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Olive Zakharov

MoAD Oral Histories Olive Zakharov - Oral History Transcript Interview with Olive Zakharov Interviewed by Greg McIntosh on 8 May 1989 G McIntosh: An interview with Senator Zakharov, Labor Victoria, Parliament House, Canberra 8th May, 1989. I’d like to ask you about, just your general view on the Parliament-Executive relationship? O Zakharov: To my mind, I mean this is something that seems to be brought up in recent years quite frequently. I wonder why, it seems to me there is undue emphasis on it. It is something the Opposition frequently bring up. They talk about government by Press Release and government by Question Time and this sort of thing. G McIntosh: Actually Senator Walsh was worried it might have been a plot by the Senate bureaucracy but I did speak to him and assured him this question has got nothing to do with Harry Evans and his mob. In fact someone else raised that with me on the House side but it’s been totally devised with the library. O Zakharov: No, in fact I think I mentioned it, wondered why it had come up. G McIntosh: No, it totally come from me within the library … O Zakharov: That’s good, right. G McIntosh: … with assistance … O Zakharov: No, we had a previous research fellow who was into this stuff as well and that appeared miraculously the next minute on, I think it was Durack’s staff. G McIntosh: Really. O Zakharov: Yes. G McIntosh: Right. O Zakharov: A woman that was about four years ago. I think that was the first time that I heard that sort of line run but to my mind and I’ve been around a fair while. I don’t think there’s been any change. In fact I think, when you’ve got a Labor government you’ve got much more control over the Executive because of the way the Labor party works. G McIntosh: Is that party government, though, or parliamentary government? If you’ve got a [INAUDIBLE] party. O Zakharov: Well, it’s hard to draw a line in-between. I mean from what my Liberal colleagues tell me about Fraser’s time, it was totally government by Executive, possibly on our side in Whitlam’s time too you could have thrown that and I wasn’t around in either of those periods. G McIntosh: The Liberals will throw up then the fact that during Fraser’s time there was floor crossing even in the House whereas — I suppose you’ve got Graeme Campbell … O Zakharov: Yes. G McIntosh: … but very rarely will that happen within Labor because you’ve got Caucus rules. O Zakharov: No, and I would maintain that, that is because we have a more democratic structure within the Labor party so you do have a say. If you get done well, so be it, that’s the way the decisions are made. They’re not made from somewhere up there, except Budget time, of course, that’s a different matter. But I think everyone, on all sides of politics accept that Budget time is different because of risk of speculation. G McIntosh: If you were in Opposition now, would you say the same thing. I mean you’ve obviously got a structure through Caucus where you can influence the Executive now … O Zakharov: Yes. G McIntosh: … what would you say, if say, we had a Howard government? O Zakharov: Well, I would have no say then, certainly, but then when your often in government you don’t have much say anyway, do you. G McIntosh: Do you think that on that point, should the Parliament have more say. I mean, it almost appears that it’s winner takes all. You have an election, if you’re in the party that wins it, you will get your say through the committee structure and so on. Is there an argument to say, perhaps the other party that’s in Opposition, should there be forums and avenues, and areas where they can really put pressure on the Executive as well or is that too frustrating for governments? O Zakharov: Well, I mean you have certainly at greater remove, you’ve got your parliamentary committee system which I don’t think works in the same way, perhaps over in the other side because there your references, for example, seem to come mostly from Ministers whereas here the reference has to come either from the committee itself or from the Senate. I think that is one powerful way of people getting input. The other way, I guess, is just by the marshalling of public opinion which is after all what it’s all about when it gets to the bottom line anyway. G McIntosh: So at the moment, how do you see, I mean the Executive has to be able to govern. But do you see the Parliament … O Zakharov: The Executive is accountable to the party as well, to the Caucus on our side. G McIntosh: How, I mean the Executive covers an enormous range, including the Bureaucracy … O Zakharov: Yes, well that would concern me much more. If you include the Bureaucracy that certainly does worry me because I think the Bureaucracy has a great deal more power than most people realize. G McIntosh: Is the Parliament equipped to cover that whole range of Executive responsibility? O Zakharov: Equipped in what way? G McIntosh: To be able to effectively scrutinize what Ministers and their departments are doing? Is it adequate? O Zakharov: Well I think the Senate is more than the House of Representative because of Estimate