For almost four years, Suzanna Sheed has started each parliamentary sitting week by moving the same motion.
The independent MP for Shepparton, a rural electorate of almost 50,000 people in northern Victoria, asks for a non-government business program to be reinstated in the state’s lower house.
Each week, leave to debate Sheed’s motion is refused. But she always brings a speech with her in the hope that, one day, the government will let her speak on the matter.
Non-government business refers to the time allocated to backbenchers, opposition members, minor parties and independents. It allows them to introduce their own bills, move motions, demand production of documents by the government and refer an issue for inquiry.
Victoria’s legislative assembly is the only lower house in Australia where this doesn’t occur.
“It’s created a situation where the lower house is just this sort of odd place where the government dominates,” Sheed tells Guardian Australia. “Our opportunities to do anything significant are terribly limited and we don’t get to hold them to account in the way that they do in the upper house.”
Changes to the standing orders made by the Bracks government between 1999 and 2004 effectively eliminated non-government business in Victoria.
The leader of the house, Jacinta Allan, says there has been a range of measures introduced to increase the involvement of non-government MPs.
“Whether it’s abolishing ‘Dorothy Dixers’, adding supplementary and constituency questions, or e-petitions, we’ve put in a range of measures to ensure more voices in our parliament,” Allan says. “We will continue to look at other ways we can increase this going forward.”
But Sheed says the only real opportunities she gets to speak out are under mechanisms shared between government and non-government members.
Sheed’s electorate borders the Murray River. On the other side the river is the New South Wales independent MP for Murray, Helen Dalton.
Since she entered parliament in 2019, Dalton – formerly of the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers party – has campaigned strongly for the establishment of a public register listing all water owners in the state.
She has introduced two private member’s bills on the matter, and is planning a third.
“I wouldn’t have achieved as much as what I’ve done if we weren’t able to introduce private members’ bills,” Dalton says.
“That’s not saying it’s easy. My first bill lapsed after six months because the government managed to stonewall or delay or filibuster until it lapsed.
“But it started a conversation.”
Dalton describes the situation in Victoria as “appalling”.
“I really do feel for them because there’s a lot of crossbenchers and independents – and we’re going to continue to see more and more of us – so that has to change,” she said.
In Victoria’s upper house, Reason party MP Fiona Patten has successfully lobbied the state government to introduce a supervised injecting room in Richmond, the enactment of the nation’s first voluntary assisted dying laws and the decriminalisation of sex work.
“Fiona Patten has been able to create so much change, not through her own bill passing but by raising awareness of an issue the government will often pick up,” Sheed says.
“Yet in our [lower] house, I represent an electorate of about 45,000 people who vote and there’s a lot of issues that they would like for me to address. It just really disappoints me that we can’t debate some of them.”
Non-government MPs in the lower house rarely get the opportunity to debate government bills either.
Since 1993, the Legislative Assembly has set a government-business program for each sitting week. When the time falls for completion of the program, debate is interrupted and members are asked to vote on outstanding matters set out in the program. It’s known as the “guillotine”.
Ellen Sandell, the Greens MP for Melbourne, says the government has used this to avoid scrutiny on its bills.
“It’s incredibly bad for our democracy and pretty poor form from a Labor government to shut down any debate, questions, scrutiny, transparency. It happens every single Thursday,” Sandell says.
“The crossbenchers and opposition often will ask, on specific bills, if we can just do the proper deep dive. And they always say no.”
Not one bill has gone to consideration in detail in this parliamentary term, meaning MPs have not been able to move amendments on a bill or debate its clauses in detail.
Sheed says it is “incredibly frustrating” MPs were unable to put questions to the health minister, Martin Foley, during debate on the pandemic legislation last year.
The opposition’s spokesperson for government scrutiny, Louise Staley, agrees.
“All the main ministers are in the lower house – the health minister, the treasurer, the transport infrastructure minister, the premier – and we’re in a situation where we cannot put questions to them on legislation,” she says.
“It’s not something that we would do all the time, on each and every bill, but some are incredibly important.
“It’s an issue that goes to the very heart of democracy.”
The Centre for Public Integrity has released a discussion paper titled “Scrutiny shortcomings: Victoria”, which raises concerns about the government businesses program and lack of non-government business in the lower house, along with the rules relating to the establishment of joint investigatory committees.
“These deficiencies gravely impair the ability of the parliament to perform its constitutional role, and should be addressed as a matter of priority,” it says.
The thinktank said the weakness of Victoria’s parliamentary scrutiny system was exposed by the Covid-19 response throughout 2020 and 2021, when the government failed to table health directions in parliament.
The Labor-led Scrutiny of Acts and Regulations Committee found it had no power to review the directions as they weren’t tabled in parliament.
Both Sheed and Sandell have raised their concerns with the government but believe there is no appetite for change.
“There’s a sense in which I think neither party wants it because they like it when they’re in government having this amount of power and not having to put up with all the ‘nonsense’,” Sheed says.
“Look at the upper house – it’s hard work for the government. But you know, we got a much better pandemic bill out of it, so that’s democracy at work.”
Sandell says even those who support the Labor government should be worried.
“These things have been eroded under a Labor government, but it could be a very rightwing government that comes in next, and they’ll take advantage of all these things that have been eroded,” she says.
Opposition leader Matthew Guy says he would be happy to bring back non-government business if elected at the 26 November poll.
“Every member of parliament, whether they’re Liberal, Labor, National, independent or Green, they have a right to raise issues and have them debated for a period of time in the parliament. Because that’s what the parliament exists for,” he says.
