Senate's committee activity would have to halt for that period. Our greatest power as a Senate is to refuse supply and to bring about a single dissolution where the government's administration is considered not to be in the best interests of the people. That reserve power would be destroyed if 30 senators had to go to the polls every time they had an argument in the other place and were forced to go to the people. If it is desired to bring the elections for the 2 houses together, a simple solution, without referendum or trouble of interfering with the Constitution, would be for the House of Representatives to go to the people when the Senate election is held in a few months time. All the trouble of the referendum and all the expense involved could be saved by one simple measure. But let us be honest. Government members do not have the intestinal fortitude to face an election at the present time. Instead, they go on with this wrangling and mucking about with the Constitution of this country in a way that no person who had any regard for the welfare and the future of the Government and the Senate itself could tolerate. Of course, as I pointed out, this argument about the Senate being obstructionist is an argument that could have applied equally to the Australian Labor Party a few years ago. I quoted chapter and verse. The argument that the Senate is obstructionist and unresponsive to the will of the people was met by an eminent constitutional authority, Professor Sawer, when he spoke to the Senate Standing Committee on Constitutional and Legal Affairs. He said that there is no point in having a House of review unless you have some degree of difference between the points of view of the Houses. He said that that position is obtained more with a staggered system of elections. He asked, in effect: 'Why have a Senate if it is merely going to be a pale replica of the House of Representatives, having to do everything that the House of Representatives wants?' He was commenting in this instance that the system of rotating senators on a staggered system also could reasonably be concluded to embrace separate elections. I think that the members of the Government ought to have regard to the evidence that was given before that Committee. In that evidence it was pointed out that the system of separate elections was a safeguard against a temporary landslide on an issue which might be of particular moment at the time but wliich fundamentally had nothing to recommend it. It could happen in a period of panic or upset that there would be an electoral landslide and a complete reversal of the situation in the Senate. As I said before, the Government has the ways and means, if it wants, of combating obstructionism by arranging a double dissolution. It is interesting to note that the people who are calling for a double dissolution at the present time are not supporters of the Government who say that the Senate is obstructing them and making government ineffective. The people who are calling for a double dissolution are the people on this side of the Senate. If Government supporters think they have sound argument to show that we are obstructing legislation, why is it that they will not go to the people and let them decide the issue? We are quite happy to let the people determine whether we are unnecessarily obstructing legislation. As a matter of fact, I am quite sure that if Mr Whitlam ever decides to go to Government House, we will be happy to go along with him and, if we get the opportunity, present our arguments in support of his request for a double dissolution. We want one. But the people who say that they cannot run the Government properly because of obstruction will not have one. I am quite sure that we will not get one. I want to say that I cannot see one argument in favour of this Bill. We have always been in favour of letting the people decide and we are determined to let the people decide in the case of the referendum. In this case the people can decide. But what better way for the people to decide than at an election? We want this matter determined by an election, not by a referendum. We have offered the Government every opportunity. When they wanted us to defeat a Bill so that within 3 months it could hold a double dissolution, we in the Australian Democratic Labor Party, used to living dangerously as we have been, said: 'Everybody says that we will be the chickens to be axed. But in spite of that for the sake of the country, to help this Government which says it must have a double dissolution to put things on the right track we will help the Government to have a double dissolution'. We have voted accordingly and the Government has everything in train for a double dissolution. The only thing that is lacking now is the intestinal fortitude. 2404 KUS 0 0 MILLINER, Bertie Senator Milliner - I will come back on that. 2404 KUD 0 0 MCMANUS, Francis Senator McMANUS -I am pleased to hear that Senator Milliner is on our side. Apparently, there is one man in the Government who has the courage to face up to it. I am pleased to know that Senator Milliner, an old fighter from the trade union movement, will be in it even if Cabinet will not. I conclude by saying that it is the easiest thing in the world to achieve the aim of this Bill without having any referendum or going to other trouble. Let there just be a House of Representatives election at the same time as the Senate election. Although I have been trying to think of anything more that DLP members can do to help the Government have an election on this matter, 1 cannot think of one thing that we have not done. We have gone out of our way to try to provide all facilities for the Government to bring the 2 elections together, but we cannot get any cooperation. The people who are causing obstruction at present are those on the Government side; Opposition senators are facilitating and co-operating. They are doing everything they can to help the Government to have an election. All that stops our having an election and letting the people decide on the matter is that we cannot get the Government to have an election. 2404 KUS 0 0 MILLINER, Bertie Senator Milliner - Do you want a double dissolution? 2404 KUD 0 0 MCMANUS, Francis Senator McMANUS Anything you like 2404 KUS 0 0 MILLINER, Bertie Senator Milliner - Come on, answer yes or no. Now who has not got the intestinal fortitude? 2404 KUD 0 0 MCMANUS, Francis Senator McMANUS Senator Milliner knows perfectly well that for months his Government has had everything squared up and has only had to go to the Governor-General and say: 'We want a double dissolution'. 2404 KUS 0 0 MILLINER, Bertie Senator Milliner - What about a double dissolution? 2404 KUD 0 0 MCMANUS, Francis Senator McMANUS And the Governor-General will say yes. Senator Milliner asks whether I want a double dissolution. I have already said that we have provided the way to bring this about tomorrow. The people we cannot get to go to the Governor-General are the Prime Minister and all the senators on Senator Milliner's side. I am a bit disappointed. I can remember, on the famous occasion of the previous double dissolution, a prominent member of the Victorian branch of the Australian Labor Party—h e was prominent in the Government too—comin g to see me and telling me that they were going to stand the Government up. I said: 'Are you sure you are on the right tram?' He said: 'Oh, the Liberals will not get a double dissolution; I have known Billy McKell too long to think he would turn down his mates'. Of course, Mr McKell acted with the utmost propriety. He accepted the advice of his Ministers. Any Government, Labor or otherwise, must acknowledge that the Governor-General must accept the advice of his Ministers, and Mr McKell did what was right without any regard to previous political considerations. I would hate to repeat the remarks of the same prorninent member of the Labor Party after Mr McKell had agreed to the double dissolution. As a result of that it is now accepted that the Governor-General, if he is asked to take action with regard to a double dissolution, will accept the advice of his Ministers. Therefore, the Bill is unnecessary. We do not need to hold a referendum in 5 months time, as Mr Whitlam can go straight over to the Governor- General tomorrow. Then we can have an election and all these matters will be settled. I do not think Government senators could have realised the true position. Now that I have explained it to them, I look forward with confidence to a motion being carried in the Labor Caucus tomorrow instructing Mr Whitlam to go immediately to the Governor-General. 2404 JXR Western Australia Leader of the Australian Country Party in the Senate 0 0 DRAKE-BROCKMAN, Thomas Senator DRAKE-BROCKMAN - Only a fortnight ago, when this house was debating the Senate (Representation of Territories) Bill, I drew attention to the fact that the provisions of that Bill represented the thin edge of the wedge in the destruction of the independence of the Senate, and perhaps of the Senate itself. Now we have before us a measure that I believe would drive the wedge deeper. We are told that the main provisions of the Bill are for a new section in the Constitution giving senators a term equal to 2 terms in the House of Representatives, and for simultaneous elections of both Houses. The Prime Minister said in his second reading speech, when this Bill was introduced in another place, that there was no derogation in the proposal from the authority or responsibility of either House, but there were great benefits. The benefits, he said, were in public convenience and worthwhile savings of expenditure, and, most of all, the benefit to Parliament of having the reflection in both Houses simultaneously of the people's will, so that the Government and the Parliament might get on with the job. I believe that we can discount the first two benefits claimed by the Prime Minister. This Government has not shown itself in 12 months of office to be one concerned with the convenience of people. Does the Prime Minister seriously ask the people of Australia to believe that cost saving is one reason why his Government wants to hold Senate and House of Representatives elections at the same time? That is utter rubbish. We know that Labor has a warped sense of proportion and priority where expense is concerned, but a Government which contributes heavily and unashamedly to the rate of inflation through the totality of its own expenditure is most unlikely seriously to consider austerity in the form of reduced election costs. This is merely a red herring, a feeble attempt to disguise the real purpose. So it is the Prime Minister's third reason, so called, that we need to deal with in this debate. By his own admission, what the Prime Minister wants by the medium of this legislation is a majority in both Houses so that legislation brought forward by his Government-the good legislation, the bad legislation, and the indifferent legislation- can be given a free passage. Neither he nor his Ministers or back benchers can tolerate the thorough review to which Labor legislation has been subjected this year in this chamber. The great strength and the great value of the Senate is its independence, and the Constitution, as it now stands, gives it that independence. Take that away and the Senate would become a useless rubber-stamp of the Executive Government's decisions. 2405 KVK 0 0 MULVIHILL, James Senator Mulvihill Even if the Government has a mandate 2404 JXR 0 0 DRAKE-BROCKMAN, Thomas Senator DRAKE-BROCKMAN And I have heard members of the Labor Party say that time and time again 2405 KVK 0 0 MULVIHILL, James Senator Mulvihill - What about the mandate? What about the voice of the people? 2404 JXR 0 0 DRAKE-BROCKMAN, Thomas Senator DRAKE-BROCKMAN I would like to try that mandate on now, just as Senator MeManus would, to see whether it still exists after 12 months. I believe that this is the Labor Government's backdoor plan, an attempt to render the Senate useless by having it reflect similar electoral opinion to that of the House of Representatives. And, when that is achieved, the logical next step, in tine with Labor policy, is to argue the Senate's uselessness. Then the way is open to go to the people and ask them to abolish the Senate. Should there be any remaining doubt about Labor's wish to abolish the Senate, let me quote a statement made by the Minister for Minerals and Energy, Mr Connor, in the House of Representatives on 28 November. By interjection, the Minister was asked: Do you not realise that the Senate is duly elected also and that it is pan of the constitutional structure? The Minister's reply was as follows: It is miles behind the times. The Senate is merely playing a partisan role. We are happy for it to do so, to put the noose right around its neck and we will hang it in due course, and it deserves it. Is the Labor Party trying to get rid of the Senate? I submit there is no doubt that is the Government's long-term intention. If the Government wanted to rid itself of the frustration it claims it surfers at the hands of the present Senate, why does it not ask the people to resolve the issue by the quick and honest available means— a double dissolution of which Senator MeManus spoke? It does the Government no credit that it chooses not to go to a double dissolution but prefers instead to attempt to achieve its aim by the stealth of the disguise in this Bill. It does not always happen that Opposition parties in the Senate hold a majority after an independent Senate election. But when it does happen, that is the price of democracy and, as the Leader of the Opposition, Mr Snedden, said in debate on this Bill in the other place, democracy is worth it. Remove the possibility of the Senate expressing a different electoral view from the Government of the day and one pillar of democracy crumbles. The non-Labor Opposition in the Senate this year fortunately has been able to reveal to the people how quickly democracy and freedom would disappear under a socialist Government. This Bill should be rejected and I want to make it clear to the Government that the Country Party will ensure that the people fully understand the proposal. Having said that, and having listened to Senate Withers, the Leader of the Opposition in the Senate, I am quite prepared for this Bill to be referred to the Senate Standing Committee on Constitutional and Legal Affairs for inquiry and report. 2405 RG4 0 0 GIETZELT, Arthur Senator Gietzelt - That is just a subterfuge, and you know it. 2404 JXR 0 0 DRAKE-BROCKMAN, Thomas Senator DRAKE-BROCKMAN Senator, if you do not want that then I will join with Senator MeManus and vote against the Bill. But I am prepared to give the Government the opportunity of putting it's case fairly and of getting experts to go before the Committee to give a view—perhap s a contrary view. I believe that the proposal which will give people a chance to understand those views is much better than action which would reject this Bill outright. So I , and my Country Party colleagues behind me, will support the amendment moved by the Leader of the Opposition in the Senate. 2406 KBW Tasmania 0 0 WRIGHT, Reginald Senator WRIGHT -We are dealing with a Bill the subject matter of which a committee of which I was a member in 1959 considered and made a report. That committee was constituted by a joint agreement of all parties then represented in the Parliament. This committee was supposed to represent a formidable approach to the issue of constitutional review reform. Of course, the committee brought forth one mouse which was successfully scotched in the nexus referendum. The Bill that is now before us is related to another proposal put forward by the committee. I think it is pertinent to consider what may have taken place in the intervening 14 or 15 years since that committee made its report. Undoubtedly the project of 1959 had become pointed in one direction- to alter the status and the operation of the Senate. Several proposals were then put forward not only in regard to simultaneous elections, which is the subject of this Bill, but also one to avoid consulting the people on a deadlock issue. There were other proposals. But undoubtedly the pre-occupation of the proponents of that constitutional review program was, in some way, to make the Senate conform. That was the situation in 1959. In the 10 years following 1949, the Senate, under the old system of voting, was almost a rubber stamp of the government of the day. Elections held under the block system were so designed to automatically produce a majority in this chamber for the party which had been voted into the majority of places in the House of Government. So long as this system was maintained it was immaterial whether or not simultaneous elections were held. Between 1949 and 1959 we had only the slightest indications of independence of thought in this chamber. There were a few- and they were growing- and it could be foreseen that if this chamber operated according to its independent judgment life would not be so happy and so complacent for governments in another place. As one of the members of that committee in 1959 1 took the responsibility of dissenting from the majority report of the committee that favoured the proposal for simultaneous elections. At that time the Senate was still a place of potential promise, a place where policy could be influenced and in some cases evolved. The Senate at that time remembered that it was constituted by the Constitution in a different fashion from the House of Representatives for the very purpose of having a different approach on proper matters. As Senator Withers said in the course of his speech this afternoon, unless there had been a different approach and a different constitution of the Senate there would never have been any Federation. In the 1890s when Federation was being discussed it had first to be determined whether the 6 States would come to the conventions. It was only on the basis that each State had equal representation in the Senate, or the States House as it was called then, that there was the beginnings of interest and agreement. Despite the experience of 70 or 80 years and with all that velocity of development that has taken place those 6 States remain 6 entities and will continue to do so with their own different and independent outlooks for the time that we have experience in politics. The peoples of those States, and not the Governments of those States, are joined here in Canberra and are represented by senators. On the occasions when State interests are at issue the Senate is quite capable of so emphasising the State issues as to be an important outlet for State political points of view. No government in this place would dare move in regard to an industry, such as the sugar industry in Queensland, without being satisfied that the senators from Queensland were in agreement with the proposal. This would be the case also in regard to island shipping for Tasmania or the apple industry of which Tasmania produces 70 to 80 per cent of Australia's exports in this field. So I simply make the point clear that in 1959 honourable senators represented State interests and had some influence on the Government of the day. The second point I wish to make about the constitution of the Senate is that honourable senators are elected for a term of 6 years. That, in the minds of the thoughtful framers of the Constitution, would give, and it has given to this place, a stability that is not available under the Westminster system to the House responsive to the responsible Government down below. It was a great experiment that was designed to try to reconcile all the demands of responsible government and all the experience of responsible government with a federal system of government. It had not been essayed in America. The people who assembled at our conventions were quite conscious of the challenge of making the system of responsible government operate. If we were to turn our minds for a minute to the changes that have come about in the operation of responsible government since 1900 we would see that the Prime Minister who took his lower House to the country at that time purely for political purposes would be scarified by the electorate, but today it has become the convention. At that time if the Prime Minister took his Party to the country on other than some important policy issue he would be condemned for that alone. Today Mr Heath, Mr Whitlam