Committees which are a very effective way. As long as you’ve got a clue about what’s going on. I mean there is a lot of things that happen in the Bureaucracy that nobody has a clue about. G McIntosh: A lot of people have said the Estimate Committees are patchy, they can be very good or they can be very bad, would you agree with that? O Zakharov: In what way, what do you mean by good and bad? G McIntosh: They are covering such a large area. You can get a Senator who can delve in and actually find out some things and some problems, on the other hand, because it’s so big sometimes it’s not seen. Also Senators might use the Estimates to grandstand, i.e. Aboriginal Affairs. O Zakharov: Certainly, yes, but on the other hand if you do want to follow something up. It doesn’t have to be in your own Estimates Committee, any Senator can, and that of course gets abused too, as we saw when Senator Vigor united everybody against him … G McIntosh: Yes. O Zakharov: … because of the way he used it to find out why a particular drain had been mended on a particular day. But I think Estimates does, if it’s used sensibly, but of course, if it does become a witch hunt or a grandstanding exercise well then the ground rules would have to change I guess. I think one of the problems too is that different Chairs do interpret the guidelines under which the Estimates operate. Some, particularly the older generation who have been around for a long while tend to interpret it much more tightly, for example, you can only ask questions about what is actually there in print in the Estimates and not go further. I think that’s a good way and it’s interesting that State government in Victoria, in the last couple of years has adopted that system for that very reason that we use it. It’s a way of finding out what’s going on. G McIntosh: Yes. A lot of people have said the Senate, particularly since the ‘70s when they developed the committee system, particularly since Murphy they are very effective at scrutinizing the Executive. There is something like fifty committees. How would you rate them overall? Some people have said it’s difficult to staff them because there are so many. O Zakharov: It is difficult, and it’s not only difficult to staff them, it’s difficult to staff them in a Senate sense because you get stretched over, particularly Labor Backbenchers because, obviously, Ministers can’t sit on committees and that leaves something like twenty-four of us to supply four, mostly, for each committee. So we’ve all got too many committees. I mean at one stage a couple of years ago I was on five parliamentary committees and that’s apart from things like Joint House and so on, but five Standing or Select and that is impossible workload. Particularly out of sitting time because you’ve got to have your hearings out of sitting time. It is difficult but I don’t know how you get around it, except by having huge Parliaments, and I gather from my British colleagues that doesn’t work very well either. G McIntosh: Well if people did argue there should be more committees, are you saying at the moment that would be very difficult to do? O Zakharov: I think it would be unless you made your committees smaller and then they’d be less representative. The committees have gone up since we enlarged the Senate. The committees are now mostly eight members, they used to be six. If you went back to six you’d have the Opposition saying, well, we don’t get enough say because they can put everybody of their people on the committee, well most of them. I don’t know that it would be any more effective. It would be a little bit easier to get quorums perhaps. That doesn’t seem to be it. It seems to me that because you’ve got a quorum of four maybe people are less likely to turn up when three people knew they had to be there. G McIntosh: How do you find, I mean, you’re a member of the government. Do you find the Senate overall does a good job of monitoring the Executive or do you find the Senate frustrates the government to some extent? O Zakharov: My belief is it frustrates. I believe in not having Upper Houses, but we’re never going to get rid of Upper Houses under our Constitution, so therefore you make them work as effectively as possible. But I would say the checks and balances take place far more within the government, at least when you’ve got a Labor government, than it does in the Parliament. I frankly think it is most undemocratic that a Senate, which is not elected on, one vote one value, can overturn the will of a government elected on that basis and when they’ve been elected with a mandate to do something. G McIntosh: Would you be worried at all though, if you got rid of the Senate and say the Opposition came in as a government … O Zakharov: I still think it would be more democratic. G McIntosh: You think it would be more democratic. O Zakharov: Yes, because people are elected democratically. I mean why should a Senator from Tasmania have the same say as a Senator from — elected by a minute number of people comparatively, the same say as a Senator from New South Wales say. G McIntosh: I agree with all that, wouldn’t a lot of the scrutiny that goes on now though — I