The Queensland Legislative Assembly Hansard is in PDF or XML - but not HTML. Fortunately Firefox renders it ok. In todays sitting, one of the first items was from Beattie on the drought implications. This was used as an excuse to give the State reserve powers to override local councils.

Today I want to talk about drought and water. South-east Queensland is in the grip of the second worst drought on record. If our dams do not receive significant volumes of water in the next six months the region will sink into the worst drought ever. Cabinet yesterday discussed the latest projections on drought and dams. Modelling by South East Queensland Water shows that under the worst case scenario Wivenhoe, Somerset and North Pine dams will strike what is known as `dead' storage levels--that is, five per cent--in December 2006. That would apply without water restrictions; restrictions would push the `dead' levels date to February 2007. Under the more realistic scenario of a repeat of 2004 rainfall patterns, dead levels will hit in October 2007 without water restrictions, or in September 2008 if there are restrictions.

Water management is a feature of the South-East Queensland Regional Plan and program, including upgrading and building new water infrastructure. The data presented to cabinet by the Minister for Natural Resources and Mines, Henry Palaszczuk, shows we must take the lead on water reform in Australia's fastest growing region. With more than 1,000 new residents flocking to the region every week, and climate change a scientific fact, we have no time to waste. As an immediate step, we will accelerate infrastructure developments on the Logan, Albert and Mary Rivers under the South-East Queensland Infrastructure Plan. Regarding Wivenhoe Dam, South-East Queensland Water is well advanced with the upgrade of the spillway which is essential to urban water supplies in south-east Queensland.

I advise the House today that the government has given south-east Queensland a commitment to subsidise the cost of the upgrade and we are honouring this commitment with a payment to assist with the upgrade. We will also bring forward $10 million in subsidies to local governments for water conservation measures, such as pressure reduction and reducing water distribution losses. The government is also examining the feasibility of desalination and exploring water purification and reuse proposals. We will reinforce capital works and maintenance initiatives with more robust laws, cracking down harder on people who repeatedly breach restrictions. We will also fast-track a proposed review of institutional arrangements. This will ensure that the arrangements for ownership and control of dams and water supplies serve the best interests of south-east Queenslanders. The region has 19 dams owned by 10 different organisations.

The south-east Queensland arrangements contrast with those in other states, where government owned corporations, not local councils, manage dams, water treatment, bulk and retail water delivery and waste water services for the entire state or for large metropolitan areas. The south-east Queensland arrangement can lead to baffling anomalies. For instance, in recent years Gold Coast swimmers had to leave the beach without taking a shower, but there was nothing to stop Brisbane people hosing down their driveways. The Gold Coast draws water from Wivenhoe Dam, which is at 38 per cent capacity, while Hinze Dam is more than 80 per cent full. We will work with local governments, other water service providers and the community to make such anomalies a thing of the past.

We will speed up the review of institutional arrangements to ensure everyone has equitable access to water. The stronger laws that we propose will impose tougher penalties on people who flout water restrictions. A domestic water user who breaches water restrictions currently faces an on-the-spot fine of $75 each time they offend. We propose to significantly increase fines, particularly for repeat offenders, and to have much bigger penalties for corporate and industrial offenders. We also propose on-the-spot fines for anyone who takes water from fire fighting systems and hydrants without approval.

Further, we propose to give the state reserve powers to impose restrictions if local governments refuse to do so . I hope the government will never need to apply any of these emergency powers. However, we need to hold them in reserve to ensure that the population and economy of south-east Queensland can continue to flourish with confidence.

My emphasis. Is this a permutation of the Paymaster Pattern , or the "Naked Grab" pattern?

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Mitchell Fifield is a Liberal Senator from Victoria and one of the Parliamentarians for an Australian Head of State. He made a very interesting speech on Bruce Smith and Liberalism in the Senate recently which was recorded in the September 6th Hansard. I have reproduced it in full.