and Mr Trudeau are sniffing the wind not for the purpose of ascertaining whether there is an issue worthy of an election but for the purpose of ascertaining whether the breeze is blowing favourably and whether it would be propitious to go to the country. Hence Mr Whitlam 's nervousness and, in a sense, hesitation in the aura of the recent election in New South Wales. He just wants to know what his chances are. Irrespective of whether he had another 3 months or 2 years of his 3-year term to run he would, if he thought it was favourable for party political purposes to do so, force an election. That sort of thing is condoned. That attitude has been engendered by the predominant influence which the political commentators have over the situation today. Parliament has allowed them to take over the expression of political will and has not required them to write the political will as expressed by parliamentarians. In an era in which such a system has been developed it is doubly important to maintain the importance of a fixed term of election for the House which has to oppose a government which has a majority. That is most important if we are to have stability of government and a degree of responsibility. Having given the Senate that 6-year term the Constitution founders said: 'There is only one event in which the Senate can be dissolved'. I should think, relying on memory, that that event would have been debated more than any other single issue in the Convention debates. In what circumstances can the States House be dissolved so that the Government, recruited in the main from the two or perhaps three most populous States, could overawe the Senate? Because the wilting of the Senate that took place between 1 900 and 1 949 had not been experienced in 1 900 and because it was expected to be a bulwark of State rights, it was decided that the Senate should not be subject to the whim of Whitlam or any other person who occupies the position of head of government. Whoever he may be, the Senate is not to be at the whim of the Prime Minister of the day as to whether it is to be struck down and dissolved. But if the House of Representatives puts an issue to the Senate and the Senate rejects it or fails to pass it and the House of Representatives proposes it to the Senate a second time, it is possible for the Prime Minister of the day to go to the Governor-General and get a provision for the double dissolution of Parliament a simultaneous dissolution of both Houses. The issue upon which the Senate has stacked its existence is then made prominent in the minds of the people. That issue then can be expected to be determined by the people with that in mind. As I stand here and remind myself of the arguments that persuaded me in 1959 to dissent from the views of the other eleven, it is not much wonder that I stood my ground because as I restate the arguments I am more than ever convinced that the Senate needs the constitutional stability and safeguards to which I have referred. But I do not approach the matter in 1973 with the same experience before me as I had in 1959. The intervening 14 years of experience have been most pregnant from the point of view of exhibiting the political potential of which this chamber is capable. There are some in the Senate who think that the committee system began in a recent era. If they were to study the debates they would learn that a very patient campaign carried on through the 1950s and accentuated in the early 1960s resulted in the gradual acceptance by the Government of a committee system in the Senate. For example, many years ago it was suggested that we should have Estimates Committees of the type we have now. If I may direct an observation to you personally, Mr President, and not to you as the occupant of the Chair, you will remember a very important committee was set up when it was proposed to amalgamate and, indeed, emasculate the amendable Bill of appropriation. In that and in the Estimates Committees the Senate has shown its strength with regard to the examination of appropriations- a strength not always maintained, a strength which was miserably and disgracefully ruined last week when we had an impulsive guillotine thrown upon us at half past four in the afternoon of the last day upon which the Government could get appropriation, so it was said, and enough members of this chamber were prepared to go along with it to enable a social party to begin at ten past six in the afternoon. Those who do not see that the programming of Parliament requires the Appropriation Bill to come on a month before it has to go through are sadly blind to the degree to which, simply by maneouvring, the power of the Senate over appropriation can be thwarted. But enough of that. I am saying that in the Estimates Committees the Senate has grown in strength. We had a suggestion the other day that if the Senate probed too far in the Estimates Committees we would have to reconsider their existence. So said Senator Murphy who, in halcyon days, claimed to be something of a protagonist of those committees. I do not think that the Senate will ever allow the Senate committee system to be terminated. Through not only the Senate committees but through other committees dealing with the innermost and most dynamic fields of policy the Senate has been probing and expressing opinion and carrying into effect policy that in 1959 it was never dreamed would be the responsibility of the Senate. If my dissenting report is perused- I had not looked at it for 10 years until I brought it in here and I had not thought of this remark- it will be seen that I quoted there that in its first 50 years of existence the United States Senate was made light of and that jests were made that the senators could be found going to the House of Representatives to observe the proceedings there, and that they were insignificant and of no account. I prophesised that the first 50 fameless years of this Senate would reproduce the American experience. Since the constitution of our select and standing committees the Senate has had a great impact upon policy. I believe that it is probably the most formidable agency for responding to the people's will when the Government submits its legislative program to Parliament, due to some extent to the lack of real political perception of the media, and to some extent to the people. If in 1959 it was essential to maintain the separate independent status of the Senate for its proper purposes, in 1973 it is ever so much more important to do so. I rise briefly to expound a point of view which although not very much listened to in this place is, I am sure, appreciated by those who out of principle make constitutional study their preoccupation, that it is necessary that we remind ourselves from time to time of the reasons why these differences exist. If we should fall victim to the myopia that seems to be clouding the outlook of the present Prime Minister (Mr Whitlam) and vote for a Bill that is designed to make the Senate the echo of a government party on the hustings every time an election is held for the House of Representatives, it would mean, I think, that we would be doing less than our duty. A dissolution of the House of Representatives takes place as I have pointed out, not only because of matters of high principle that have been debated in Parliament. It may take place because of the purely fortuitous circumstance that leaders disagree. If there were today an ambitious contention between 2 members of the governing party in the House of Representatives, the Government might fall. Half of the Senate is to go to an election next year. Suppose that we had an incident similiar to the one that we witnessed this morning involving the Minister for Aboriginal Affairs (Senator Cavanagh) and the Government nominee on the board of Applied Ecology Pty Ltd (Senator Georges) arising from the dismissal last week by the directors of the Government expert, Dr Bustard, after which the Government yesterday presumably summoned up its courage and said: 'No, we are going to keep Dr Bustard but we are going to remove the directors'. If we were a Party of a government that might very well create in Caucus tomorrow morning such a situation that there would be an election which would take the other House to the people. I would like to think of them going along the beach like a group of turtles following the whimsies of Mr Whitlam 's whimsicality. So I just pause for a little silent pity towards the author of this proposal; and the more so when I reflect on how he has masqueraded as a constitutional constructor. A constitutional convention was in the wind when he came into office, and he said he would support it. He went along and, after certain discussion, he produced a great idea. 'In the Constitution, I have pointed out', said Mr Whitlam to the assembled Convention in Sydney, 'it is possible only for the States to refer matters to the Commonwealth. I suggest the reciprocal process should operate: It should be possible for the Commonwealth to refer matters to the States'. What a magnificent condescension! How original! If honourable senators recall the piece of paper- the statement, or whatever it is called- that they put out after these conventions, this was the great idea. Then Caucus met and it said: 'We are not going to have any of this funny business. We want a referendum on prices'. And it said: 'We won't have anything on incomes'. No. But next week Mr Prime Minister said: 'Unless you include incomes, I am finished '. So, Mr Hawke being silent, Caucus succumbed, and we are told a great impression was produced. And then the Democratic Labor Party took a hand in it- and of that I will say nothing. The difference between the 2 referenda has been referred to by Senator Webster briefly when arguing about suspension of the Standing Order. He was required to confine himself to the title and its truth. I just want to reinforce what he said by reference to the way the convolutions of Mr Whitlam 's constitutional mind go. He has come forward out of Caucus, not with a proposal to control incomes as was agreed to about prices, but a constitutional proposal with respect to incomes. In the course of the second reading debate, Senator Murphy said: 'I want you to know that this power, if given, will not be exercised always in a negative sense. It will enable the Australian Parliament to give those guarantees which hitherto the States alone have given'. Always curious to know how these great minds work, I asked a question. I was told quite frankly that it would enable the Australian Parliament to fix the basic wage and to legislate, possibly, for hours of work and for sick leave, annual leave, long service leave and all the other safeguards of wages. That was the second contribution by Mr Whitlam to this process of constitutional study. It is like a boy licking his fingers after eating a toffee apple. Mr Whitlam has made a couple of proposals and he says: 'We might do a little more of this making constitutional proposals'. So we have these 4 sticky proposals which will be before us this afternoon. We have before us now this proposal dealing with simultaneous elections. This must be the joke of the whole session. As Senator McManus has pointed out so clearly, if bringing the elections of this Parliament into gear is the desideratum of those who are concerned about the expenditure of $2m in order to consult the people in the election of the Senate, is that mere waste or gross extravagance in relation to the purchase of 'Blue Poles'- blue, black or brindle; I do not care what it is called- which is a bit of duco stuck on canvass and for which the agent's fee was $100,000? Dear, oh dear, the economic sense of the Government which deters it from going to the people. Let us both go together. Let us go on this occasion, now that the Senate has stipulated the things upon which it is in definite disagreement and registered its stand so that double dissolution circumstances have occurred. The opportunity faces the Government now, if it has the courage to go to the country and so bring the elections for the Houses together. But a government which manages turtles and the purchase of a painting such as 'Blue Poles' as it does will not do so. It offered $8m towards the cost of draining Lake Pedder and resuscitating a button grass plain in order to form a warm habitat for 6 varieties of broad tongued rats or other things that are found there. The other day my good friend Senator Webster reminded me of these things. I was advocating a national view in relation to the seas and submerged lands. Senator Webster was taking a State view. I turned around and said to him 'Troglodyte', in happy memory of the visit which we paid to New Guinea, where we saw the mud men. I pictured the fiat, muddy floor of Lake Pedder and thought that one word would be sufficient for understanding. The poor people up in the Press Gallery say that I turned in acrimony. God help us. May they acquire a little humour and broadness of outlook. This Government offered $8m to drain Lake Pedder which is a magnificent body of water, 93 square miles in area and 50 feet in depth. It is the loveliest and the major water storage in the southern hemisphere. The Government offered $8m to drain that. Yet it wants to avoid a Senate election because that will cost $2m. Do honourable senators think that that is prudence? Do honourable members think that is real political intelligence? I hope that we will be able to reflect these views properly before the country shortly. I support the proposal that this Bill be subjected to the scrutiny of the Senate Standing Committee on Constitutional and Legal Affairs. That Committee has representation from all sections of this Parliament. It would be interesting to see just what the Government members on that Committee, on sober consideration, would say. It is my experience that committee operations bring forward a detachment from partisan or party considerations. I think that an objective report from the Senate Standing Committee on this issue at this time would be most valuable for the record and as a guide to this chamber. For myself, I would prefer to see the Bill go before the Committee; but, if not, I think that it should be defeated. 2409 KBL Queensland 0 0 WOOD, Ian Senator WOOD -As one who has always stood for the independence of this chamber, I think that I should say a few words in connection with this Constitution Alteration (Simultaneous Elections) Bill. The matter has been set out by the previous speaker, Senator Wright, in a very able manner. Senator McManus also brought a very good, practical, down to earth approach to the matter. Over the years this chamber has developed to a stage which, possibly, at one time people felt it would not reach. I think it can be truly said that today the Senate plays a much more important part than it did some few years ago. The way in which the committee system has developed and the approach of the Senate in certain ways and to various subjects have been outlined. I think that this has all been to the good so far as the legislatures of this Commonwealth are concerned. I feel that nothing should be done to detract from the passage which the Senate has been travelling for some years. It would be tragic if things were done to deflect the Senate from the approach which it has been making and from the development which has been achieved. As has been pointed out, the need for the synchronisation of elections has not been brought about by the Senate. As has been clearly stated, it has been brought about by the people in the other place. I do not think it is a very good move at all to change the Constitution to enable this place to be taken to an election every time the House of Representatives decides to go to an election. It is quite possible that in the other place situations may develop from time to time which may bring about more elections than are being held now because of the elections for the Houses being out of tune with each other. From the Senate's point of view, having a Senate election apart from the House of Representatives election focusses attention on the Senate much more than when the 2 Houses go to the polls together. In the past the tendency was always to cloud the issue of the Senate by featuring the House of Representatives to such a great extent. I know that people in the other place like to feel that they dominate and, as a consequence, they like to put the Senate in an inferior position. But it has been recognised by members in that other place that over recent years the Senate has made strides of which they are envious. I remember that about 18 months or a couple of years ago, when the Senate Estimates committee system had been established, on 2 occasions then Opposition members- now Government membersin the other place stood up and asked: Why cannot we do this? Why cannot we do that? The Senate does it. We are just so and so'. The honourable members meant that today the Senate is a House of very great importance. On another day members of the House of Representatives who are members of the Party of which I am a member stood up and said almost the same. It was an indication in their minds that the Senate was achieving things, was going places and was developing to a much higher status than it had attained before. I think that this is all to the good of the parliamentary system of this country. We do not want to let people in the other place do their best to destroy the Senate. I have no hesitation in saying that because I know what has been said to me by the person concerned. The present Prime Minister (Mr Whitlam) - arrogant Gough- hates the Senate and would love to see the Senate reduced considerably in stature. 2410 KRG 0 0 LILLICO, Alexander Senator Lillico Did you say that he was arrogant? 2410 KBL 0 0 WOOD, Ian Senator WOOD I said he was arrogant. His wife says that he is arrogant. Of course he is arrogant. His wife says that he is entitled to be arrogant. No person is entitled to be arrogant because arrogant people treat the views of other people with contempt. No one should look at other people with contempt because we are all human beings. I know that the Prime Minister hates the Senate and that his views of senators are derogatory. It is a bad thing for a person occupying the position of Prime Minister to think of people in this chamber and to think of this chamber in that way. This Bill will not be of advantage to the Senate. I want to say in fairness that, apart from any Party arguments that take place, the Leader of the Government in the Senate, Senator Murphy, is, I believe, honestly and sincerely keen to lift the Senate to the highest possibly partiamentary standard. In that respect I pay him the tribute of saying that I believe he is a true parliamentaria 2410 KRG 0 0 LILLICO, Alexander Senator Lillico - He took the rise out of you this morning. 2410 KBL 0 0 WOOD, Ian Senator WOOD H e did not take the rise out of me because what I said was the truth. The Leader of the Government in the Senate, as Attorney-General has to draw up this legislation. 2410 KRG 0 0 LILLICO, Alexander Senator Lillico - He had too many guns for you this morning. 