Senator MILNE (Tasmania—Leader of the Australian Greens) (17:50): I rise today to note that this is the second time we have had the suspension of standing orders brought on. Senator Abetz tried it earlier. Twice the Senate voted not to support what the government wanted to do in bringing on the debate on the repeal of the carbon price bills today; now we are seeing it brought back on. As Senator Wong has just speculated, one can only assume that it is being brought back on now to defy the will of the Senate because some deal has been stitched together; it is being brought back on to get the government a majority to suspend standing orders in order to thwart the rules of the Senate in relation to Senate committees. This Senate committee process has been a farce and it really disappoints me. I say that because the Greens moved to have this Senate committee report on 2 October. The reason is that we wanted to have a series of hearings, proper hearings, and to hear from a number of stakeholders—including some of the 59 economists who are out today saying, 'Keep emissions trading.' It would have been a useful exercise to explore some of the options through the Senate committee process. I was disappointed when Labor would not support a decent period of time for that committee to report. In fact, it only supported it to 14 July. It would have been sensible to have a proper process. Nevertheless, I still expected there would have been at least one day of hearings, so I was shocked to learn that the government used its numbers on the legislative committee, where it has a majority, to prevent any hearings being held. I just want to say that again: the government used its numbers on the Senate legislative committee to prevent any hearings being held. That is oppressive; that is the wrong way to treat the Senate. How can you think it was appropriate to block any hearings at all from being held? How can you think it is appropriate now to come in here to suspend standing orders to try to ram this through on the first day, having blocked any committee hearings being held? The Senate is a house of review. The thing it is best known for in the community is Senate committee inquiries and reports into matters of concern to the Australian community. If we are now going to be in a position where the Senate committee process is abused and where you have governments using their numbers to prevent hearings being held, then we are going to have much poorer levels of debate. It is through those Senate committee inquiries that people raise particular issues, which you bring to the Senate—you make amendments and change recommendations—and it actually helps you form a determination on some legislation where you may not have appreciated the complexities of it in the first place. I condemn the government for refusing to have any hearings into the whole clean energy package of bills. It is appalling that we now have a situation where the Senate, having expressed its view earlier today that it did not want to deal with this but wanted to stick with the 14 July reporting date as had been agreed, has now seen the government go away and cobble together some deal—we will soon see what the deal is—to bring on the suspension of standing orders. It would be very disappointing if senators, on their very first day, took a decision that essentially up-ends a longstanding Senate procedural process. It is all very well to do a deal on this today, but there will be other matters where senators in this chamber will want to have hearings and serious investigations. If the government gets away with this today—using its numbers to block hearings and to bring forward dates when committees report and to bring on legislation before it has even been looked at by senators in this chamber—then we are not doing democracy in Australia a service. We are undermining democracy and going down the path of the government ramming things through the Senate. That is a very bad way for us to proceed and that is why I do not think it is appropriate that this is going on, especially since the Senate had already expressed its view earlier today in relation to these matters.