This is a good political speech. The reader is left in no doubt of Fifield's philosophy of liberalism which is probably best described as cautious-conservative-liberalism [CCL?]. The dominant strand is liberalism itself and Fifield rightly places the individual as the dominant political entity inside his view of liberalism.

The speech drops into some left bashing, but given it was done in the theatrics of parliament, that is probably just par for the course - but far less than the 'politics as sports' that is normally seen in the Hansard.

Fifield also misses with his description of a Bill of Rights as handing legislative function to the judiciary. This is ironic as the central theme is Smith's "legislative meddling" in the speech. A Bill of Rights is to create an area of liberty that the legislative cannot trespass into. It actually ensures that the legislative cannot meddle in areas of liberty.

As we are seeing in the US where habeous corpus has been legislated away by Congress and placed under the arbitrary will of the executive . The only route of appeal for the people in this instance is to the judicial to cast down what is unconstitutional legislation.

A bill of rights stops legislative meddling and ensures that the people can sue the legislative, through the judicial, to ensure that a bare minimum of liberty is guaranteed.

I hope Fifield, and other Senators, do more speeches of this nature. I am also going to have to go looking for Smith's book, Liberty and Liberalism .

Senate Hansard. September 6th, 2006

MATTERS OF PUBLIC INTEREST - Mr Bruce Smith

Senator FIFIELD (Victoria) (12.45 p.m.)--The term `freedom fighter' conjures up images of flag-waving revolutionaries marching through the streets, or perhaps brightly coloured and costumed superheroes, the stuff of comic books and cartoons. We almost certainly do not picture a well-groomed, neatly dressed, moustachioed gentleman of a century ago. Yet that is what Bruce Smith was. He was a freedom fighter who devoted his life to advocating for individual freedom, not because it was popular but because it was in society's best interests. Bruce Smith is not exactly a household name in Australia, nor has he been graced with a parkland statue, but his unassuming name masks his legacy as one of Australia's significant and early liberal thinkers.

Arthur Bruce Smith was born in Surrey, England, in June 1851, educated in England and then at Wesley College in Melbourne. He studied law at the University of Melbourne before returning to London, where he was called to the bar in early 1877. Later that year, he returned to Melbourne and was admitted to the Victorian bar on the same day as Alfred Deakin. The two men would be prominent figures in Victorian and federal politics for the next couple of decades.

Bruce attempted to make his first foray into politics when he stood for the Victorian Legislative Assembly seat of Emerald Hill in February 1880. He was unsuccessful. That was in fact the first of five attempts he made to enter Australian parliaments. He moved to Sydney the following year and practised at the bar. But Bruce's political ambitions remained strong and, on 23 November 1882, he won a by-election for the New South Wales Legislative Assembly seat of Gundagai. As luck would have it, parliament was dissolved that same day, so Bruce again went to the polls and was re-elected 20 days later, on 13 December.

An issue of the Bulletin that year praised Smith, saying he added `the strong common sense of the experienced commercial man to the acumen of the practised advocate'. Smith resigned that seat in 1884 and returned to Melbourne to become joint managing director of his father's shipping company, WM Howard Smith and Sons Ltd. He went on to found the Victorian Employers Union in 1885 and served as its first president until 1887.

Bruce enjoyed writing and over the years contributed to several journals, including the Victorian Review, Melbourne Review, Centennial Magazine and the Sydney Quarterly Magazine. He returned to Sydney in 1888 and founded the New South Wales employers union.

Smith made a fourth run at parliament and re-entered via the New South Wales Legislative Assembly, this time in the seat of Glebe in 1889. He joined with the free traders and served in Parkes's last ministry as secretary for public works and then colonial treasurer. The turbulent politics of that time took their toll on Bruce, and his commitment to his immediate family saw him again bow out of politics in 1894. In 1901 Smith made his fifth and final attempt to enter parliament, becoming the first federal member for Parkes, a seat he would hold for 18 years and be re-elected to six times before being defeated in 1919.