2410 KBL 0 0 WOOD, Ian Senator WOOD No , he did not have too many guns because I told him the truth. He, as Attorney-General, has to respond to the demands of his Government. I know that at all times he tries to lift this Senate to the highest possible parliamentary standard. People who do that in this chamber play a very noble part in the parliament of this country. Throughout the years that I have been here Senator Wright, who spoke before me, has been one member who has done a great job in helping to build this Senate on an independent basis. I have heard some very fine contributions from him at times and I believe that future history will show that his efforts were fine attempts to raise this Senate to the standard at which it should be and which it is now achieving. Having been in this chamber for 24 years this month I can recognise that the Senate has made great progress and that big changes have taken place. I believe the Senate today is a chamber of which the people can be proud. I have no hesitation in saying that it is necessary to retain the present Constitution and for senators to fight the battle before the people on their own polling day. This, I believe, brings more and more to the minds of the people of Australia the great value of the Senate. Despite what has been said about the Senate delaying legislation this year the Senate will have passed a record number of Bills. Because of the welter of legislation which has come forward it has no doubt been impossible for everybody to assimilate it. If some legislation has been delayed it has not been just for the purpose of delaying but to provide time in which to see things properly. I do not think anybody should expect a parliamentarian to vote for legislation unless he really knows what it is about. The Senate today is putting legislation through at a very fast rate but is giving, I hope, the necessary scrutiny that is required by parliamentarians. I think that the Senate is doing a very good job. If we have to alter legislation at times or if we need more time in which to examine legislation, the Senate is doing its job as I believe it should. I think it can be said that today the Senate is valued more in the minds of the Australian people than it has ever been before. Irrespective of what might be said in a political way about the Senate being obstructive and so on I think that a lot of people today are also saying: 'Thank God there is a Senate'. During the last election campaign I travelled the lonely coastline of north Queensland and passed through various regions. The thing that please me very greatly was that in those places the people, even representatives of the Press and the radio, said that the Senate today was the House that was doing a great job. In fact they said that it was doing the better job of the 2 Houses of Parliament. That is a tribute not only to the Senate as a House of Parliament but to those comprising the Senate. I think it can be truly said that the great majority of senators here take a pride in their House—i n the Senate. I wtil not support any referendum or anything else to alter the Constitution in a way that would weaken this House—the s Senate—i n its great march to better things. 2411 KVK 0 0 MULVIHILL, James Senator Mulvihill - What about the cost of separate elections? 2411 KBL 0 0 WOOD, Ian Senator WOOD Thi s may cost money but if democracy is really worth having the spending of $lm' or $2m on another election is of much greater value for the people of Australia than spending it on a few more 'Blue Poles'. If democracy is worth having it is worth paying for. The fact that the Senate has a separate election should not debar us from trying to preserve the Senate as it is. The Senate should not be an appendage of the House of Representatives. That is paramount as far as I am concerned. If that great hater of the Senate, that arrogant gentleman Mr Whidam, is so concerned about the cost of holding separate elections the remedy rests with him. He can bring House of Representatives elections on at the same time as Senate elections. He has the remedy in his own hands, as has been pointed out before. If it is a matter of saving money, let him have the House of Representatives elections at the same time as the Senate elections. I believe that senators should fight this Bill. I am not in favour of it. I hope that if this proposition to alter the Constitution goes to the people of Australia a case wtil be clearly put forward so that the Senate shall not be stopped in its great march for greater things for the people of Australia. 2411 1L5 New South Wales ALP Attorney-General and Minister for Customs and Excise 1 0 MURPHY, Lionel Senator MURPHY - In reply- I am grateful to Senator Wood for what he said about me, especially as he has been a great parliamentarian. A lot has been said about the Senate committees. It should not be forgotten that when the Labor Party was in Opposition it put forward the proposal for the legislative and general purpose committees- the standing committees- which are now praised. It was the votes of Senator Wood and the independent senator, voting with the then Opposition, which secured the establishment of those committees against the combined vote of those who are now praising them. I think the record will speak for itself concerning the establishment of those committees. A number of issues have been raised. I do not wish to go through all of them. One thing is clear. The present Government, through the Prime Minister, before the last election put in the policy statement to the people: We will hold referenda to synchronise elections for the House of Representatives and the Senate . . . He : spoke in support of another referendum proposal also. So it was a clear statement of intent that this referendum would be sought. In our view, the people are entitled to voice their opinion on the question whether there should be synchronisation of elections for the Senate and the House of Representatives. The proposal ought not to be sent to the Committee; it ought to be sent to the people. If the people have to choose, they may accept the arguments that have been put forward by a number of senators opposite. They may listen to what has been put by Senator Wood, ibr example, and may choose to vote in favour of it. At least they ought to be given the opportunity. They ought not to be denied the opportunity to vote because this proposal is sent to a committee of the Senate. That is not how the Constitution ought to be altered. It is difficult enough to alter it now, but when the House of Representatives proposes an alteration which was previously put to the people at election, one would think that in all decency it ought to be put to the people. If the proposal is not put to the people immediately because the Senate declines to do so and accepts the proposal to refer the matter to a committee, the Government will treat this course as a failure to pass in terms of the Constitution and will, at the earliest opportunity, bring forward the proposal again in such a way that the provisions of section 128 can be availed of, and it can be put to the people without the concurrence of the Senate. The wisdom of those who framed the Constitution has been praised. It is interesting to observe that they had the wisdom to provide for a contingency such as this. If one House declines to pass a referendum Bill which has been passed by the other House, after the constitutional interval the matter can be put directly to the people so that this kind of obstruction cannot prevail. The interposition of a committee between the alteration of the Constitution and the people ought not to be supported. The arguments need not be gone over again. There are too many elections. Elections of the House of Representatives and the Senate ought to be synchronised conveniently, either by this method or by having some fixed term for both Housesfor example, a 6-year term for the Senate, as it is, and a 3-year term for the House of Representatives. That proposal would mean significant alterations to our system of government. For example, it would mean that the House of Representatives could not be dissolved if a government had lost the confidence of the House. Therefore, it appeared to the Government that the convenient way of synchronising elections of the 2 Houses was to alter the Constitution so that when there was an election for the House of Representatives there was one for the Senate also. The other suggestion is that there ought to be elections from time to time- mid-term elections -and that in some way the judgment of the people could be reflected in a mid-term way. That suggestion is not satisfactory. Governments need a period in which to legislate and to allow their legislation to take effect. Everywhere it has been found that if a country is to have stable and efficient government there needs to be some reasonable period between the assessments by the people and possible changes of government. Whether it is 3 years or 5 years, as in the United Kingdom, these periods are thought to be reasonable. If there is to be accepted some doctrine of a more regular approach to the people and an assessment of their viewpoint, such as every 1 8 months, surely logic demands that if the people have changed their minds after 18 months that should be accompanied by a change of government. If they do not want the policies which are being implemented, let there be a change of government. It is very hard to sustain the proposition that one should accept the verdict of the people and not give effect to it properly. Instead, each House is see-sawing against the other. I can see some force in the arguments put by honourable senators opposite, and there are countervailing arguments, but the overwhelming ground for the passage of this Bill is that the argument will then be decided where it ought to be decided, and that is at the hands of the people. Let them make their judgment. Let there be no doubt about it, the Opposition parties are combining to prevent the people from having their say. They are not prepared to say: 'Here is a proposal that was put to the people by the Prime Minister at the last election. We will go out on the hustings and fight it. We are prepared to accept the verdict of the people at the next Senate election'. They say: 'No. We do not want the verdict of the people on this proposal. We want to shelve it, as we will no doubt shelve the other constitutional proposals. We will prevent the people from having their say. Instead, we will have the Senate election. The best way of getting the first of these proposals away from the people and putting up some cover of respectability for what we are doing is to send it off to a committee to look at it'. We say that that is not a proper course of action and that it would be far more consistent with democracy to let the matter pass. Even if the Opposition wanted to indicate its disapproval, it should say that it would go out and fight the matter and let the people decide. That is what we ask of the Opposition. We say that if the Opposition votes for the amendment or votes against putting the matter to the people it is denying the people the right to say whether the elections for the Senate and the House of Representatives should be synchronised. Question put: That the words proposed to be left out (Senator Withers' amendment) be left out. The Senate divided. (The President- Senator Sir Magnus Cormack) 30 24 Majority........ 6 AYES NOES Question so resolved in the affirmative. Question put: That the words proposed to be inserted (Senator Withers' amendment) be inserted. The Senate divided. (The President- Senator Sir Magnus Cormack) 30 24 Majority....... 6 AYES NOES Question so resolved in the affirmative. Question put: That the motion, as amended, be agreed to. The Senate divided. (The President- Senator Sir Magnus Cormack) 30 23 Majority....... 7 AYES NOES Question so resolved in the affirmative. 2413 bill 2413 Debate resumed from 20 November (vide page 1910), on motion by Senator Murphy: That the Bill be now read a second time. 2413 DV4 Western Australia 0 0 WITHERS, Reg Senator WITHERS - Mr President,the Bill currently before us has the short title Constitution Alteration (Democratic Elections) Bill 1974. As I said in the debate on a previous Bill, this is only typical of this Government's approach. The long title to this Bill is deliberately misleading. The Bill has 7 clauses and what would be put to the Australian people is an acceptance of all 7 clauses. Parts of this Bill the Opposition would be prepared to accept, such as clause 3 which seeks the deletion of section 25 from the Constitution. I state for the benefit of those members of the Labor Party who have not bothered to read their own Government's Bill that this clause deals with the provision as to races disqualified from voting 2414 1L5 ALP 1 0 MURPHY, Lionel Senator MURPHY It is superfluous 2413 DV4 0 0 WITHERS, Reg Senator WITHERS Yes. Section 25 reads: For the purposes of the last section, if by the law of any State all persons of any race are disqualified from voting at elections for the more numerous House of the Parliament of the State, then, in reckoning the number of the people of the State or of the Commonwealth, persons of that race resident in that State shall not be counted. As the Leader of the Senate (Senator Murphy) interposes, that is superfluous. But unfortunately the Opposition cannot support the Bill and cannot support the deletion of this clause. This is because either we have to accept the Bill as it is or reject it. We would suggest to the Government that the Liberal Party would be willing to support a separate referendum to delete section 25 of the Constitution. Clause 4 is unnecessary for under section 29 of the Constitution to which this clause seeks to add words, the Parliament is already given the power to provide for the determining of divisions in each State for the House of Representatives. This clause is fundamental to understanding how the Labor Party Government seeks to manipulate the electoral system. Divisions at present are based on the number of enrolled electors. What this Bill seeks to do is alter the basis of a division to the number of people within the division—no t just enrolled electors, but every man, woman and child, whether they are entitled to vote or whether they are not entitled to vote. The Government that is attempting to do this is that Government which for years has been crying out: 'One vote, one value'. I ask: Where is there one vote, one value when in divisions of equal population one electorate may have 40 per cent of the people eligible and enrolled to vote, but another electorate may have 60 per cent of the people eligible and enrolled to vote. This is not equality of voting power, butthat is what this present Government seeks to do Members of the Labor Party Government seek to prostitute the Australian Constitution for what they believe would be their own political advantage. It may well be in the short term, but in the long term it would not assist them for even if 55 per cent of the vote were required to throw this Government out of office, such a percentage of the vote would be obtained and obtained quickly if the present disenchantment with the Government existing in the community is any guide to the future feelings of the Australian people. The Liberal Party Opposition, however, will oppose the Government's attempt to have this provision written into the Constitution for as Mr Malcolm Mackerras, Australia's leading expert in electoral matters has stated, the provisions of the Bill we are considering would result in the greatest departure from the principle of one vote, one value, ever seen in the history of House of Representatives elections. Yet this is the Government—the s Labor Party Government—tha t a few months ago preached the virues of one vote, one value, when the Commonwealth Electoral Bill was introduced into the Senate, sponsored by that great team of would-be electoral manipulators, Messrs Whitlam and Daly. At that time, Senator Murphy, in his second reading, said: Why should the law permit one division to have 69,000 electors and another division only 46,400? Yet this Bill would allow even greater discrepancies in the number of voters. When the Electoral Bill was debated in the Senate, I said: This Bill is an exercise in deception. The Labor Party is not interested at all in having one vote one value. This Bill is just the first step on the way to redistributing the electorate on a population basis. That was only 6 months ago and already what I stated then has happened. The practical difficulties of which Senator Murphy spoke at that time, of basing an electorate on people and not electors, have obviously been overcome. Electoral manipulation and now even attempted constitutional manipulation knows no bounds within the Labor Party. Basing the size of an electorate on people is inequitable from the beginning. The only figures available for such a purpose would be the figures of the last census. The census does not necessarily show where a person lives, but where he happens to be on a particular night. It means that thousands of people are counted for inclusion in electorates in which they do not live, including visitors from overseas. The Labor Party has abandoned its so called principle of one man, one vote. The principle is not even fair and equitable from the beginning, and yet this Labor Government has the audacity to misrepresent to the Australian people the purpose of the Bill in its title. The Australian people are not used to dishonest governments but fortunately they are becoming very quickly aware of what this Government, led by Mr Whitlam, is about. The Prime Minister (Mr Whitlam) has long since joined the conclave of witless men of whom he once complained. Clause 5 seeks to write into the Constitution what has already been achieved. That is the 18- year-old vote. Why should this be enshrined in the Constitution? Just as Parliament in this decade saw fit to grant 18-year-olds the right to vote, so a future Parliament may wish either to lower the voting age to 16 years or to increase it to some age higher than 18 years. At present, the Constitution leaves this up to the ParUament, and we beUeve that is the way it should be. The best constitution is the constitution that is the least definitive. It aUows each ParUament to determine its own needs and wants. There are very few matters that are immutable over a long period of time. The voting age is not one of them, as time has shown, and future generations may weU have different views from those of all of us here. Clause 6 of the BUI, dealing with the original jurisdiction of the High Court, seeks a power that the Parliament already possesses. For the Commonwealth to seek to interfere with the constitutions of the States in the way proposed in this BUI is, I beUeve, contrary to the provisions of the Constitution and is certainly contrary to the spirit of the Australian Constitution which was established at Federation. It was a compact between the States for their mutual benefit; it was not a compact for dominance by one part over the other. The BUI seeks to have included in the Constitution matters which have already been obtained or powers which the Parliament already possesses. Of course, it seeks to destroy the electoral system of this country. Australia's electoral system has served the AustraUan people weU for 70 years. It is fair, it is equitable, and it is the envy of many countries overseas. As I said earUer, there is one aspect of the Bill that we would support; but unfortunately, because of the plate of porridge dished up by the Government, we are unable to extract separate parts. Therefore we must reject the whole BUI and vote against the second reading. In conclusion, I wish to make one further observation. When Senator Murphy replied to the second reading debate on the previous BUI, he propounded the argument that, merely because one House of the Parliament passes a BUI, that proposition ought to be put to the electorate. I ask Senator Murphy and all Government senators: Do they beUeve in that as a matter of immutable principle, or does it mean only that if the House of Representatives passes a Bill the Senate ought to send it off to the people? If the proposition— a s I understood Senator Murphy to put i t - was that if a House of the ParUament believes a proposition ought to be sent to the people that proposition should be put to the people, does he then say that, if this chamber should pass a BUI by which it sought to put to the people at a referendum a proposition to alter the Constitution and that BUI were rejected twice by the House of Representatives, under the terms of section 128, the Government would then advise the Governor-General to submit the Senate's Bill to the electorate in a referendum? If the Government is not wtiling to do that, wUl it please not use that argument again in this place? The Government cannot expect to use one argument with regard to BUls passed once or twice by the House of Representatives and expect our consent without any capacity for us to oppose such Bills unless it is wUling to give us the quid pro quo. If it is willing to give us the quid pro quo, there may be a completely different situation on this side of the chamber concerning BUls to alter the Constitution. Let the Government state clearly what would be its attitude if the Senate passed a BUI for an Act to amend the Constitution. Would the Government support it in the House of Representatives or, should the BUI be rejected twice there and passed twice by this chamber, would the Government advise the Governor-General to submit the matter to the people? The