think the government pretty well gets most of what it wants through the Senate at the moment. O Zakharov: I’d argue about that. It gets most of its Bills through but often they’re drastically cut and chopped about. Breaks your heart sometimes what you’ve got to agree to just in order to … G McIntosh: To get it through. O Zakharov: … buy the Democrats off usually. You agree to amendments which you certainly know are wrecking the Bill really, not to mention things that just don’t proceed because of the time. I mean the tragedy in my view of the legislation for the Bill of Rights. Now, we would probably have got it through in the end but we were faced with the threat that people like Brian Harradine, people like some members of the Opposition were prepared to speak, as Brian Harradine did unsuccessful on Sex Discrimination; one man stand thirty three times on the one Bill. You multiply that by thirty odd people — one of the Ministers worked out the time that it would have taken — this was I think in about April or May that we decided we had to drop it, that it would have taken the rest of the year without debating anything else, in order to get it to a vote. That’s just impossible. To my mind that’s just obstructing the course of justice so to speak. G McIntosh: If it’s not possible to get rid of the Senate, probably not, what sort of reforms do you think are achievable in terms of — most people, I would agree about getting rid of the power to block money Bills, that sort of thing. O Zakharov: Yes. G McIntosh: Some people have argued, like Senator Hamer that Ministers should all come from the House and not from the Senate. Should it have a delaying power rather than an outright power to block. O Zakharov: I would think a delaying power. I wouldn’t favour all the Ministers coming from the House because I don’t think you get enough talent, apart from anything else. I think it would be very difficult to handle legislation when you didn’t have Ministers who were attending Cabinet Meetings and up with the stuff that they were doing. Who were just one removed like Assistant Ministers, or whatever. But certainly I would favour there being some time limit after the introduction of the Bill, by which time it had to be brought to conclusion or dropped. G McIntosh: If we just move on to the next area briefly. Just what’s your general view of the new building and do you think it’s had an effect of the Parliament-Executive relationship? O Zakharov: I think the new building on the whole is fantastic, in terms of working conditions for everybody. I think we saw that difference, at the end of last year in the level of stress. Although we sat nearly the record time before Christmas the stress was very much less than you would normally have sitting over that period because people weren’t put in the rat situation and people did have a couch you could lie down on for example, and did have space to breath, reasonable eating conditions, all those things. I don’t know that it makes any difference. I mean people said a lot beforehand, particularly journos about the distance between the Ministers’ offices and the — in fact they’re no further than as used to be, for example, to go from the far wing in the Senate over to see someone like Neal Blewett who was in the far wing in the House of Representatives. I don’t think that is any further. In fact it’s probably less distance than it is to go say from here, and I’m nearly as far as you can get from the Minister’s office. And you get to the Ministers’ offices there is room for five or six of you to get down and talk, which you didn’t have before, a lot of the offices. G McIntosh: Yes, what about the informal contact, a lot of people have mentioned the informal contact has gone and it’s very difficult. You really have to make an effort to go and see and meet people. O Zakharov: Well, I think that’s possibly, yes, the only thing I notice now is that, if you want to see a colleague over in the House of Reps side, you really can’t do it with any safety. But, we still all meet in the Dining Room, we still all meet in the Bar. We still go to Caucus committees together and so on. I don’t it’s all that much different. I think people built that up beforehand because the place seemed so huge. I think they’re getting used to it. I mean most socializing is Dining Room and Bar it seems. G McIntosh: A lot of people — I didn’t even raise it, but a lot of people raised the Dining Room almost automatically and said it was a disaster, but it’s been improved. O Zakharov: Well, yes it’s been improved and, I mean a disaster is due to the architects and long term what’s going to happen is that the kitchen has got to be enlarged. The kitchen is grossly dangerous at the moment. It will be moved out into the present Members-Guests and then the Members-Guests will be moved out into the Terrace and it will be bigger, it’s too small at the moment. There’s very little call for the area where members get served at the tables, it’s almost nobody in there ever, since they started the Bistro up again. But I mean that’s a matter of working out your supply and demand and it will all be settled, unfortunately at