Smith never wavered from his enduring belief in the values of liberalism. During his parliamentary career he was one of the most fervent opponents of immigration restriction, the White Australia policy, compulsory arbitration and the new welfare liberalism espoused by some of his colleagues. He was also a vocal supporter of the women's movement, advocating equal rights and opportunities for both genders. He continuously argued that freedom and liberty were the most effective instruments to ensure societal wellbeing, not `meddling legislation', as he termed it. Smith retired to his home in Bowral in 1925 and died there in 1937, aged 86.

Smith penned a number of works including Our Commonwealth in 1904 and the brilliantly titled Paralysis of a nation , attacking socialism, in 1914. But his most important contribution was his documentation of his political philosophy in the aptly titled work of 1887, Liberty and liberalism . One hundred and twenty years later, the principles that underscore Smith's commentary are still relevant. His work has stood the test of time.

Throughout his life he remained true to his belief in championing the rights of individuals and the value of free enterprise--as he coined it, `true liberalism'. Perhaps the most important message Bruce Smith left is the reminder that governments have limited capacity to improve the welfare of individuals. Australians are better off when encouraged and nurtured to work on improving themselves rather than turning to the state for answers. One of Smith's ideological allies, John Bright, spoke in this same vein when he observed:

... there is a danger of people coming to the idea ... that a government can do anything that is wanted--that, in fact, it is only necessary to pass an Act of Parliament to make any one well off. There is no more serious mistake than that.

Liberalism is often shouted down by the Left as an instrument of the wealthy, but Smith knew that those who suffer most from loss of liberty are actually the poorest members of society. Smith reminded those of us charged with the responsibility for legislating that acts of parliament remove `a liberty from somebody, because it must of necessity speak of something which shall or shall not be done, where before it was optional'. As the federal member for Parkes, Smith stunned other members of the House when he addressed them stating:

I have not that exalted opinion of the powers of Parliament. It can transfer things from one person to another, and it can do a great deal of harm.

Bruce Smith held freedom as sacred and recognised legislation as potentially its greatest threat. It is fascinating to compare the ideas of Smith with the opposing ideas of the political Left. Though the Left claim the battleground for women's rights, they forget that classical liberals like Bruce Smith stood strong for their equality. In a speech to the House in 1901, Bruce Smith argued that women should receive equal workplace pay. And it was not the Left but rather proponents of liberalism like Bruce Smith who were the most fervent critics of the White Australia policy.

The socialists of Smith's time, much like their ideological kin today, assert moral ownership over the notion of `opportunity for all', but equal opportunity has always been a strong ideal of true liberalism. Many of Smith's battles were against those who misinterpreted the goals of liberalism or deliberately skewed them for personal advantage. Smith said:

Liberalism does not seek to make all men equal: nothing can do that. But its object is to remove all obstacles erected by men, which prevent all having equal opportunities.

It might at first glance appear odd that a member of a government would be lamenting the influence of the very entity that they are representing. But the spirit of liberalism is not anti government--that amounts to anarchy--but one in which the intervention of government in the private life of a citizen is sought to be thoroughly minimised.

Today Bruce Smith would be turning in his grave. Right around the country, Labor state governments are presiding over a series of emerging nanny states. They tell us what we should say, how we should feel and what we should think, and none is worse than the government of the sovereign state of Victoria, currently headed by Mr Bracks. A case in point is that the Bracks government's Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities Act 2006--the bill of rights--illustrates exactly what Bruce Smith warned against. This is the sort of meddling legislation that purports to advance freedom and liberty but in fact does exactly the opposite. This bill of rights hands to the judiciary the power and responsibility to make laws.

Labor's bill of rights requires the courts to ensure that every single piece of legislation--past, present and future--must be interpreted in a way that is consistent with human rights. This gives a legislative power to the courts--a power that properly resides with democratically elected parliaments. It does nothing to protect people's rights; rather, it limits them by prescribing them. As the old proposition goes: to define a right is to limit it. The problem with prescribing rights is that, once you start detailing some, other important rights are omitted. For example, property rights are included in the bill, but the bill's explanatory memorandum expressly states that the bill does not deal with the issue of compensation for property being taken.

