Nicola Roxon (Gellibrand, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Attorney-General) Share this | Hansard source

This is another example, unfortunately, of the bad law-making that goes on under the watch of this Attorney, when we have to do it all on the run. The Attorney has not even had the decency to respond to the Senate committee’s report prior to moving the amendments today, which had not been circulated. They deal with a number of recommendations that come from the Senate committee, but it might have been courteous to this House, let alone the other place, to provide that response prior to moving these amendments.

We have no trouble in accepting recommendations that come from the Senate committee’s consideration of these matters—and a number of them are technical. However, in the brief time that this material has been available to us, I cannot accept the Attorney’s assertion that the others are merely simply technical matters. Just to use an example, the first item removes Protective Service officers from the reach of the new Law Enforcement Integrity Commission which is being set up, when one of the key complaints the Labor Party have is that consideration should have been given to their coverage by this commission. Protective Service officers, as many of us in this House know, wear the same uniforms as the Federal Police. They are armed. They have significant powers. In our view, it is at least a matter that should be considered, not moved as a mere ‘technical amendment’ in this House with a group of 26 others, without any notice having been given.

So it is of great concern to us. I know that there will be time in another place to go back through these, but it is extraordinary for the Attorney—who normally likes to regard himself as being decent in the way that he deals with matters in this House—to have given such a lack of notice either in response to the Senate committee’s recommendations or for these changes. We have another batch of changes for each of the other bills that are before us, which presumably will not be able to be dealt with before the House is called to other duties at two o’clock. We would just like to register our protest that, on matters that there is, by and large, support for, it would be much easier to get these through the parliament if we were to be given notice of the changes that the Attorney intends to move.

Given that there was not an opportunity to speak separately on it, I also want to flag that, if the Attorney wants to take more time to consider the amendment that was moved by us and consider it in the other place, he knows that his colleagues in the other place have been urging for this matter to be passed by the parliament this week. I am not sure whether the Attorney is aware that if those changes are accepted in the other place they will have to come back here. We are putting a lot of pressure on the time constraints, I think, when the amendment could be accepted in this place. It is not a major amendment. We have one amendment that makes one set of changes to a couple of words, and the government is moving 27 that it expects us to be able to agree to without any notice. So we express our serious reservations and hope that we will be in a position, if the House is called to other duties before then, to be able to consider in detail those 27 amendments that have been moved by the Attorney without any notice to us. Perhaps he might consider that as a preferable course of action.

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