Government must have it both ways or not have it at all. 2415 JXR Western Australia Leader of the Australian Country Party in the Senate 0 0 DRAKE-BROCKMAN, Thomas Senator DRAKE-BROCKMAN - As the Leader of the Opposition (Senator Withers) has just pointed out, in relation to the Bill now before the chamber one could be excused for saying that if ever there was any doubt that the Labor Government employs a double standard this Bill must dispel that doubt. For years, this Parliament and the people of Australia have heard Labor champion the electoral principle of one vote one value. For years, we have listened to Labor claim and complain that people in the country areas of Australia have greater voting strength than people in the cities. Yet here we have a Bill that proposes to alter the Constitution so as to ensure that members of the House of Representatives and of the Parliaments of the States represent numbers of people rather than numbers of electors. One major effect of such a change would be to take our electoral system further away from the one vote one value principle. Why the double standard? Why propound one principle and follow another? Clearly, this is another attempt by Labor to fool the people, and for that reason alone it deserves to fail. A few months ago, the Senate rejected a Labor Government Bill which sought to give the cities more representation in Parliament and the country areas fewer representatives. Now wc have a new Bill with a different title but the same objective. Its one major difference is that now the Government seeks to let the people decide by referendum. What Labor wants is not equality or fair representation for the people, or one vote one value or whatever else it might like to call it. It wants political advantage for the Labor Party- and this Bill, presented so soon after the Electoral Bill was thrown out, demonstrates its determination to get it. The motive is consistent with this Government's deep-rooted antipathy towards rural areas. I do not propose on this occasion to go through the long and growing list of decisions made by this Government that have disadvantaged country people. They are well known. In view of the obvious aim of the Bill, I ask: How serious is the Government about its decentralisation policy? If it succeeds in having electoral boundaries determined by numbers of people, the Government will have the greatest representation where it wants it- in the heavily populated worker suburbs of the cities. I submit that it is most unlikely that Labor will set in train policies that would bring more people out of the cities into country areas: it would be defeating its own electoral purpose by doing so. To prove my point that Labor argues one principle but adopts another, I shall give figures showing how the proposal in the Bill will take us further away from one vote one value. If the present proposal had applied at the time of the 1969 election, one vote in the electorate of Sydney would have been worth 1.7 votes in the electorate of Robertson, and one vote in the electorate of Melbourne would have been worth 1.77 votes in the electorate of Diamond Valley. There are many other similar examples. I now turn to Labor's effrontery as exhibited in this Bill's proposal to give the Federal Government the right to tell the States how they shall elect their representatives to their own Parliaments. This is just one more attack by the centralist, socialist Government on the rights of the States. It is preposterous for the Prime Minister (Mr Whitlam) to ask the Senate-the States House- to approve a measure that would strip the States of such a fundamental right. That he had the temerity to do so emphasises, if emphasis were needed, the Federal Labor Government's determination to grab every significant State power for Canberra- a process which would lead, of course, to the achievement of the Prime Minister's ambition to abolish the States, which he sees only as an encumbrance. For these reasons, clearly the Bill should be rejected in its entirety, and the Country Party means to see that that is what happens. 2416 KUD Victoria Leader of the Australian Democratic Labor Party 0 0 MCMANUS, Francis Senator McMANUS - The Australian Democratic Labor Party will vote against these Bills. We realise that they can only be delayed and that we cannot prevent the referendum from being held. But we believe it is worth while to vote against the Bills at the present time to highlight our opposition to what is an obvious attempt to gerrymander elections. I was interested some years ago to read a paper upon this very point in the 'Australian Quarterly Review' of March 1969. This article was written, I believe, by a member of the Australian Labor Party who was particularly interested in the subject of elections. In the course of the article he pointed out that any proposal such as this, which allegedly will make electorates of equal size and so bring about equality in voting, cannot fail to do the opposite. He could not see in it any great reform and he pointed out that the objection always to anything of this nature comes from the fact that it can lock up large minorities in certain seats and in effect give those minorities no say in the government. What, for example is the worth of a Labor vote in Kooyong? The people of Kooyong who vote Labor have no representation. Contrarily, what is the worth of a Liberal vote in Gellibrand? Under this system of equal electorates the Liberals in Gellibrand have no representation. In a number of seats the Australian Democratic Labor Party has quite sizable minorities but it does not get one member in the House of Representatives. On occasion we have obtained in elections 500,000 votes. But we do not get any representation in the House of Representatives. Is there any provision in this Bill, by a Government which says that it wants electoral justice, to give the DLP with 500,000 votes any representation? There is none at all. Let me say categorically that the purpose of this Bill is not electoral justice. The Government is not interested in electoral justice. This is one more attempt to get control of the electorate in order to perpetuate Labor government. This issue was raised prior to the last election. The DLP in the course of its advertising predicted that the Labor Party if elected would do just this. At the time no attempt was made by the media or most of the Press commentators to deal with the question of electoral justice. They did not deal with the DLP's argument that the Labor Party would do this. They said that it was unthinkable that a Labor Government would attempt to do this type of thing and therefore they did not give our arguments any consideration. There were people in the Labor Party who became very eloquent and said that the advertising of the DLP was unacceptable, that it was wrong that that kind of advertising could be used. At that time Mr Hugh Cudlipp, who is a leading personality in the British Press, was in Australia. Some members of the Labor Party went to him in the hope that he would issue a statement attacking the DLP's advertising. But he laughed at them and said that the sort of political advertising that he had seen in the Australian election was cream puff advertising. He said: 'I would be sorry to see British elections conducted on these lines. I prefer a bit of fight '. However, that did not prevent a number of representatives of the Press, many of whom now occupy lucrative positions to which they have been appointed by the Labor Government, coming out and expressing horror that the DLP could suggest that people like Mr Whitlam or Freddie Daly would seek to gerrymander electorates to perpetuate themselves in office. All I will say about these people is that they knew perfectly well from their association with Parliament that the average attitude of political parties is not 'Is this electoral justice? ' but 'Who is going to win? '. That is the attitude in this Bill. Mr Daly has sat down and has tried to work out a system under which his Party will win and be perpetuated. He is putting it up here in a Bill seeking a referendum in the hope that he will pull the wool over the eyes of the people. The situation is that we are to have, say, 100,000 people in each electorate. Has there ever been a greater joke than that? Suppose that we had 100,000 people in each electorate. Honourable senators opposite know very well that in the inner areas of the big cities, particularly areas in which there are a large number of migrants- and the migrants have big families-out of 100,000 people 40,000 to 45,000 might be adults and 55,000 to 60,000 might be children. In other electorates where old retired people live the proportion of children is much smaller. So the position is that under the arrangement put forward by the Labor Party we would have certain electorates in which there would be inevitably far more adults who are entitled to vote than in other areas. Members of the Australian Labor Party have sat down with their experienced men in electioneering and worked out that such a proposition would suit the Labor Party down to the ground because such an arrangement would favour them. The Government has now introduced this proposal which it says would give one vote one value. If the Labor Party believed in the principle of one vote one value it would introduce this principle in its own Party. In the proceedings which resulted in my leaving the Labor Party there was a vote in which the three small States and one delegate from a small State voted against us. The 2 States where all the population is- Victoria and New South Walesand one of Queensland voted for us. But in the event the Federal Executive decided against us because there was no representation on a population basis. The representatives of the two bigger States and one of Queensland were defeated by 7 votes which came from the smaller States. What has the Labor Party done about representation in the Senate to bring in the principle of one vote one value? I was defeated in the Senate elections of 1961 for 3 years. At that time I scored 2 10,000 votes. There were 10 senators in the Senate from Tasmania at that time who together represented 1 80,000 voters. I did not get a seat although I got 2 10,000 votes. But 10 senators with an average of 18,000 votes each got in for Tasmania. What was the attitude of the Labor Party? I said to Senator O 'Byrne, who is a Tasmanian senator: 'Do you agree, Senator O 'Byrne, with a situation whereby 10 senators from Tasmania representing 180,000 voters were elected and I did not get a seat although I got 30,000 more votes than the 10 of them'. He said: 'Of course I do'. But Senator O 'Byrne will vote for this Bill on the ground that he favours one vote one value. There is not one vote one value on the Federal Executive or the Conference of the Australian Labor Party; the States get equal representation. But why does not the Labor Party follow the principle of one vote one value in its own Party parliament? There is not one vote one value at the Australian Council of Trade Union conferences. The unions would not have it. At the Australian Council of Trade Union conferences small unions get representation out of all proportion to the big unions. One did not get one vote one value- this has been changed recently- on the Trades Hall Council in Melbourne. A big union of 70,000 to 80,000 members would get 4 votes and a union made up of 53 members would get one vote. Members of the Australian Labor Party do not believe in the principle of one vote one value, otherwise they would introduce it into the affairs of their own Party. That is why I say that this proposition is just one more example of the attempt to fix the ballot box, to fix the ballot paper, in the interests of maintaining the Australian Labor Party in office. If members of the Australian Labor Party really believed in the principle of one vote one value they would advocate the system of election which gives the nearest approximation to the principle of one vote one value, that is, the HareClark system. In saying that I am supported by the opinion of some distinguished people inside the Australian Labor Party. In a recent address to the Proportional Representation Society in South Australia, Mr Clyde Cameron said that in his opinion the only system of election which could be calculated to give electoral justice to all parties was the Hare-Clark proportional representation system. I endeavoured to produce in this chamber a report which the Victorian Branch of the Australian Labor Party commissioned about S years ago on this subject. A committee of the Victorian branch of the Australian Labor Party, led by the late Senator Sam Cohen, Mr Gordon Bryant and other leading personalities of the branch, was asked to sit down and determine the system which in its opinion would give electoral justice and would ensure that if the Australian Labor Party ever received 50 per cent of the votes it would be in government. The committee sat down and produced an excellent report which indicated that the fairest system of election and the system which gave the nearest thing to electoral justice was the Hare-Clark proportional representation system. When I attempted to have that report incorporated in Hansard we had the amazing situation of one supporter of the Government, Senator Mulvihill, refusing me leave to do so. 2418 KUS 0 0 MILLINER, Bertie Senator Milliner You know why 2418 KUD 0 0 MCMANUS, Francis Senator McMANUS He did not want a report of a committee of his own Party incorporated in Hansard. 2418 KUS 0 0 MILLINER, Bertie Senator Milliner - You know why. Because you refused to give leave the day before. 2418 KUD 0 0 MCMANUS, Francis Senator McMANUS enato r Milliner said that I know why Senator MulvihUl refused to give me leave. What objection would there be to its incorporation in Hansard so that people could examine it and form their own opinions? 2418 KUS 0 0 MILLINER, Bertie Senator Milliner - You refused to give leave the day before. 2418 KUD 0 0 MCMANUS, Francis Senator McMANUS I did? 2418 KUS 0 0 MILLINER, Bertie Senator Milliner - Yes, the day before. 2418 KUD 0 0 MCMANUS, Francis Senator McMANUS I doubt it. The honourable senator should have another look at the Hansard report. I repeat that there is no betief by the Australian Labor Party in the principle of one vote one value. When the AustraUan Labor Party has had the power to do so it has gerrymandered State electoral boundaries just as much as the Party opposing it, the Liberal Party of AustraUa, has done on occasions in the State field. Members of the AustraUan Labor Party do not believe in the principle of one vote one value. They beUeve only in the implementation of a system under which they wtil be sure to win office. No question of electoral justice is involved in this BUI. No question of giving the ordinary Australian a better deal is involved in this BUI. If there were members of the Labor Party would have to support the proportional representation system. This is merely one more instance of an attempt to seize electoral advantage for the purpose of perpetuating the tenure of office of certain people. For that reason, the Australian Democratic Labor Party wUl vote against it. 2418 KRG Tasmania 0 0 LILLICO, Alexander Senator LILLICO - I rise merely to draw attention to one aspect of the Bill which is before the chamber. Before doing so I want to say that I found myself to be in agreement with most of what Senator McManus had to say- I suppose 90 per cent of it- but not with what he had to say about a comparison between the electoral figures for Tasmania and the electoral figures for Victoria and the other States. The precise reason why the Senate was created was to counteract imbalances such as that which exists in another chamber between Tasmania and the other States. In my view it is fit and proper that the position at present with regard to the small State of Tasmania and the larger State of Victoria should pertain. The long title to this Bill states: To alter the Constitution so as to ensure that the Members of the House of Representatives and of the Parliaments of the States are chosen directly and democratically by the People. That in itself is a misnomer. Senator Withers quoted from an article by Malcolm Mackerras, who wrote an article for the 'Bulletin' in regard to this measure. He said that the Bill should be labelled: A Bill for an Act to alter the Constitution so as to rid Australian Parliaments of anti-Labor gerrymanders and to insert pro-Labor gerrymanders in their stead. He went on to cite as an example 6 blue ribbon seats- 3 blue ribbon Liberal seats and 3 blue ribbon Labor seats- and said that if they were assessed on a population basis only 59 per cent of the people would vote in the blue ribbon Liberal seat of Bradfield, 44 per cent in the blue ribbon Labor seat of Grayndler, 46 per cent in the blue ribbon Labor seat of Sydney, 62 per cent in the blue ribbon Liberal seat of Warringah, 59 per cent in the blue ribbon Liberal seat of Wentworth and 43 per cent in the blue ribbon Labor seat of Werriwa. That is the direct opposite of the proposition that we heard so much about some time ago of one vote one value. I am disappointed that a neighbouring country in which this system has been practised ever since the acceptance of elected parliaments in that country has not been quoted. No mention has been made of it. I refer to New Zealand. Just before 2 December- in the week before 2 December- there was an election in New Zealand. The newspapers in this country hailed it as a landslide victory to Labour in that dominion. There were various contentions as to what effect it would have on the subsequent election in this country. While I was in New Zealand I got hold of some Press cuttings on the election results. It should be remembered that in New Zealand elections are assessed on a population basis and that New Zealand is pretty meticulous in this respect. The New Zealand legislation lays down that there must be a redistribution every census. Incidentally there must not be a disparity of more than 5 per cent between any of the electorates. Among the newspaper headlines in New Zealand- in my view the newspaper headlines in New Zealand are just as foolish as some of the newspaper headlines in this country- there was one which said: 'Labour Sweeps to Power- Mr Kirk party's fourth P.M.'. Another said that Labour had the backing to redeem its policies. They went on and on. I think one of the headlines said that the New Zealand Labour Party had a mandate to put all its policies into operation because of the landslide victory. In the forefront of this screed I have before me a dissertation by a lecturer in political science at the Auckland University in which he devoted many pages to the reasons why there should be such a terrific swing to Labour and what caused it. It should be remembered that in New Zealand the electorates are assessed on a population basis. 2419 KBW 0 0 WRIGHT, Reginald Senator Wright On people as distinct from electors. 2418 KRG 0 0 LILLICO, Alexander Senator LILLICO Yes , on people as distinct from electors. I was amazed to find that in this mighty swing that caused so much comment the New Zealand Labour Party received only 48 per cent of the votes polled. There was a swing of 3 per cent. The Labour Party gained 48 per cent of the votes polled, and that 48 per cent elected 64 per cent of the members. These are official figures that I am quoting. The National Party gained 41.5 per cent of the votes polled, and that 41.5 per cent elected only 36 per cent of the members. That is what happened in New Zealand. I repeat that the Labour Party gained 48 per cent of the votes polled. This mighty swing, which these strange newspapers hailed as a landslide, was accomplished on a minority of the votes. That is as much like democracy as I am like Cleopatra. It is just a parody; nothing else. May the Lord save and preserve us from ever having introduced into this country the system that operates in New Zealand. That is what I rose to say. I think it is worth saying. I think it is worth placing on record that the so-called landslide to Labour in New Zealand was just a complete and absolute farce and one of the most ludicrous things that one could possible imagine in democratic elections. I wish that my speech was being broadcast and that the New Zealand people were hearing it. I went to the office of the National Party in Auckland and I said to the man in charge: 'This Labour Party Government gained only a minority of the votes'. I had a job making him understand what I was talking about. I believe that wein Australia are years ahead of the New Zealanders so far as democratic representation is concerned. Let us not put the clock back. That is why I am with Senator Withers in his opposition to this awful measure, which is put up and calculated only to give a very definite advantage to the Labor Party. There is no other reason. The Labor Party is not interested in democracy. I have seen too much of its actions to think that it is. They go back a long time to when the Labor Party abolished the Legislative Council in Queensland. It loaded the place with Labor members and, in spite of the fact that a referendum which was held just a few months previously decreed that the place should not be abolished, the Labor Party went on and abolished it. The Labor Parly's actions over the years are loaded with things like that. Honourable senators can rest assured that this proposition is only part of a blueprint to ensure a permanent Labor Government in this country. 