Bruce Smith would be horrified at the perverse implications of this bill. It was the men of his time who decided against a constitutional bill of rights. In a final slap in the face for democracy in Victoria, the Bracks government refused the opposition's request to put the proposed bill to a referendum. It is, unfortunately, now law. The final word on the Victorian bill of rights should go the author of a personal submission to a parliamentary committee in 2001. It reads:

A bill of rights would pose a fundamental shift in tradition, with Parliament abdicating its important policy-making functions to the judiciary ... A bill of rights is an admission of the failure of parliaments, governments and the people to behave in a reasonable, responsible and respectful manner. I do not believe we have failed.

That personal submission was actually penned by former New South Wales Labor Premier Bob Carr. He got it right.

What disturbs me even more is the restriction of freedom of speech in Victoria as a result of the Racial and Religious Tolerance Act 2001. No-one should ever condone racial vilification. It is completely unacceptable in Australian society to vilify anyone on the basis of their racial background. It was a desire to protect members of our community that prompted the bill. Anti-Semitism was particularly in the minds of the proponents and the authors of the bill, but the act has gone too far. It limits freedom of religious expression, freedom of speech and freedom of conscience in a way that is totally unacceptable in a liberal, pluralistic democracy. Religious vilification should be condemned, but the difficulties of legislating against religious vilification have become evident.

Two Christian pastors have been found guilty by the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal of making fun of Muslim beliefs and practices. The crime was to quote the Koran and evoke laughter from the audience. No-one suggested that the pastors were quoting the Koran incorrectly, just that the response to quoting passages from the Koran was laughter. In Victoria today, laughter amounts to religious vilification. The core business of clerics is to advocate why they believe--to advocate their world view and why their truth is the right one. Of necessity, this means saying why you believe that another's belief system is flawed. The battle of ideas, the battle of world views and the battle of beliefs is at the heart of what makes us a pluralistic society. Pluralism is not the housing of beliefs in silos; it is the interaction of those ideas and the tolerance of those ideas. But tolerance does not mean a denial of contestability. All ideas in our society should be contestable.

But there is worse to come. A convicted Wiccan paedophile serving time in jail has used the religious vilification provisions of the legislation to pursue the Salvation Army for allegedly vilifying his Wiccan religious beliefs. The paedophile voluntarily enrolled in an alpha course--a church run course to explain Christianity. The crime? Those conducting the course did not speak well of witches, astrologers and occultists. The Wiccan was unsuccessful in his action, but the fact that this matter could even go to a directions hearing means that the laws are fundamentally flawed. I again turn to Bob Carr for assistance. He had this to say about such laws:

As they are used in practice, religious vilification laws can undermine the very freedom they seek to protect--freedom of thought, conscience and belief.

This is yet another example of meddling legislation. The solution to the articulation of poor ideas, stupid ideas and offensive ideas is not to gag those articulating them. The solution is to rebut them with good ideas--the sort of legitimate exchange of ideas that people like Bruce Smith spent their lives engaging in. I fear that I am giving Bob Carr too much credit, but I will give him the final word on this particular piece of legislation. He said, `Leave these matters to the common sense of the Australian people.'

I congratulate the state Liberal leader, Ted Baillieu, and the shadow Attorney-General, Andrew Macintosh, for their stands on these issues of freedom. The Victorian opposition is committed to repealing the bill of rights and to reviewing the religious vilification provisions of the Racial and Religious Tolerance Act. Bruce Smith would be proud. We need to be vigilant and resolute and reject being told how to live our lives. It is always time to stand up for individual freedoms, liberty and equal opportunity. It is time to stand against these new nanny states. It is time to revive the spirit of Bruce Smith.

The December 1st Senate Hansard is almost entirely consumed by the Independent Contractors Workplace Amendment. Andrew Murray has an interesting statement on the determination of what constitutes an independent contractor.

Unfortunately it is a hard debate to follow and requires a knowledge and understanding of the history of Workchoices related legislation - one of the reasons why we elect specialist legislators - though the flipside is that the people who are required to follow the law should be able to do so easily and without excess specialist knowledge of the law. ie it should be easy to read and understand.