huge expense in terms the structural changes but the architects bloody well wouldn’t listen. G McIntosh: Well just the last area on reform. You’ve mentioned the Senate obviously as a fairly major area, are there other areas within the Parliament that you think — what sort of changes could, or should be made to make the Parliament work better? Have you got enough resources, backup? O Zakharov: Well certainly not enough resources while we’re up here, and this again is money I guess and public’s perceptions of how you spend money and so on. The same story as Member’s pay and so on. We can’t have — I would find it impossible to run my electorate office with only two staff and very difficult to find enough work to justify having one staff member up here. Some of the Opposition people do but you wonder what they actually do. Yet, we have a limit to travel of our staff members, and unrealistic limit. It’s set on House of Representative sitting weeks, so at the end of every sitting we have to go cap in hand and say we need more travel. We need more days away and so on, just to cover. We used to be able to get that. When I first came, when you ran out, you ran out and that was too bad and you survived on your own. That’s more difficult now because of the size of the place. I mean if I was to go up to the library to get something it’s a quarter of an hour that I’m not in my office. G McIntosh: I know I just came from there. O Zakharov: Yes, that’s right. I virtually never go to the library now, which is a pity. G McIntosh: Do you think that’s a problem? O Zakharov: Well, I guess it’s partly my priorities and partly I’m too busy now anyway. I mean there’s no reason I couldn’t but where it was before, if I was on my way too or from the other side, I’d call in and look at the regional papers and interstate papers and so on, that’s not possible. Also we used to have, of course, and I’ve just realized that we don’t have that any more, we used to have that rack of papers actually in the Senate basement which was very good because you could zap along there easily. That’s something I might bring up again and reinstitute that somewhere. G McIntosh: Is there any other areas you can think of? O Zakharov: I think the other thing I would personally like to see, speaking time cut in the Senate. I think anyone can say in twenty minutes what they presently say in half an hour, in fact most people would say in five minutes what people say in half an hour. That is a tactic that is used to slow down the works because we don’t have the gag. So you’ll get Bills. It’s going to happen with the Wheat legislation for example, that every member of the Opposition will have their name down and they tend to do that until the last week and then you have that mad rush in the last week, trying to get the legislation through and the Opposition says the government’s rushing it. Well the government is only rushing it because they were dragging their feet earlier. G McIntosh: Yes, is there any way to overcome that? O Zakharov: Well, I think shorten the speaking time would be one thing. I mean, make second reading speeches twenty minutes. I think on the committee stage you could probably make it ten minutes instead of a quarter of an hour. I mean people manage it when we have an MPI for example, if a number of people want to speak, because of the time limit on the whole debate, they cut themselves down. I think it’s just a matter of self-discipline and not using the space that’s there as a tactic. Other than that it’s very hard to say what else, just off the top of my head you could do to make things more efficient. G McIntosh: What do you think the effect would be, it’s unlikely, but if a government, it doesn’t matter what sort of government, gets control of the Senate, what effect do you think that will have on how the Senate operates. O Zakharov: Well I think the Senate would stop being obstructive, obviously, stop playing those games. I can remember when we did, before we had this voting system we’ve got now. I can remember back in the forties when the government always had the majority in the Senate. G McIntosh: It was just a rubber stamp basically. O Zakharov: Yes, but of course it didn’t have its other functions then. It had very different sort of standards and the sort of standards you’re getting elected now, partly because of the difference in the workers Senate, are less likely to be rubber stamps. You don’t have ninety year olds in the Senate any more as you used to. The whole thing works very differently. The Senate used to be like the House of Lords, or worse. G McIntosh: Someone said, the place politicians went when they died. O Zakharov: Well that’s right, yes, exactly. You still get the odd one that’s here for services rendered. It’s very obvious because they don’t pull their weight and it just makes it harder for everybody else. The works changed but the system in their particular State obviously hasn’t. G McIntosh: It’s still the same. O Zakharov: Yes, or they’re promoted here to get them out of the State House in some cases. G McIntosh: Okay, well I think that about covers it, thanks very much Senator. O Zakharov: Okay, good.