2419 KBW Tasmania 0 0 WRIGHT, Reginald Senator WRIGHT -I rise to express appreciation of what Senator Lilico has addressed to us. It relieves me entirely of any need to refer to this swindle that the Bill proposes, switching from a creed of one vote one value to the idea of the number of people. It makes me wonder whether the conference between the New Zealand Prime Minister and our own Prime Minister (Mr Whitlam) soon after the elections transported this idea across the Tasman. This may have been the secret of his success. The switch has never been explained up to date. However, I rose to refer to clause 7 of the Bill. I am in search of enlightenment. I seek the expression of better opinion. When I find in an Australian Parliament's proposal to amend the Federal Constitution a provision saying on what basis each House of the Parliament of a State shall be constituted, I just wonder what the Government will be dreaming up next. In the Federal Constitution, which is a Federal compact between the States, certain provisions are set out. In Chapter V, headed 'The States', section 106 begins: The Constitution of each State . . . shall, subject to this Constitution - 2420 1L5 ALP 1 0 MURPHY, Lionel Senator MURPHY Thos e are the words—'subject to this Constitution' 2420 KBW 0 0 WRIGHT, Reginald Senator WRIGHT Ah! Apparently we have shined the diamond a little. That is where the genius becomes unburied. Senator Murphy finds the words 'subject to this Constitution'; but reading the sections fairly and with even an atom of objectivity, it saysAh! Apparently we have shined the diamond a little. That is where the genius becomes unburied. Senator Murphy finds the words 'subject to this Constitution'; but reading the sections fairly and with even an atom of objectivity, it says The Constitution of each State . . . shall, subject to this Constitution, continue as at the establishment of the Commonwealth . . . until altered in accordance with the Constitution of the State. 2420 KAS 0 0 WEBSTER, James Senator Webster - Senator Murphyforgot to look at that part. 2420 KBW 0 0 WRIGHT, Reginald Senator WRIGHT I have no doubt that he brushed that aside; it is not that he did not look at it. Anything that is inconvenient or in the way of Senator Murphy's impulse he just brushes aside. He revealed in one interjection the proviso 'subject to this Constitution'. He rises to this state of egregiousness whereby altering the Constitution of the Commonwealth he can alter the Constitution of a State. Yet the section expressly says: The Constitution of each State . . . shall . . . continue as at the establishment of the Commonwealth . . . until altered in accordance with the Constitution of the State. We need not call in aid— 2420 KRU 0 0 LITTLE, John Senator Little - You are having more success in finding out things than I have had. You are receiving an answer. I have not received an answer at all. 2420 KBW 0 0 WRIGHT, Reginald Senator WRIGHT Righ t is sometimes done, even if little by little. If Senator Little and I cooperate, we wul effectuate a little progress. I was about to refer to the Constitution to which Senator Murphy says section 106 is subject. One provision of section 128 says that the Constitution— that is to say, the Federal Constitution, the Constitution to which section 106 is subject—ma y be altered by a proposal initiated by the Parliament and passed by the people. It then says, somewhat thoughtfully, I think: No alteration diminishing the proportionate representation of any State in either House of the ParUament, or the minimum number of representatives of a State in the House of Representatives, or increasing, diminishing, or otherwise altering the timits of the State, or in any manner affecting the provisions of the Constitution in relation thereto— That is, in relation to the State shall become law unless the majority of the electors voting in that State approve the proposed law. It is subject to that Constitution that Senator Murphy's bid is made, forbidden though I regard it even without the aid of section 128. But, as I said, I am putting forward a view very tentatively and unassumingly in the hope that, apart from the single minded interjection 'subject to this Constitution', the learned leader of the Government will vouchsafe to us any opinion or any authority as to its validity which we should consider when this Bill comes up next time. Meantime, some of the States which recently went to London in relation to submerged lands, might employ themselves by going to the High Court to destroy the nonsense that is ensconced in clause 7 of this Bill. 2420 1L5 ALP New South WalesAttorneyGeneral and Minister for Customs and Excise 1 0 MURPHY, Lionel Senator MURPHY - in reply- I thank Senator Wright who has just indicated that, irrespective of what might be put by any member of the Government including myself, a decision has already been taken by the Opposition Parties to oppose the Bill. 2420 KBW 0 0 WRIGHT, Reginald Senator WRIGHT That is subject to what the Minister says. 2420 1L5 ALP 1 0 MURPHY, Lionel Senator MURPHY I thank Senator Wright for indicating that it is possible that even that collection of honourable senators might possibly be affected by what I might say. Senator Wright has suggested that in some way it is wrong that section 128 should be used to affect the constitutions of the States. Well, is it? On principle it is proposed that the people of Australia should be asked to alter their own basic instrument of government. That instrument deals with the Constitution of the whole of Ausualia. That is what it is. The Constitution of Australia deals with the Australian Parliament, the Governor-General, the Federal judiciary and also with the situation of the States. Subject to the Constitution and until altered in a certain way the powers of the States continue. The Constitution is not something dealing only with what we might call the affairs of the Australian Government or the Australian Parliament. It deals with the whole of the Constitution of Australia. Certainly it deals shortly with those State affairs as section 106 and the following sections provide. But it is the framework for the whole of Australia. It is recognised that section 128 could be used to alter the constitutions of the States. The learned authors Quick and Garran in the 'Annotated Constitution of the Australian Commonwealth' at page 990 stated: Amendments of the Constitution would not necessarily be confined to the machinery, organisation, and operation of the Federal Government; they might include changes of functions as well as changes of structure. New powers and functions could be added, or exisung powers and functions could be withdrawn. Nor is the scope of the amending power restricted to the structure and functions of the Federal Government; it extends to the structure and functions of the Governments of the States. Indeed, nearly every extension of powers and functions granted to the Federal Government would involve a consequential contraction of powers and functions in the Governments of the States; and if a constitutional amendment could so alter the powers and functions of the Governments of the States, why should it not be capable of dealing, if necessary, with the Constitutions and political organisation of the States? We say 'if necessary' for the necessity may never arise; but the dormant power is there, and may be used in an extraordinary emergency, if the States neglect or refuse to adjust their constitutional arrangements to harmonise with Federal developments and requirements. 2421 KBW 0 0 WRIGHT, Reginald Senator Wright - And convert them from bicameral to unicameral? 2420 1L5 ALP 1 0 MURPHY, Lionel Senator MURPHY That is right, and do what ever the Australian people think ought to be done in relation to the constitutions of the States. 2421 K3R 0 0 BYRNE, Condon Senator Byrne - The honourable senator does not think that we have to go back to the Constitution Act itself for such a fundamental change? 2421 1L5 ALP 1 0 MURPHY, Lionel Senator MURPHY It is quite clear. We say that even under section 106, which was referred to, the preservation of the constitutions of the States is subject to the Constitution which includes section 128. Here it is proposed to do something which the Opposition characterises as a dreadful thing. I think it was Senator Lillico who asked why. He said that in some way this was a plot to put Labor governments permanently into power. He said: 'These people here in government are actually proposing to give equal representation to the people.' He said: 'They are not only proposing in relation to the House of Representatives to make the districts equal in regard to people but they are actually turning to the States and, in relation to the Houses of the State Parliaments, they are insisting, if the people will agree with them, that there should be equal representation of the people.' He said: 'In that event we will have a dreadful result because we will have Labor governments all the time.' I do not think that he is quite right in his prediction. I think that sometimes the people may be mistaken in their views and perhaps elect, for a short time, governments of other calibres. But they are entitled to do that. Surely we are overdue for this representation. It is an emergency. In other democracies they have seen the necessity for equality of representation. When we were school children we were taught that there should be equal representation of the people. 2421 KRU 0 0 LITTLE, John Senator Little - Why does the Minister not advocate proportional representation? 2421 1L5 ALP 1 0 MURPHY, Lionel Senator MURPHY Senator Little interjects and asks why I do not advocate proportional representation. There is nothing in this proposal which stops the States from adopting proportional representation. This proposal is quite consistent with proportional representation. 2421 KRU 0 0 LITTLE, John Senator Little - Hear, hear! 2421 1L5 ALP 1 0 MURPHY, Lionel Senator MURPHY Does Senator Little accept that? 2421 KRU 0 0 LITTLE, John Senator Little - I would accept that if I thought the major political parties were fair dinkum, but you are not. 2421 1L5 ALP 1 0 MURPHY, Lionel Senator MURPHY The proposal was designed not to exclude such a system as proportional representation. The representation of single electorates is consistent with democracy. For the election of the House of Representatives one could conceivably have a State vote as one electorate. That would be consistent with democracy. The thread which runs through these proposals is that, however it be, there ought to be equal representation of the people. What is so dreadful about that? What is so dreadful about it is that in practice, in this community over the last few decades, we have not had equal representation of the people. The present Opposition parties have benefited from that and they do not want the situation corrected. That is where the political division comes into it. It is as simple as that. If there were equal representation of the people, Labor governments would not have been out of power, federally, for 23 years. If there were equal representation of the people there would have been differences in the States. I suspect that certainly in Queensland there would be a difference in the Parliament which may well have meant a difference in the Government. In Queensland there was a Labor government for about 33 years, except for a break of 3 years. I do not think that that would have occurred under what is now proposed. There would have been a greater change over the years. What we are seeking is for the people to have equality of representation in the House of Representatives in respect of each of the States. The Senate is the States House and under the proportional system we get exact equality of representation in each of the Senate elections. 2422 K3R 0 0 BYRNE, Condon Senator Byrne - Would you be prepared to introduce proportional representation for the House of Representatives? 2421 1L5 ALP 1 0 MURPHY, Lionel Senator MURPHY It is not for me to answer that question now. I say to the honourable senator, as I have said publicly before, that a great deal of consideration has been given to that question in the Australian Labor Party. I speak subject to correction but my impression is that some provisions relating to first past the post voting have been deleted from our platform. I know that a good deal of discussion has been given to this subject inside the Australian Labor Party; I say no more than that. The basic question here is whether the people should be entitled to vote and to have a system of equal representation of the people in the House of Representatives and in each of the Houses of Parliament of the States. If honourable senators opposite oppose that they oppose democracy. It does not matter how much they clutter it up by saying what is done in the Federal Executive of the Australian Labor Party, a trade union or anywhere else. Equal representation of the people is the ultimate form of democracy. Senator Wright gets up and talks about democracy but is prepared to prevent the people from having even a chance to vote for their equal representation. 2422 KBW 0 0 WRIGHT, Reginald Senator Wright - Under a Federal Constitution do you say that by referendum you can convert a State Parliament into a State municipal council? 2421 1L5 ALP 1 0 MURPHY, Lionel Senator MURPHY Th e answer to that question is this: It is for the people to decide what kind of system they want. Whether that question or some other question arises, if there is a decision of the people in accordance with section 128 that is democracy. They wUl choose the kind of system they want. It is for the people to decide whether they want municipal councUs, regional councUs, State governments, intermediate kinds of government, a unitary system or a federal system. Surely Senator Wright is not going to say that it ought to be beyond the capacity of the people, by any stretch whatever, to amend their Constitution and to have the system of government that they want. Apart from equal representation of the people there is another important point to be considered. In at least one upper House of ParUament there is no direct representation of the people. That is why this BUI is framed directly at the— 2422 KRU 0 0 LITTLE, John Senator Little - In another there is no upper House. 2421 1L5 ALP 1 0 MURPHY, Lionel Senator MURPHY I am speaking of New South Wales. Honourable senators may not be as famtiiar as they might be with what happens in New South Wales. The people in that State have no direct say in the election of members of the upper House of the State Parliament. Members of the upper House in New South Wales are elected by an electorate consisting of 60 members of the upper House, including those who are retiring and who have an enormous voice in their own re-election, and the 90-odd members of the Legislative Assembly, the lower House. They meet together before the expiration of the term of the one-quarter of the members of the Upper House who retire every 3 years. The term of members of the Upper House is 12 years. They meet and elect another 15. 2422 K3R 0 0 BYRNE, Condon Senator Byrne - Has that House a correspondingly limited power because it is not a House of direct election? 2421 1L5 ALP 1 0 MURPHY, Lionel Senator MURPHY No. 2422 K3R 0 0 BYRNE, Condon Senator Byrne - In New South Wales does it have absolute power of rejection as we have here? 2421 1L5 ALP 1 0 MURPHY, Lionel Senator MURPHY Yes, there are no Umits. There is no Act containing the limitations applicable to the House of Lords in Great Britain. The New South Wales upper House has a general power of rejection and uses it. I am pleased to see the look of surprise upon Senator Byrne's face because it is remarkable that such a body should be so elected in 1973. The question whether such a body should exist is one thing; the manner in which its members should be elected is another. I remind Senator Wright that one of the arguments put forward in New South Wales by members of his own Party as a reason for not abolishing the Legislative CouncU was that the system of electing its members would be reformed. My recollection is that it was said that there would be election by the people. That is what we are saying here. That has not been done. We beUeve that the Constitution of the Commonwealth should ensure that there is equality of representation and direct representation of the people in the Houses of Parliament of the States as well as in the House of Representatives. Those who vote against this BUI do so simply for their own self-interest in order to perpetuate a system under which governments can be elected in Australia in accordance with a procedure which is unrepresentative and therefore undemocratic. Question put: That the Bill be now read a second time. The Senate divided. (The President- Senator Sir Magnus Cormack) 25 29 Majority....... 4 AYES NOES Question so resolved in the negative. 2423 bill 2423 Debate resumed from 20 November (vide page 191 1 ), on motion by Senator Murphy: That the Bill be now read a second time. 2423 DV4 Western Australia 0 0 WITHERS, Reg Senator WITHERS - The Liberal Party will vote against this Bill. It will vote against the Bill because it is unnecessary, because it is a further erosion of the Constitution and because it is an underhand way of grabbing powers from the States to centralise arbitrary power in Canberra. The Liberal Party acknowledges the emphatic right of local government to receive assistance by way of funds, according to the total capacity of the nation to produce funds. We do not believe that local government should be treated like poor country cousins. It should not be given an occasional handout by the Federal Government and told to go home and make do. We believe that local government should receive extra money. We further believe that it is within the Government's power now, under the present Constitution, to make this money available. Section 96 of the Constitution states: the Parliament may grant financial assistance to any State on such terms and conditions as the Parliament thinks fit. I repeat, 'on such terms and conditions as the Parliament thinks fit'. Therefore it is possible for the Federal Government to make grants to local government now under section 96 of the Constitution. The proposed alterations to the Constitution are irrelevant and unnecessary. The Government is proposing another bureaucracy in a fast growing bureaucratic system. There are almost 1,000 municipalities in this country. Imagine the machinery which would be necessary to examine the affairs of these municipalities and to decide which ones were doing what, why they were doing it, how they were doing it, whether they needed assistance, if so what assistance and how much assistance. I ask: Does local government really believe that it will get a better deal from a bureaucratic organisation such as this? Will its claims be heard more readily? I doubt it. What is more likely to happen is that local government will become enmeshed in a tangle of red tape created by the Federal Australian Labor Party Government and paid for by the long-suffering taxpayer. What could and should happen under the present Constitution is that money going to local governments ought to go to them via the State governments. There is nothing to stop this Parliament appropriating X number of dollars as a national purpose for local government, to be distributed to the State governments on a prescribed formula and to be distributed among local government bodies by the 6 State governments. 