During his speech Andrew Murray is recorded as saying;

These items related to the definition of employee, which I will be moving later in the Workplace Relations Act amendment. I think I need to put these in context now, because obviously if they relate to provisions that are going to go into another act you need to put them in their context.

The bill claims that one of its objectives is to recognise independent contracting as a legitimate form of work arrangement that is primarily commercial; but in fact the bill offers no solution and no further enlightenment as to who is a genuine contractor or employee or who is a disguised contractor or employee.

As the chamber knows, various state legislatures have attempted to grapple with this but at the federal level the common-law provisions continue to prevail. Indeed, the bill only includes a very minimal definition of an independent contractor.

Instead it defers to the common-law definition, which in any case is subject to change over time as jurisprudence advances. Many, including the Democrats, believe relying on the common-law definition of employment is fraught with the problems.

Murray is arguing for explicit legislation that is definitive rather than the common law style of implicitability which remains a non-concrete entity until it is forced into definition by a High Court case. By the sounds of it the States have created explicit definitions in their now obsolete industrial relations legislation.

As noted in my minority report to this bill, the common-law definition of an independent contractor is not a definition as such; it is a set of principles established through jurisprudence and it is not about defining who is an independent contractor but defining who is not an employee.

The common-law approach relies on a test which involves the consideration of a number of court established factors or indicia. This means effectively a case-by-case approach, which is an unsatisfactory way to proceed with employee-contractor definitional disputes that may affect many hundreds of thousands of Australians.

I think it is important to recognise that this particular issue is at the heart of a genuine policy contest between the government and people of my persuasion.

Both the government and the Democrats agree that there should be a national regime which establishes the nature of independent contracting. The difference between us really comes down, at its heart, to the issue of the definition of an employee.

The government has, as a policy matter, adopted the common-law approach. We think--and we agree with the states, because they have tried to address this fundamental issue as well--that you do need a definition of employment.

The government, in another field, of course, has attempted to address this issue in a different way in tax law, through the alienation of personal service income test, which does seek to provide specific indicia of what constitutes an employee.

The Democrats are a national party who are comfortable with the ongoing centralisation of power to Canberra. That has been obvious over the years. Not surprising as they formed in a period when Australia was becoming comfortable with Australian nationalism and Australia as an independent nation-state.

I don't agree with that approach however. I think increasing decentralisation is a virtue under globalisation, as well as the security and stability challenges in the modern world. Federalism is a good technology, but only as much as the system is capable of restricting centralised control.

Murray's point that when disputes arise under this legislation, that common-law form that is permanently being moulded by Judicial decisions is inefficient and time-consuming. If the government is creating legislation to recognize independent contracting then it should be an explicit category. I side with Andrew Murray on this despite my opposition to Canberra having unitary control of industrial relations.

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Senator Russell Trood of Queensland made a speech on Regionalism in which he argues that the health of the federal system requires devolution to the local authorities closest, and most competent, to deliver the required governance to citizens.

Trood also suggests that devolution might require the establishment of more states in order to increase the local responsiveness. He also argues that clean boundaries of authority, responsibility and separation need to be defined but with an acknowledgement that the modern-state invariably is not composed of autonomous fiefdoms but overlapping and co-operating political areas. Trood also mentions that devolution is not just a rural concern but will bring greater benefits to city-dwellers too.

I agree with Trood. The on-going centralisation has become a structural weakness in our political system. The antidote is decentralisation, and as Trood argues devolution.

The entire speech is reproduced here;

A hundred years after Federation, Australia has an increasingly centralised system of government. The recent High Court decision in the Work Choices case was further confirmation of this reality, but the movement towards the centre has been evident for a very long period of time. The extent of this movement would have surprised some of the founding fathers.

They created a federal system to devolve power and to anchor democracy in a country which, even by the start of the 20th century, exhibited growing political, economic and social diversity.

