Joint Select Committee: dissenting submissions excluded because they were not "relevant"

Submissions ignored (image from Andrew Bolt)

The Dissenting Report of the Joint Select Committee into the Clean Energy Bills makes very interesting reading, and shows evidence of a concerted attempt to suppress or exclude dissent from the debate, based on a subjective test of “relevance”.

It appears that many submissions were intentionally classified as “mere correspondence” in order to avoid their publication, and obviate the need for the Committee to have regard to their content.

In this report of Coalition Members and Senators we have included the comments of hundreds of Australians – not just those few who appeared before the committee in its select few days of hearings in south-eastern Australia, or those professional organisations who made detailed submissions, but also many comments from the more than 4,500 people who made submissions to this inquiry, which the Labor-Greens-Independent majority refused to have published.

To the thousands of people who feel like Noel Bowman, who stated in his submission that ‘I suppose no one will ever read this submission and in consequence I am wasting my time’, the Coalition members say we have tried to give you a voice. We could not quote or reference everybody, but in contrast to Labor’s determination to shut people out of this process we were even more determined to ensure that as many voices as possible from across Australia were heard. (page 129)

…This Joint Select Committee – dominated by the Labor and Greens proponents of the legislation into which it is inquiring – allowed just a week for the committee to receive submissions, determining at its first meeting on Thursday 15 September that it would advertise for the first time on Saturday 17 September 2011 but with a closing date for submissions of Thursday 22 September 2011.

Hearings for this inquiry were scheduled in the week following the closing date of submissions, which did not allow the committee to properly consider the more than 4,500 submissions it received. In fact, the Labor-Greens dominated committee opted not to accept the vast majority of submissions and merely received them as ‘correspondence’, despite unsuccessful Coalition attempts to extend both the deadline for making submissions and the time allowed for the committee to report.

This volume of correspondence demonstrates the level of engagement and the depth of feeling Australians have in relation to the Government’s policy approach on this issue, but which Labor and the Greens have effectively sought to silence as far as this inquiry is concerned. (page 253)

On what grounds, therefore, did the committee exclude such a vast amount of correspondence? Let’s look at the requirements for submissions, from the Committees web site:

• There is no prescribed form for a submission to a parliamentary committee. Submissions may be in the form of a letter, a short document or a substantial paper. They may include appendices and other supporting documents.
• Submissions should be prepared solely for the inquiry and should be relevant to the terms of reference. They may address all or a selection of the points outlined in the terms of reference. Submissions may contain facts, opinions, arguments and recommendations for action.
• It is helpful if submissions are prefaced by a brief summary of the main points.
• Supplementary submissions may be lodged during the course of an inquiry to provide additional information or comments on other evidence.

Nothing particularly challenging there. The Clean Energy Committee had no specific terms of reference (see here), so that removes one hurdle. Let’s have a look at the checklist:

Before lodging your submission you may find it helpful to consider the following checklist:

•  Have I commented on some or all of the terms of reference? [There were none for this inquiry – Ed]
• Have I provided a summary of the submission at the front (for lengthy submissions)?
• Have I provided my return address and contact details with the submission?
• If the submission contains confidential information, have I made this clear at the front?
• Have I provided an electronic version of the submission (if possible)?

There is nothing there which would permit the Committee to exclude 4,500 submissions as mere correspondence. An email with a return address should be sufficient for it to be accepted as a submission.

But here is the Committee’s explanation – and it is based on the wholly subjective test of “relevance”:

A large amount of correspondence was received by the committee. These items were not received as submissions to the inquiry because they did not address the actual legislation being considered. The correspondence was read and noted. The majority of the correspondence questioned the following issues:

• The legitimacy of the science behind climate change and whether it is due to human action;
• The legitimacy of the government to introduce the legislation;
• The impact of the carbon ‘tax’ on individuals and the economy; and
• Why should Australia go it alone on introducing measures to reduce carbon pollution putting us at a claimed competitive disadvantage? (Introduction, p12, here – PDF)

The next paragraph quotes the Chief Scientist, Ian Chubb, at the Inquiry hearings (see here for more of Chubb’s nonsense at that hearing) as if this somehow justifies their relevance test:

The latest information I have seen shows that the CO2 levels are high and that the rate of accumulation is accelerating. The scientists who study this would argue that it is getting to the point where something has to be done quickly in order to cap them at least and start to have them decrease over a sensible period of time. You could easily argue that it is urgent and that something needs to be done because of the high level presently and the accelerating accumulation presently (sic). We do need to do something.

Well that clinches it for me…!

It is almost beyond comprehension that the Committee felt that those four issues “did not address the actual legislation being considered.” They may not be relevant for considering individual sections of the Bills, but those four key issues go straight to the heart of whether the legislation is prudent, or even necessary at all! Is the Committee expecting us to believe that questions of prudence or necessity are outside its scope? Laughable.

Remember, there were NO terms of reference for this Inquiry, so the Committee should not have been able to exclude correspondence on the grounds of relevance. Even if there were terms of reference, issues raised in correspondence are clearly relevant to the matter being considered.

I have to keep reminding myself that this is Australia and not the former Soviet Union. Is this where we are at, in 2011, where the genuine concerns of the public, in a formal parliamentary committee, are simply ignored?

The Dissenting Report is here (PDF).