2424 JXR Western Australia Leader of the Australian Country Party in the Senate 0 0 DRAKE-BROCKMAN, Thomas Senator DRAKE-BROCKMAN -We are told by the Government that the purpose of the Constitution Alteration (Local Government Bodies) Bill is to make Federal funds available direct to local government bodies, by means of grants and low interest loans, to ease the burden of rates and to improve municipal services. An alteration to the Constitution is necessary before the Government can implement its plan, and the people are being asked at a referendum whether they believe that the constitutional alteration should be made. This is one of 6 major changes to the Constitution proposed by the Labor Government. It is one of the 6 new avenues of power the Labor Government seeks from the electors by means of referendum. I believe that the people are well justified in asking just what is going on. 2425 1L5 ALP 1 0 MURPHY, Lionel Senator MURPHY Yo u wUl not let them have their say 2424 JXR 0 0 DRAKE-BROCKMAN, Thomas Senator DRAKE-BROCKMAN Oh ! They are entitled to question the motives of a Government which, within a few months of taking office, wants to make sweeping changes to a Constitution which has stood the test of time since Federation. The answer, of course, is that the Labor Party wants more power. It claims that it cannot do what it wants to do without that additional power, and in almost every case it is angling to grab that power from the States. I want every AustraUan citizen who wUl be voting on this and other referendum issues to understand fully that the Constituion is the law and the letter of the AustraUan Federation and that Federation is a partnership of the States and the Commonwealth. What the Government is seeking to enact now is a huge takeover bid, with the powers given to the States by the Constitution being the takeover target. We are now learning the hard way that this socialist Labor Government has every intention of controlling the nation's means of production, distribution and exchange, as the socialist doctrine says it should. Undermining the authority of the States is part of that program. If we aUow the plan to continue and to develop, as it wtil if not checked now, we wtil no longer have States in AustraUa, just as we would no longer have the Senate, which is the States House in Federal ParUament, if Labor had its way. Local government bodies are the creation of the States and are bound by State laws. It is no wonder the State governments, including the 3 Labor State governments, strongly oppose this measure. They know that chaos is the likely outcome, with local government falling under State administration on the one hand and financial control by Canberra on the other. Certainly local government needs ore funds. No political party is more acutely aware of this than is the Country Party. The increasing cost of providing community services has forced local government bodies to pass the burden on to the community by way of higher rates. Despite this the local government debt is increasing. My point is that it is not necessary to change the Constitution to alleviate the pressing financial difficulties of local government. The desired result can be achieved by the Federal Government increasing the funds made available to the State governments for distribution to local government. The Federal Government can do this under the Constitution as it now stands. The proposal contained in this BUI also has to be viewed in relation to the Government's intention to group local government bodies into regional authorities. Every individual council and every ratepayer should consider carefully whether their particular local government body would be advantaged or disadvantaged by having to make application for financial assistance on a regional basis. Under the proposed local government regions scheme, councils wtil lose much of the individuality they now possess in seeking finance from the States. Additionally, when a region makes an application for direct assistance, consideration and determination virtually wUl rest with the Minister for Urban and Regional Development in distant Canberra. Is this what local government councUs want? Of course it is not. In my own State of Western Australia I know that many councUs are strongly opposed to the regional system. 2425 KUS 0 0 MILLINER, Bertie Senator Milliner - How many? Tell us a couple of them? 2424 JXR 0 0 DRAKE-BROCKMAN, Thomas Senator DRAKE-BROCKMAN I was shocked recently to see the number of councUs that are coming forward and expressing this view. Despite their urgent need for increased financial assistance, local government councUs see the regions proposal and the direct Commonwealth assistance proposal as 2 further instances of Canberra's interference in the affairs of the States. The Country Party beheves that the financial requirements of local government should be determined after consultation between the States and local government bodies, taking into account their loan commitments, their overall financial responsibUities and the burden of rates on the ratepayers. The funds should be made avaUable by the Commonwealth and allocated to the States for distribution to local government in accordance with priorities determined by the States after consultation with local government. Because of the views which I have expressed, the Country Party wUl oppose this Bill. 2425 KRU Victoria 0 0 LITTLE, John Senator LITTLE -The Australian Democratic Labor Party is opposed to the Constitution Alteration (Local Government Bodies) Bill. It admits that the principles sound very attractive. Indeed, struggling local government councils seeking desperately a way out of the dilemma in which the financial policies of successive previous governments and this Government have placed them are bound to find the overall proposition apparently attractive. But if one is a practical politician- every senator ought to be if he is not- one has to remember that only just recently, at the time of the Parramatta by-election, there was a sudden decision to build a $8m hospital in the area because it was necessary to win votes. Without castigating the present Government very much at all but simply looking at practical politics and practical politicians, I wonder just what would be the circumstances of the Federal Government going into local government council areas with an open cheque book and saying: 'We will look after you'. I wonder what would be the position in relation to, say, the inner Melbourne suburb of Collingwood which forms part of a blue ribbon Labor seat. The Labor Government would not have to worry about the local council at Collingwood because it could not lose the seat. But what would happen in the outer suburban areas which are in borderline seats? 2426 JUH 0 0 DEVITT, Donald Senator Devitt The y would get sewerag 2426 KRU 0 0 LITTLE, John Senator LITTLE Those would be the councils that would be looked after. They would all be sewered. They would all be in a position today to pay their way as they did for a long time. They could do this if they were not paying today 3 times the interest rate that they used to pay on all moneys that they borrow. Local councils 25 years ago were not in the situation that they are in today. The situation in which they are placed has been brought about because they cannot borrow money because they owe too much interest on the money they have already borrowed. If a council pays interest over 10 years on an amount borrowed and at the end of 10 years still owes the principal, it knows darn well that it cannot borrow money. This is the old story of financial policy by means of which this Government is wrecking local councils, and doing it more decisively than the previous Government. Whereas the previous Government increased interest rates by a half of one per cent, this Government has increased them by 2 per cent. It wrecked every local council the moment that it did so. The Government knows darn well that this is what local councils cannot afford to do. Of course, they could borrow money at 3 per cent and pay their way. But they cannot borrow it at 10 per cent. 2426 JUH 0 0 DEVITT, Donald Senator Devitt - How would you know? 2426 KRU 0 0 LITTLE, John Senator LITTLE I would know because probably I have been paying rates a lot longer than the honourable senator. Let us take the situation as it has existed in our own experience. This may not apply to Tasmania which wtil not have Albury-Wodonga complex. But let us consider the risks that are being run in the guise of decentralisation— the s new vision splendid. Let us see how it has worked out for the people in the areas adjacent to Albury-Wodonga which I have recently visited. Local councils in those areas have done much to help decentralisation in their towns and have attracted industries. Just because they are 5 miles outside the Albury-Wodonga complex, such industries will continue to pay the current telephone rates. But if the factories which the local councils have attracted to their areas shift over into the complex area they will benefit from a big reduction in telephone rates. The local councils are beginning to see now, that this is not just a matter of decentralising the population of this country from Melbourne and Sydney to inner areas like Albury and Wodonga. They are beginning to realise that there is a great possibility that population will be attracted from Castlemaine, Benalla and other towns, and so will industry. Industry that needed constant telephonic communication with Melbourne or Sydney would be foolish to stay 10, 15 or 25 rnties outside the Albury-Wodonga area. The telephone concessions alone that will be made available to these selected areas will be sufficient to attract development, not only at the expense of the 2 great metropolises I have mentioned, but also at the expense of the adjoining already decentralised cities. I make no aspersions against the purposes of Dr J. F. Cairns who has directed a great deal of regional development into the area that he happens to represent in the Parliament. 2426 KAS 0 0 WEBSTER, James Senator Webster - Is that where his son is? 2426 KRU 0 0 LITTLE, John Senator LITTLE His son is employed by the authority concerned. But that is only in accordance with the common practice of jobs for the boys. I am not dealing with that aspect of the position at the moment. Dr J. F. Cairns probably realises the necessity that exists in his area which in my life time has been one of the fastest developing outer areas of Melbourne without any assistance at all. But this development no doubt has highlighted many shortcomings. What an enormous temptation it must be for members of Federal Cabinets who can help the industries in their area by the direction of funds from the Commonwealth directly into their own electorates. I am a very sophisticated politician. I would not trust the members of this Government with that power and I would not trust the members of the Opposition with it. The only people who I would trust with such power would be the members of the Australian Democratic Labor Party. I have no doubt that the members of all other poUtical parties have exactly the same phUosophy. I say this: It is obvious how power is used. During all the time that poor old Parramatta could have received a hospital, it was not until there was a vital by-election to be conducted in the area that the Commonwealth rushed in with $8m for the construction of a hospital. Now, it is suggested that it would be wonderful if it could rush into any local councti area. The idea would be to shoot your sitting member of ParUament and create a by-election if your area were short of something and it would have a chance of getting Commonwealth funds poured into the area by the Government to try to win the election. 2427 K6F ALP 1 0 CAVANAGH, James Senator Cavanagh - That is a good suggestion. 2427 KRU 0 0 LITTLE, John Senator LITTLE That is how politics works. The Minister for Aboriginal Affairs (Senator Cavanagh) who 'interjects does so because he realises that this is how it works. I do not believe that the Parliament should lend itself to that sort of development. It is true that our local councUs have a great financial problem. But I think that we should look at the real causes of it. As I said before, the real cause has not been that in the past the councUs have not been able to borrow money or that during the present State loan situation they were not able to get the money. The local councUs have always been a 100 per cent safe bet for anyone who wanted to lend money because they have the power to rate the citizens in the area and to raise the money. What they cannot do is repay it at an interest rate of 10 per cent, no more than can anyone else. The Government wtil not reaUse that. It says that the solution to the problems of local councils is to let the Commonwealth raise the money for them at lower rates of interest. Probably, it wtil give the money to them at a half of one per cent less than the current bond rate. The current bond rate would send even a pawnbroker broke. Pawnbrokers never used to charge these sorts of interest rates. They have been governed by laws over the centuries to prevent them from doing this. Such practices would have been described as 'usery and in more unpleasant days pawnbrokers would have been executed for charging the rates of interest that the Commonwealth Government has just made apphcable to the bonds of the Commonwealth to the detriment of everybody. 2427 KB9 0 0 WILKINSON, Lawrence Senator Wilkinson - What about hire purchase? 2427 KRU 0 0 LITTLE, John Senator LITTLE What about hire purchase? Only 15 years ago the Democratic Labor Party was leading a fight to try to stop the unlimited development of hire purchase—the pouring of funds into companies which charged high rates of interest. Do honourable senators know what they were charging then? They were charging the shocking rate of 8 per cent. It shocked everybody. Now, everybody is paying 10 per cent. This Government came to power as the workers' Government that would do something for the worker. It did them, aU right. It did them proud. It wrecked their hopes with one decision to increase the interest rates by 2 per cent because under those sorts of interest rates there is only one possible economic result. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Whatever is done, that is how the position finishes up, and that is how it finishes up with local councUs. They are the poor relation and they wiU go on getting poorer whtist these interest rates of 10 per cent apply. The Government's pious referendum to enable the Commonwealth to borrow money for them and to charge them interest at a little lower than the bond rate will not lower the cost of their money to below their labour costs. The local councils today spend more in paying interest on the money they owe than on all the staffs they employ to keep the cities clean and for all other purposes. They cannot afford to go on doing that. That is where the solution to the problem lies. It does not lie in coming to the Parliament and saying: 'Let us have a referendum. Look at the poor old local councils'. They managed; they did reasonably well; they served the community; they borrowed money, built roads and footpaths and provided the services of libraries. When the interest rates were at 3 per cent and 4 per cent they were never in the shocking trouble or involved in the problems in which they are involved today. If honourable senators look at the real reasons for the trouble they wtil find that we do not have to be wasting the time of the Parliament with a proposition such as this giving a phoney solution to the problem for which the solution is obvious. We do not want to see the already great powers of the Commonwealth to decide to butid hospitals in electorates where there are by-elections expanded still further to give it the power to go into an electorate and offer to butid roads in an area when there is a political reason for wanting to do so. For that reason we are opposed to this proposition. 2427 1L5 New South Wales ALP 1 0 MURPHY, Lionel Senator MURPHY - in reply- Once again the Opposition Parties have indicated that they are prepared to. vote to prevent the people considering the question whether the people's own Constitution should be amended in a particular way, that way being to enable the Commonwealth to borrow money for and to grant financial assistance to local government bodies. The policy speech, which was presented by the Prime Minister (Mr Whitlam) immediately before the election of 2 December 1972, expressed a determination to make local government a genuine partner in the Federal system. The newly elected Government has pressed for and secured direct representation for local government on the Constitutional Covention which met for the first time in the middle of this year and which intends to consider various constitutional matters. The Grants Commission Bill, which has been passed by this Parliament on the initiative of the Government, empowers the Commission to inquire into and report on applications for grants from approved local government bodies. At the Constitutional Convention, the Prime Minister secured the agreement of the leaders of five of the State delegations that the Australian and State governments should come together to consider amending the financial agreement that is referred to in the Constitution. On 1 1 October, the heads of Government met in Canberra to consider the Australian Government's proposals that there be a voice and vote for elected local government representatives on the Loan Council, and that the Australian Government should be empowered to borrow on behalf of local governments. The Prime Minister indicated that if this could not be agreed to he would seek the necessary constitutional amendment of section 105a. Those events are the lead up to this Bill. As it has not been possible to achieve the assistance to local government that has been sought by consultation with the States, the Australian Government has proposed and the House of Representatives has agreed that the question should be put to the people to decide simply whether this Australian Parliament should be empowered to enable laws to be made for the borrowing of money by the Commonwealth for local government bodies, and whether the Parliament ought to be empowered to grant financial assistance to any local government body on such terms and conditions as the Parliament thinks fit. It is extraordinary, with all that is said by senators opposite about local government, that now, when local government wants something and when the Australian Government thinks it should be able to borrow on behalf of local government and to grant financial assistance to local government, the Opposition Parties should indicate that they are prepared to prevent the people of Australia having a vote to say whether the Parliament should be empowered to do what I have outlined. If honourable senators opposite face up to the matter, the brutal truth is that they are opposing the wishes of the Australian Government and the House of Representatives to let the Australian people exercise their right under the Constitution to vote on whether the constitution should be changed in this way. Honourable senators may rationalise and satisfy their own consciences or judgments as to what they are doing. The most they will be able to do is to postpone this measure for some months because, fortunately, the kind of obstruction in which they are now indulging was foreseen, and it is possible for the House of Representatives to pass the Bill again and, if it is rejected again in the Senate, to put the matter to the people, despite the obstruction by the Senate. Then, if the people want this proposal, it will become law, the Constitution being altered. If the people do not want it, very well: That will be the voice of the people. However, the Senate is taking the stand here that it will not allow the people even to vote on the matter. This obstruction reveals the anti-democratic attitude of the Opposition Parties, which will not even allow the people to have their say. It is hard enough to alter the Constitution, even when the proposals get to the people, because of the mass of misinformation put before them, but Opposition senators are not even willing to let the people have a say on the matter. What has happened when these proposals have been brought in? They have stalled one matter, rejected another, and have now indicated that they will again refuse to let the people have their say. Question put: That the Bill be now read a second time. The Senate divided. (The President- Senator Sir Magnus Cormack) 24 29 Majority....... 