Given the strong drift towards centralism, it is perhaps not surprising that it has attracted frequent and increasingly vociferous criticism. Nor is it surprising that a long list of other ills are supposed to afflict the federal compact, including the vertical fiscal imbalance between the states and the Commonwealth.

Without embracing the complaints of every critic, I share the belief of many that there is now a need for us to look seriously at the dysfunctional aspects of federalism and to think creatively about the way that we might address them. I am convinced that, when we do so, we will not reach an adequate resolution of the problems unless there is a strong dose of devolution or greater regionalism within the policy mix.

Tonight I wish to argue briefly a case for a new regionalism.

When the six existing colonies formed one indissoluble federal Commonwealth of states in 1901, there was every expectation that new states would be admitted to the federation. Indeed, were the founding fathers to return today, they would be astonished to find that after 100 years this has not occurred. The last time there was any significant change to the political geography of the country was in 1911, when the Northern Territory was hived off from South Australia. Certainly, it was not expected that my own state of Queensland would remain unchanged. When it became a colony in 1859, it had a population of just 23,000 people.

By the time of Federation the numbers had grown substantially and there was considerable anticipation that a new state would be created in North Queensland. It was this prospect that encouraged many in the north of the state to vote so strongly in support of the Federation referendum.

The expectations of the founding fathers have not been fulfilled, and the reality is that there is a low correlation between Australia's real-life urban and rural regions and the levels of government designed to serve them. Put another way, the geopolitical boundaries that divide the nation-- whether we talk about local government boundaries, state borders, the lines that mark out area consultative committees or even the myriad divisions created for the delivery of health, education and other government services--are often poorly aligned to the communities of interest they are designed to serve.

There is no necessary virtue in comprehensive regionalism and no ideal level of devolution for good governance. However, there is the well-established principle of subsidiarity. This principle holds that decisions should be taken, and responsibilities exercised, as close as possible to the citizens at the lowest level of competent authority. We have long given rhetorical support to this proposition but equally long disregarded it in practice.

In these circumstances it is perhaps not surprising that Australia's existing political geography is coming under increasing criticism from a wide range of perspectives. Local government representatives routinely contend that they are closest to the people but deprived of the power and the resources and increasingly subject to the burden of cost-shifting from other levels of government.

The states and territories complain constantly about fiscal centralisation, overlapping and duplicated functional responsibilities and, increasingly, federal policy control.

Nor is the Commonwealth satisfied with current arrangements. The states rightly earn blame for delaying and frustrating sensible Commonwealth reforms, for delinquency in failing to cut taxes under GST reforms, for a failure to spend on infrastructure development and for their tolerance of numerous regulatory inconsistencies that add massively to the costs of business, both local and international.

Finally in this litany of federal woes, it is useful to point out that the complaints and frustrations with current arrangements of federalism are not just confined to the three levels of government. In October 2006, the Business Council of Australia released a report which contended that overlap, duplication and cost-shifting between the Commonwealth and the states, unnecessary taxes and overspending on programs because of a lack of oversight and accountability cost Australians at least $9 billion a year, and perhaps as much as $20 billion a year, through higher taxes and poorer quality services.

It is not a natural instinct among politicians, especially at the federal level, to consider that part of the solution to the problem of federalism is to seek greater devolution. More often, greater centralisation is seen as a better response. For some, to contemplate the idea of more states, and perhaps expanded regionalism, as a solution to federalism is as near to a nightmare scenario as is possible. This view fails to take account of the potentially productive power of the regions that could be released if serious reforms were achieved.

It fails to acknowledge how political restructuring can help promote innovation and ensure economic sustainability in a globalised economy.

It fails to appreciate that increasingly in Australia governance is a shared activity between local, state and federal authorities and that reform and the achievement of prosperity involve not so much competition as cooperation and collaboration between these different levels of government.

The idea that each of Australia's levels of government are separate fiefdoms--autonomous in their decision making, separate in the management of their financial affairs, independent in the exercise of their responsibilities and in every other way removed from one another--is an old and thoroughly outdated view of the modern developed state.

Of course, there need to be clear divisions of political authority and also comprehensive understandings of roles and responsibilities, but these must exist within a much more sophisticated model of contemporary intergovernmental relations.

The model of enhanced regionalism that will work best for Australia is a matter for debate. We could pursue more states created from existing ones, stronger regions with more widely devolved powers created within states or, of course, the even more radical idea of abolishing the states altogether and moving to a two-tier system of governance with many regions. All are possibilities.

We can debate these options in due course. For the moment, we have a far greater challenge--that is, to imagine a new federal future around a stronger, more sustainable regionalism. Perhaps we should be concerned that the Australian people have no interest in such things. On this matter, I draw the Senate's attention to the Constitutional Values Survey in Queensland and New South Wales undertaken by researchers at Griffith University. They showed a remarkably high knowledge of the problems of federalism among the public and a willingness to embrace reform.

What, then, might be the possible benefits of a reformed system?

First, there could be a more effective political system with better economic representation and accountability. Second, it would offer more efficient and responsive public administration. Finally, it would be possible to see communities with higher levels of social, economic and environmental sustainability. In Australia, arguments for greater devolution within federalism are often seen as arguments designed to benefit Australians in rural areas.

This is a narrow prism through which to consider the arguments for change. Certainly, regional Australia could hope to be empowered through reform, but the shortcomings of federalism affect those in urban areas and certainly those in the rapidly growing sea change communities around our coast.

Regionalism is a program of reform for the whole country. I would be surprised if reform was to take place quickly, but the reality is that to date our efforts at federalism reform have been half hearted and our interest in regionalism pursued without a serious commitment to the value of devolution.

In a globalised world, where the challenges of maintaining economic prosperity, the integrity of our liberal democracy and a high measure of social cohesion are constantly before us, we can do so much better.

I try to read as many Hansards as possible but when it becomes hard to do, or a hassle, I don't bother. PDF is a very inconvenient form to read through a browser. The native rendering format of a browser is HTML. It would be great if all the Hansards were in HTML first with the option for PDF.

Also, the HTML version should have a permanent deep-link that never goes away or is limited by session's timing out or anything of that nature.

That I am complaining about something like this, when even ten years ago I could not browse through the Hansards at night, is a great example of how far the parliament website's have come along. They are proving to be a wonderful resource.

Another great innovation would be to have RSS feeds for the Hansards with each speech being an entry and the RSS including the first forty words of the speech, motion, measure etc.

That would be awesome.

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Kerry Nettle made a speech in the Senate on the citizenship test legislation [pdf] which has been tabled. Nettle was a part of the Senate inquiry into the test consequently his a speech is a good summary of the findings - basically there is little need or value in it.

From the speech:

As part of that discussion, there was no additional justification provided by the Department of Immigration and Citizenship when it appeared before the committee. There was reference to the fact that there had been consultation--we were all aware of that--and to the fact that citizenship tests exist in other countries, but simply because it is done in other countries is not a justification for why we should do it.

In fact, the Department of Immigration and Citizenship was not able to provide any information to the Senate committee about ways in which a citizenship test had assisted with the project of improving the cohesiveness of society in any of the countries to which it pointed as examples of countries which have citizenship tests.

And:

The government has not put forward a need or a justification for this change. Indeed, our citizenship laws as a whole are working quite well. The example of overseas countries was the only justification put forward to us and the government could not even provide us with an example of how the test had helped in other countries.

In fact, we heard evidence to the contrary. Then there was the issue of whether or not the government's proposed citizenship test would achieve its objectives. We had an extraordinary number of witnesses appear before the committee to say that, no, it would not achieve the objective of improving cohesiveness and that, rather, it was likely to fuel division within our society and undermine existing English language programs.

The problem is that this legislation is not written in the immigrants or the national interest. It is for the purpose of making nativists, isolationists and nationalists feel better about themselves.