5 AYES NOES Question so resolved in the negative. 2429 bill 2429 Debate resumed from 21 November (vide page 2016), on motion by Senator Murphy: That the Bill be now read a second time. 2429 DV4 Western Australia 0 0 WITHERS, Reg Senator WITHERS - I shall be brief with this Bill. It exhibits all the traits of dishonesty and fraud which were evident in the other referenda Bills. Take the long title, for instance. It reads: To facilitate alterations to the Constitution and to allow Electors in Territories, as well as Electors in the States, to vote at Referendums on Proposed Laws to alter the Constitution. The title makes no mention of what is intended in paragraph (c) of the second clause of the Bill, that is, to reduce the number of States required to indicate their approval for a proposed change in the Constitution. At present section 128 of the Constitution requires a majority of the States to vote for a proposal. At present that is 4 States. The Government's proposal is that the number of States required to be in favour of a proposal be reduced to three. But there is no mention of this in the long title. However, I will not quibble about that because when we come to the committee stage I intend to move for the deletion of clause 2 (c) and I intend also to move if that amendment is carried to amend the long title to the Bill so that it bears some relationship to the purpose of the Bill. The Constitution which was drawn up at the end of the last century was a compact between all the States. It was not imposed upon them from above or without. It was a decision taken for the benefit of all. Undoubtedly a very strong reason for their agreement was that for any proposed changes to the Constitution, a majority of States would be required to signify their approval. If a majority of States had been ignored and were not given a controlling place in the federal structure, there would have been no Federation and no Commonwealth Parliament and therefore no Commonwealth Government. It is not for the Commonwealth alone to make decisions affecting the federal structure. The States must have and are entitled to have a major role in any proposed changes to the Constitution. The States have a separate interest to be protected with respect to constitutional change, and it is up to the Senate, composed of senators elected on a State-wide franchise, to ensure that the State interest is protected. Clause 2 (b) of this Bill, is supported by the Opposition. This clause proposes that the following words in section 128 of the Constitution shall be omitted: But until the qualification of electors of members of the House of Representatives becomes uniform throughout the Commonwealth, only one-half the electors voting for and against the proposed law shall be counted in any State in which adult suffrage prevails. These words have long since been overcome by events and should therefore be omitted. Clause 2 (a) of this Bill proposes to alter section 128 of the Constitution to allow qualified electors in the Territories to vote. The Liberal Party endorses this proposal wholeheartedly. As I have indicated, it is our intention to move to amend the long title of this Bill so that it clearly states the major intention of the Bill- that is to allow electors in the territories to vote at a referendum. The Opposition hopes that the Government will accept our amendments so that the proposal for giving electors in the territories the right to vote at referenda may be put to the Australian people with the support of the Australian Parliament. Such a proposal should not be buried in with other matters on which there is not agreement as the present Government proposes. In conclusion I ask the same question that I asked when I dealt with the last Bill. If the proposition of the Leader of the Government in the Senate (Senator Murphy) is that the Senate ought not to reject any Bills that have originated in another place so that the matter may be placed before the people, will he also give an undertaking that if any Bill is passed by this chamber that Bill will also be submitted to the people? The Leader of the Government cannot have it both ways. I remind Government senators that under the Constitution it is not the Government which submits propositions to the electors, it is the Parliament or one House of Parliament after the other has rejected the legislation and then the Governor-General submits it. It is no use talking about mandates. The Leader of the Government has put up the proposition that because one House passes a Bill for an Act to hold a referendum we in this place ought not oppose it but we ought, in the interest of democracy, to allow the people to exercise their judgment on it. If that is his proposition in regard to the legislation now before us will he also accede to my proposition that if the Senate passes a Bill for an Act to submit to the people a referendum to alter the Constitution, the House of Representatives also should let that Bill go to the people? 2430 JXR Western Australia Leader of the Australian Country Party in the Senate 0 0 DRAKE-BROCKMAN, Thomas Senator DRAKE-BROCKMAN -The Australian Country Party agrees with the provision of this Bill that will give electors in the Australian Capital Territory and the Northern Territory the right to vote on proposals to alter the Constitution. It is obvious that every qualified person should have a say in whether the Constitution is altered, regardless of where in Australia he or she lives. But my Party is opposed to the proposal contained in this Bill that the Constitution can be changed, given an overall majority of electors, with agreement on a 50-50 basis between the States. I believe it is very likely that the people of Australia will want to give voting rights to the territories but that many electors will have grave doubts about altering the majority of States clauses. The Bill we have before us does not permit us to vote for one proposal and not the other. We must vote for both or neither. One wonders why the Government would put forward a proposition that clearly invites defeat. It cannot be that the Australian Labor Party is half-hearted about its desire to alter the constitution. As I have said in debate on another Bill, Labor is proposing a multiplicity of constitution changes- so many that we cannot doubt it is serious. We must look elsewhere for the reason why this tug-o-war Bill has been brought forward in this form. I see 2 possible reasons, each consistent with Labor style. The first is deceit, in that the Government hopes the electors will see the issue merely as one in which they are asked to give voting power to the Territories, and disregard the other proposal. The other possible reason, of course, is that the Government may reckon its chances of getting Constitution alteration proposals past the States are enhanced if the required majority of States is aligned with the number of Labor State governments. As we know, there are 3 Labor State governments at the moment, and a three-three 'majority' of the States is what the government's amendment to the constitution proposes. I submit there cannot be a valid reason for seeking the change. A majority is a majority. It is not three out of six. For that reason the Australian Country Party will support the amendment foreshadowed by the Leader of the Opposition in the Senate (Senator Withers). 2430 K3R Queensland 0 0 BYRNE, Condon Senator BYRNE -I direct my remarks primarily to that part of the Constitution Alteration (Mode of Altering the Constitution) Bill which deals with the determination of the majorities necessary to ensure the passage of a referendum. I feel that the proposal is based on a total misconception of the very purpose of the Constitution and the nature of the federation of the States. The preamble to the Constitution states: Whereas the people of New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, Queensland and Tasmania . . . have agreed to unite in one indissoluble Federal Commonwealth. . . In other words, the Commonwealth of Australia is not a union of all people; it is a federation of designated colonies emerging as designated and original States. The proposal to alter the provision concerning the alteration of the Constitution to 3 States from the present constitutional requirement of four appears to me to be a denial of the concept of the banding together of a series of colonies and States into a federation. 2430 1L5 ALP 1 0 MURPHY, Lionel Senator MURPHY I s the honourable senator objecting to the Territories having a vote? 2430 K3R 0 0 BYRNE, Condon Senator BYRNE No , I am not. I am objecting to the 3 : 3 ratio as against the 4 : 2 ration. The original contemplation— I know that the point is made by the Attorney-General (Senator Murphy) in his second reading speech—wa s that there would be a proliferation of States and that the ratio of 4: 2 would be unreal in the anticipated developing circumstances. Significantly, the development in Australia has been to the contrary. The number of component States has been static but there has been an undue increase in the population of 2 of the States. That makes all the more necessary and all the more salutary the preservation of the 4 : 2 ratio. Therefore, I think that to disturb it at this stage, when the population of two of the States necessarily wtil enlarge more and more, would give a total imbalance in the future in the operation of variations to the Australian Constitution. If ever there was a time when I think the original provision should be adhered to, it is now. Whatever was the original anticipation, as the processes of history have operated the prudence of the provision has been demonstrated in the development of two of the States. So the preservation of the 4 : 2 ratio becomes more salutary than ever before. I can find no justification for this aspect of the legislation in the proposition presented by the Attorney-General that the Constitution has been difficult to alter. If the Constitution has been difficult to alter, that has been because the will of the people has been against alteration within the terms and framework of the formula applying to an amendment to the Constitution. Otherwise, one is merely substituting the opinion and view of the Government as presented at referenda for the opinion and view of the people who rejected them or supported only a very small or fragmentary number of them. In those circumstances the Australian Democratic Labor Party opposes in particular, that part of the Bill which provides for the disturbance of the present mode of determining the majorities necessary to ensure the passage of a referendum. The proposition which has been presented by Senator Withers and which he proposes to make the subject of an amendment has a great deal to commend it. There are 2 disparate propositions. I do not think that they should be associated in one referendum. Recently we had before us Bills for referenda on prices and incomes. In that case the Democratic Labor Party put forward a contrary position because in its contemplation prices and incomes are inseparably linked. It was for that purpose that we said that only one question should go to the people. For the very same reason and on the processes of the very same logic, we think it would be completely inappropriate for these 2 questions to go as one question for a common yes or no. Therefore, we will support the amendment which has been foreshadowed by Senator Withers and which is designed to retain only the reference to a vote in the Territories concerning amendments to the Constitution. We will support the severance of that from the Bill when the matter comes forward. We oppose the proposition in the other part of the Constitution Alteration (Mode of Altering the Constitution) Bill. 2431 1L5 New South Wales ALP 1 0 MURPHY, Lionel Senator MURPHY - in reply-The Government will oppose the amendment which has been foreshadowed by Senator Withers. The foreshadowed amendment seeks to leave out a significant part of the proposal which has been put forward by the Government. The criticisms of the Bill are not justified. The Bill is for an Act to facilitate alterations to the Constitution. A number of complicated matters are involved. I would like to see an honourable senator opposite start to draft a long title of the Bill which expresses it in a better way than the present long title, which states: To facilitate alterations to the Constitution and to allow Electors in Territories, as well as Electors in the States, to vote at Referendums on Proposed Laws to alter the Constitution. The proposal is one which, if carried by the people, would facilitate alterations to the Constitution. The Constitution is difficult to alter. The requirements are such that there must be not only a majority of the people of Australia- that is, in the States- voting in favour of a proposal but also a majority of the States. There is no doubt that that makes it extremely difficult to alter the Constitution. The proposal, if carried, would facilitate its alteration. It would mean that, if a majority of the people- we wish to extend that from a majority of the people in the States to a majority of the whole of the people of Australia, whether in the Territories or in the States- were in favour of a proposal and at least half of the States were to vote for the proposal, the constitutional referendum would be taken to be approved. Where is the justification for saying that the people should not be given the opportunity to make alterations to the Constitution easier? Those are the words of the long title; that is, to facilitate alterations to the Constitution. We are plainly putting to the people that we want to make it easier to alter the Constitution. 2431 K3R 0 0 BYRNE, Condon Senator Byrne Bu t the Constitution does not contemplate the people en masse only as one element; it contemplates them in the States as such. 2431 1L5 ALP 1 0 MURPHY, Lionel Senator MURPHY Senator Byrne may be right. What we are seeking to do is to allow the people to alter the Constitution and to do so in a way that will make it easier to alter it in the future. We are putting it to the people as plainly as can be. We are saying that it is extremely difficult to alter the Constitution and that it ought to be made easier to alter it. The one way in which we are proposing to them to make it easier is by saying that, if a majority of the people want it altered—tha t means the people in the Territories as well as in the States—an d if at least half the States are in favour, that will be enough to carry the proposal. Some might argue that it ought to be enough to have a majority of the people. Senator Byrne put an argument about the States. But, in all justice, why is it not reasonable enough to say that, if a majority of the people want the Constitution to be in a certain direction and at least half the States agree that it should be in that direction, that should be enough to carry the proposal? All we are asking the Opposition to do is to give the people the opportunity to say whether that should be the mode of altering the Constitution or whether it should remain as it is. The Opposition is not even prepared to let the people vote on whether there should be a majority of the States or at least half of the States in favour of a proposal. Where is the justice in Senator Byrne's stand? We are asking a majority of the people plus a majority of the States to agree that in future it will be enough to have a majority of the whole of the Australian people plus at least half of the States. The Government is asking the Opposition to agree with it that the people in a majority of the States—tha t is what Senator Byrne is saying in the critical point—togethe r with a majority of the people of the States should be allowed to say whether any future change needs the support of only at least half of the States as well as the majority of all the people. The honourable senator is saying that he will vote against this proposal. He is saying: ' I will not allow that to go to the people'. It is he who is maintaining that the will of the people— 2432 KRU 0 0 LITTLE, John Senator Little - We cannot say that we will not let it go to the people. We are saying only: Take back your Bill, we do not like it'. 2432 1L5 ALP 1 0 MURPHY, Lionel Senator MURPHY Mr Acting Deputy President, may I continue my speech? 2432 KBW 0 0 WRIGHT, Reginald Senator Wright - You want to shout him down. 2432 1L5 ALP 1 0 MURPHY, Lionel Senator MURPHY If the honourable senator suggests that a speaker should be interrupted by someone interjecting, that is a delightful interpretation of the Standing Orders. 2432 10000 0 0 ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT, The The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT Order ! Senator Murphy, I suggest that you address the Chair. 2432 1L5 ALP 1 0 MURPHY, Lionel Senator MURPHY Senator Byrne, with beautiful logic, said that the position ought to be that as the Constitution was framed a decision about the Constitution should be made by a vote of the majority of the people in the States as at the moment, plus a majority in a majority of the States. That is exactly for what the Government is asking. We are saying: Let this proposal go to exactly that electorate and let the people decide whether they want to change the Constitution so that in future we will need only at least half of the States. Senator Byrne having suggested the beautiful logic of it—ho w correct it is that a decision should be made by these people—surel y must accept that they are entitled to change the basis if they want to do so. Yet he says: ' I will vote against the majority of the people, together with a majority of the States, agreeing to alter the Constitution'. I see him smile because he realises there is no answer to this. How can the honourable senator oppose that electorate having the say and deciding to change the basis in the future? I would think that on reflection—i t is not too late for someone to change his mind—the honourable senator ought to realise the irresistible logic of this position. However if I am to be realistic, the irresistible logic will not prevail at this stage against the decision which has been made in the honourable senator's caucus. But there it is. We have come to the last of these 4 proposals and the Opposition members again are combined to vote against simply putting this proposal to the Australian people. It has to be carried by that extraordinary combination, a majority of the States with a majority of the people in each State— a majority of the States plus a majority of the Australian people—ye t honourable senators opposite say: 'No, we will not allow the people to have their say'. Again, the Opposition parties are taking up a position of opposition to democracy. They say: 'We will postpone as long as we can the right of the people of Australia to have their chance to vote on these questions'. The Opposition will no doubt have its way. It will no doubt postpone the putting of these questions to the people. But I think the fact that the Australian people are waking up to the Opposition is starting to percolate through even to the Opposition. Question resolved in the affirmative. Bill read a second time. 2432 Clause 1 agreed to. Clause 2. Section 128 of the Constitution is altered- by omitting the words 'in a majority of the States' and substituting the words 'in not less than one-half of the States'. 