Nettle does another excellent speech which summarises the issues surrounding legislation for covert search and seizures by the Australian Federal Police [pdf]. It should be noted that Australian Democrats and Labor had issues with this component of the legislation. Nettle's speech is a reply to Stott Despoja's speech announcing the Democrats oppose that part of the legislation.

Nettle's speech:

I spoke extensively on this matter in my speech on the second reading. This amendment, as Senator Stott Despoja outlined, is about removing the power of the Australian Federal Police to carry out secret searches in people's homes, to confiscate their equipment, to plant listening devices and to access their computer equipment, all without those people ever knowing.

As I explained in my speech, and as Senator Johnston has heard me explain before, our concern is that, if evidence is gathered as a part of that covert search which is subsequently used against an individual in court, they will not be able to contest that evidence because they will not have known about the search having been carried out.

As I explained in my speech, currently the way in which warrants are issued is that you know someone is searching your home or your property and you are able to be there to check that they carry out the search properly. You get receipts for things that they take, and you are also able to have a lawyer present.

What that means is that you are able to check to see that the search is carried out lawfully and properly. If the search is carried out covertly and you never know about it then, if evidence is gathered and brought into a court and used against you, you cannot contest the accuracy of the collection of that evidence or whether that evidence was collected legally, because you were not able to observe or be aware of the search or receive receipts for documents taken because you would not know that the search had been carried out.

As I said in my speech, the government's rationale is that this is about evidence. The position I have put forward is that, given the delay in notification of the search warrant, it is inevitable that it will be used for intelligence.

But, if I take the government's rationale that it is for evidence, you would not be able to contest that evidence in a court if you were not aware of the way in which the search was carried out because you would not have been notified, you would not have had anyone present, you would not have had a lawyer able to observe the search and you would not have been able to access receipts for the process.

The amendment is about ensuring that there is not an abuse of the power to carry out the search. I am not saying that there will be an abuse; that is not what I am saying. I am just saying that this mechanism prevents you from being able to ensure that such a search is carried out properly.

If evidence is gathered and is used against you in a court, you have the right to be able to ensure that that evidence was legally and properly collected. But this takes away your right to be able to ensure that evidence used against you in a court is appropriately collected.

That is the concern that the Greens have in relation to this, and that is why we do not support giving these new sneak and peek powers to the Australian Federal Police.

I dealt with the issue of the time delay in my speech on the second reading. It is an extraordinary length of time.

If it is for evidence-gathering in particular, I cannot see why you need six months extended to 12 months and then 18 months. And, with the approval of the minister, the extensions can continue. That might make sense if it were for intelligence gathering, but it is not.

The government's rationale is that it is for evidence-gathering. Presumably, you are gathering evidence to use in the courts, so why such long delays?

It is interesting to compare it to the USA PATRIOT Act. In that act, at section 213, it says that such warrants are only able to be delayed for 90 days.

What is being proposed here, as the initial period of time, before there is any requirement for notification, is double what is in the USA PATRIOT Act.

Then this legislation allows for further extensions to make it 12 months or 18 months and then, with the approval of the minister, to extend it beyond that. So it is quite extraordinary, even when compared with overseas examples such as the USA PATRIOT Act.

Where you give powers to the Federal Police to carry out a search of somebody's home, there needs to be that accountability.

Our concern is that this model for covert search warrants, the sneak and peek powers for the AFP, does not allow you to have the oversight that you need, particularly if evidence is being gathered that is being used against you in your court case, because you cannot contest it. That is the concern that the Greens have, and that is why we strongly support this amendment.

We are concerned, and I outlined this in my speech in the second reading debate, that the process outlined in the bill suggests that an 18-month delay in notifying anybody can be easily obtained. This goes to the matter of there not being guidelines for Administrative Appeals Tribunal members or judges on making a determination about when it is extraordinary circumstances and should be extended even further. That allows 18 months to become standard.

Obviously there is an additional approval from the minister for a period beyond 18 months, so the length of time indicates to us that it is of concern. As I have said, that is far longer than is allowed in the United States, for example.

The Greens are far more liberal than they get credit for.