2432 DV4 Western Australia 0 0 WITHERS, Reg Senator WITHERS - As I indicated earlier that the Opposition would move an amendment during the Committee stage, I move: Leave out paragraph (c). I think the arguments for and against this were well canvassed in the second reading debate and I have nothing to add. It can go to a vote. 2433 KBW Tasmania 0 0 WRIGHT, Reginald Senator WRIGHT - Before Senator Murphy replies I want to raise a point on this matter and I ask the Attorney-General (Senator Murphy) to enlighten me. I take the view that this proposal in paragraph (c), limiting the majority to half of the States, is a provision of the Constitution relating to a State and that no State would be bound by it unless a majority of electors voting in that State approved the proposed law. I suggest that that comes from a consideration of the second last paragraph of section 128 which reads: And if in a majority of the States a majority of the electors voting approve the proposed law, and if a majority of all the electors voting also approve the proposed law, it shall be presented to the Governor-General for the Queen's assent. That expression 'And if in a majority of the States a majority of electors voting approve the proposed law' is a provision of this Constitution in relation to the States which states: Therefore no alteration in any manner affecting the provisions of the Constitution in relation thereto, shall become law unless the majority of the electors voting in that State approve the proposed law. I know that this has been the subject of a division of opinion, but I would like to know, from the Attorney-General, for the purpose of considering the Bill at the appropriate stage what is the view of the Government on whether an alteration to this effect would be valid in any State where a majority of voters were against this proposed law which enables the Constitution in relation to that State to be altered by a 3-State majority instead of a 4-State majority. 2433 1L5 New South Wales ALP 1 0 MURPHY, Lionel Senator MURPHY - The Government opposes the amendment moved by the Leader of the Opposition (Senator Withers). The reasons have been given- that this matter ought to be determined by the people according to the provisions of the existing Constitution. If they choose to alter it that is their entitlement, and the paragraph ought not be deleted from the Bill. As to the matter that Senator Wright put, he asked as I understand it, that if this alteration were made, would that then affect the proposition, say, in relation to a proposal to alter the limits of a State, or diminish the proportionate representation of a State in either House of the Parliament; whether this provision, if carried, would alter the special requirements that it shall not become law unless a majority of the electors voting in that State approve the proposed law. I cannot say that I have given full consideration to that proposition but, on the face of it, I would think that it would not alter the situation applying under the paragraph in section 128 which begins: No alteration diminishing the proportionate representation of any State. . . That would be unaffected by this proposed alteration to the Constitution. This proposed alteration simply deals with the preceding paragraph which commences: 'And if in a majority of the States'. The proposal relates to that. It is not referable to the last paragraph. The words 'in a majority of the States' do not appear in the last paragraph. On the face of it I do not see that the specific provisions of the last paragraph would be affected by this alteration. This would simply say that in the other matters, which are outside the scope of that last paragraph, where it provided that in a majority of the States a majority of the electors voting was required it would now be only a majority of voters in at least half of the States. 2433 KAS Victoria 0 0 WEBSTER, James Senator WEBSTER -While the Attorney-General (Senator Murphy) was speaking in reply on this matter I noted that he did not take up the point raised as to the wording of the long title compared with the various other matters which are contained in the Bill. 2433 10000 0 0 TEMPORARY CHAIRMAN, The The TEMPORARY CHAIRMAN Order ! Senator Webster, we are not dealing with the long title yet. We are not taking the Bill as a whole. We have dealt with clause 1. We are now dealing with clause 2. 2433 KAS 0 0 WEBSTER, James Senator WEBSTER I ask the Attorney-General whether he believes that the long title fairly describes the alterations which are proposed to the Constitution under this Bill. 2433 1L5 New South Wales ALP 1 0 MURPHY, Lionel Senator MURPHY - I thought I dealt with that point. I indicated that this was a Bill to facilitate alterations to the Constitution. This certainly is such a proposal and it does that. If the provision of a majority of the electors in the States were altered to relate to all the States taken together so that one had a majority of the people of Australiawhich would include the Territories along with the States- that would not facilitate the alteration of the Constitution. But if, as well, there is a requirement only for at least half of the States instead of a majority of the States, then that would facilitate alteration to the Constitution. So that is a fair description of what the Bill is about. Question put: That the words proposed to be left out (Senator Withers' amendment) be left out. The Committee divided. (The Temporary Chairman- Senator Wilkinson) 30 23 Majority....... 7 AYES NOES Question so resolved in the affirmative. 2434 1L5 New South Wales ALP 1 0 MURPHY, Lionel Senator MURPHY - I indicate that the Government is opposed to the clause in the amended form. I will not call for a division. Clause, as amended, agreed to. Title. To facilitate alterations to the Constitution and to allow Electors in Territories, as well as Electors in the States, to vote at Referendums on Proposed Laws to alter the Constitution. 2434 DV4 Western Australia 0 0 WITHERS, Reg Senator WITHERS - I move: Leave out 'To facilitate alterations to the Constitution and '. The long title will read, if the amendment is carried, 'to allow Electors in Territories, as well as Electors in the States, to vote at Referendums on Proposed Laws to alter the Constitution.' This basically is a formal amendment. The matters concerned have been discussed and canvassed before. 2434 1L5 New South Wales ALP 1 0 MURPHY, Lionel Senator MURPHY - In a sense I suppose that what Senator Withers said is right. The Committee having removed the provisions of the Bill that it has removed, the Bill would not facilitate further alterations to the Constitution. While it would still relate to the extension of a vote to the people of the Territories as well as the States, the Bill would not provide a facilitation for alterations to the Constitution. I suppose in that sense the Leader of the Opposition (Senator Withers) is right in saying that this would be in conformity with what has been done, but because the Government disapproves of the alteration of the Bill in this way we will oppose it on the voices. Since what I have said is on the record I do not think that there will be a need for a division at this stage. Amendment agreed to. Title, as amended, agreed to. The TEMPORARY CHAIRMAN (Senator Wilkinson)—Th e question now is that the Bill, as amended, be agreed to. 2434 1L5 ALP 1 0 MURPHY, Lionel Senator Murphy - May it again be recorded that the Government is opposed to these changes. Bill, as amended, agreed to. Bill reported with an amendment and an amendment to the title; report adopted. 2434 2434 1L5 New South Wales ALP 1 0 MURPHY, Lionel Senator MURPHY - I move: That the Bill be now read a third time. I indicated during the Committee stage that the Government is opposed to the alterations which have been made to this Bill. That has been made very clear. The report which has been adopted has made a very substantial alteration to the proposal which the Government wished to be put to the people and which the House of Representatives has agreed should be put to the people. Having said that, the simplest course is to allow the matter to proceed, the government indicating in this way that the deletions are not acceptable to it. 2434 10000 0 0 PRESIDENT, The The PRESIDENT A s this is a Bill to amend the Constitution the provisions of section 128 of the Constitution must be observed. Therefore I direct that the bells be rung. Passage of this Bill requires an absolute majority. (The bells having been rung)— 2435 10000 0 0 PRESIDENT, The The PRESIDENT Loc k the doors. I must inform honourable senators that I ordered the bells to be rung in accordance with the requirements of the Constitution. As no division was called for on the motion for the third reading of this Bill I ordered that the bells be rung. The question is 'that the Bill be now read a third time'. Those in favour say aye; to the contrary no. As there is no dissentient voice I declare that the ayes have it. As no division was called for I think it desirable that the names of those honourable senators present who agree to the third reading of the Bill be recorded. I therefore appoint Senators Young and O'Byrne as tellers and direct the tellers to record the names so that there is a record in the journals of the Senate of those honourable senators who have indicated their support. Senators agreeing to the Third Reading: Anderson, Sir Kenneth Bishop, R. Bonner, N. T. Buttfield, Dame Nancy Byrne, C. B. Cameron, Donald Cant, H. G.J. Carrick, J. L. Cavanagh, J. L. Cormack, Sir Magnus Cotton, R. C. Davidson, G. S. Devitt, D. M. Drake-Brockman, T. C. Drury, A. J. Durack, P. D. Gair, V.C. Georges, G. Gietzelt, A. T. Greenwood, I. J. Guilfoyle, M.G.C. Hannan, G. C. Jessop, D. S. Kane.J.T. Keeffe, J. B. Laucke, C. L. Lawrie, A. G. E. Litde, J. A. McAuliffe, R.E. McClelland, Douglas McClelland, James McLaren, G.T. MeManus, F. P. Marriott, J. E. Maunsell, CR. Milliner, B. R. Mulvihill, J. A. Murphy, L. K. Poke, A. G. Poyser, A. G. Primmer, C. G. Rae, P. E. Sim, J.P. Townley, M. Webster, J.J. Wheeldon, J.M. Wilkinson, L. D. Withers, R.G. Wood, I. A. C. Wriedt, K.S. Tellers: O'Byrne, J. Young, H.W. 2435 10000 0 0 PRESIDENT, The The PRESIDENT Order ! As 52 senators have agreed to the third reading of the Bill I certify that the third reading has been agreed to by an absolute majority as is required by the Constitution of Australia. Question resolved in the affirmative. 2435 1L5 ALP 1 0 MURPHY, Lionel Senator MURPHY b y leave—Mr President, you will appreciate, as I think do all honourable senators, what has happened. A Government measure has been introduced and has been altered significantly in the Senate. Half the proposal contained in the Bill has been taken out. Of course, the Government wants the part that remains. It lso wants the other part. The Bill will go back to the House of Representatives. The Government will determine whether the Bill in this form is acceptable or whether it should insist on the Bill as it was introduced. That is why I indicated to honourable senators that I moved the motion for the third reading in order that the Bill might take its proper course, go back to the House of Representatives and be considered by the Government in the light of the Senate's action. 2429 DV4 Western Australia Leader of the Opposition in the Senate 0 0 WITHERS, Reg Senator WITHERS by leave—Th e Opposition quite understands the position of the Leader of the Government in the Senate (Senator Murphy). He has moved his motions this afternoon without prejudice to the right of the Government to do whatever it may wish to do. I suggest to him that, if the Government is still keen on reducing the number of States in which a majority of electors is required from four to three, it introduce a separate Bill. We feel that the residents of the Territories should be given a vote. We have indicated that the Bill, as it has been passed, would have our support. Rather than take a rigid attitude, the Government ought to introduce another Bill to give effect to its wishes in respect of the balance of section 128, and we can argue about that on a separate Bill. Bill read a third time 2435 Bills 2435 Consideration resumed from 28 November (vide page 2254). Clause 24. (l)Where- (b) a period of not less than six years has elapsed since— (i) the date on which the duties on goods of that description were first imposed; or (ii) where, since that date, the Commission or the Tariff Board has made an inquiry and report in relation to the assistance that should be provided to the industry producing goods of that description—the date on which that report was furnished, the Commission may on its own initiative inquire into and report on the assistance that should be provided to the industry producing goods of that description. Upon which Senator Cotton had moved by way of amendment: Leave out' six years', insert' ten years'. The Committee divided. (The Temporary Chairman- Senator Wilkinson) 30 23 Majority....... 7 AYES NOES Question so resolved in the affirmative. The TEMPORARY CHAIRMAN (Senator Wilkinson)- Order! The question now is: 'That the words proposed to be inserted, be inserted '. Amendment agreed to. Clause, as amended, agreed to. Clause 25. In this Part, "Commissioner" includes an Associate Commissioner. 2436 JQR New South Wales 0 0 COTTON, Bob Senator COTTON - Clause 25 deals with the question of temporary assistance. The Opposition has circulated a series of amendments which flow from and are dependent upon the amendment to clause 25 which I shall now move so that the record will be clear. I move: Leave out the clause, insert the following clause- 25 (1). There shall be a Temporary Assistance Authority, comprising not more than three persons, appointed by the Governor-General on a full-time or on a part-time basis as appropriate. Members of the Temporary Assistance Authority shall hold office under such terms and conditions as the Governor-General determines.'. I will proceed now to discuss that new clause 25. 2436 10000 0 0 TEMPORARY CHAIRMAN, The The TEMPORARY CHAIRMAN Order ! Has this amendment been circulated? 2436 JQR 0 0 COTTON, Bob Senator COTTON The amendment has been circulated. I should mention that this matter was debated fairly thoroughly in the House of Representatives. The view of the Liberal Party in the Senate is the same as that held by Liberal Party supporters in the House of Representatives, namely, that it is much wiser for the Temporary Assistance Authority to be separated from rather than be included in the Industries Assistance Commission itself for the various reasons expressed in the House of Representatives and to which I shall try to advert briefly here. But dependent upon the proposed new clause 25 being inserted, there has been circulated a number of consequential amendments to clauses 26, 27,28, 29, 30 and 31. Clause 25 is the important clause; it is the operative clause. Once the amendment relating to clause 25 is disposed of, the others will fall into line. I know that there are people who hold wide and differing views on this subject of a Temporary Assistance Authority. Even some of my own friends do not hold the views that I hold, but that does not mean that they are necessarily correct. I want to advert to one or two matters in relation to this clause, and they flow from the report which we are really discussing because this legislation is based upon that report. I refer to the report of Sir John Crawford who begins to deal with this question of temporary assistance on page 46 of his report. In paragraph 78 under the heading 'Temporary Assistance' he states: Some domestic industries will encounter sudden and unexpected difficulties from time to time, due say to drought, in the case of primary industries, or damaging competition from imports, in the case of secondary industries. These short term emergencies will often result in requests for temporary assistance, from the industries affected. That is a very important observation. But it is no less important to read the section of the report in which Sir John Crawford summarises his main conclusions. These are recounted on page 94 of the report. In paragraph 160 Sir John Crawford— I deal with these things briefly—state s the general purposes which he sees as being valid to the establishment of the Industries Assistance Commission. In that paragraph Sir John Crawford states: I have summarised briefly below the main conclusions of my report, without restating them in detail and without explaining again the reasons behind them. Reasons for establishing the Commission It can assist the Government to develop co-ordinated policies for improving resource allocation It can provide advice on those policies which is disinterested It can facilitate public scrutiny for those policies Guidelines for the Commission The Commission should only advise the Government; it should not have executive or administrative responsibilities to the Government It should be provided with a broad policy framework, which should be consistent with the long term goals of national economic and social policy. There we have some very important observations. Let me return to page 46 of the report where Sir John Crawford talks about domestic industries encountering sudden and unexpected difficulties due, say, to drought in the case of primary industries. There are other difficulties to be contemplated in primary industries, such as perhaps from time to time a sudden flood of imports damaging the home market and underntining it. I can think of one such occasion when at one stage the Australian fat lamb market looked as though it would be flooded with New Zealand lambs coming in at a price which was well below the Australian producers' production costs. There was really no device available by which to give immediate relief to that industry. From time to time comments have been made in the Senate about the dried pea industry and the frozen vegetable industry. Primary industry is likely to encounter the need for unexpected and sudden help as a result of difficulties caused byunrestricted low priced imports, some of which are dumped, just as secondary industry is so affected and has been affected. What we are dealing with here is the economic viability of established industries, both primary and secondary, the security of employment for those people engaged in those industries, and the What we are dealing with here is the economic viability of established industries, both primary and secondary, the security of employment for those people engaged in those industries, and the need very often for urgent and quick actionsomething that has to happen perhaps within the space of a few weeks—i n order to get those involved in a situation in which they do not have to go out of business. I think one would be well advised to look at the previous arrangement that safeguarded this position, namely, the existence of the Temporary Assistance Authority which operated separately. Cases of urgent need were referred to it by the Government. The Authority dealt with those cases. A report was made back to the Government and the Government then decided whether to pick up the case. If it decided to do so, it assisted the industry concerned immediately. In the new scheme we have a broadening of the base. Instead of just manufacturing industries being assisted, assistance is now to be extended to primary industry and also to some sections of the transport and service industries. These industries will stand in need of the same urgent examination of an application for relief in order to safeguard employment, the viability of the industry, and all those things. The valid comment that Sir John Crawford makes in his report is that the Commission should only advise the Government; it should not have executive or administrative responsibilities to the Government. The Temporary Assistance Authority, in my view— Consideration interrupted. 2437 10000 0 0 TEMPORARY CHAIRMAN, The The TEMPORARY CHAIRMAN Order ! It being 7 p.m., in conformity with the sessional order relating to the adjournment of the Senate, I formally put the question: That the Temporary Chairman do now leave the chair and report to the Senate. Question resolved in the affirmative. The Temporary Chairman having reported accordingly) 2437 adjournment Appointment of Commonwealth Solicitor-General 2437 10000 0 0 TEMPORARY CHAIRMAN, The The TEMPORARY CHAIRMAN Order ! In conformity with the sessional order relating to the adjournment of the Senate, I put the question: That the Senate do now adjourn. 2437 1L5 New South Wales ALP 1 0 MURPHY, Lionel Senator MURPHY - Consistent with what I said I would do when I was answering a question last week, I inform the Senate that as of today Mr Maurice Hearne Byers, an eminent Queen's Counsel, has become Solicitor-General of the Commonwealth. Question resolved in the affirmative. Senate adjourned at 7.2 p.m.