Bruce Billson (Dunkley, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Broadband, Communication and the Digital Economy) Share this | Hansard source

I reiterate that the government has got this wrong. We are being asked to consider in detail, without considering in detail, amendments that displace coalition amendments, opposition amendments, in the Senate that are superior in everybody’s view except the minister’s. Industry believes so and the drafters believe so, but we do not have the time to go into those specifically.

Given the ridiculously tight time frame, the amendments included by the Senate addressing the voluntary disclosure arrangements and putting in place some encouragement for people to behave that way—issues about disclosure of that information; the duties of officials, whether they be of the company or in the Public Service; the safe harbour provisions for encouragement of voluntary disclosure; compensation arrangements where there are damages incurred; how the storage and handling and destruction of protected carrier information is handled; and our improved ministerial advisory process—are all being knocked off by this process.

I undertook to be positive and constructive with our input and our approach. We have done so, and the government has ignored all of this input that the industry believes has been very worthwhile. We will not be dividing on each individual measure in this consideration in detail stage. To avoid Senator Conroy misrepresenting our behaviour, the opposition have again facilitated this process. We have made our argument. We are not impeding the passage of the bill. In fact, without the opposition’s assistance, Senator Conroy would not have a bill going through this parliament and back to the Senate. Just for the record, we oppose these amendments and believe that the government is very short-sighted in not embracing the very constructive, wise and considered input that the Senate provided.

Question agreed to.

Bill, as amended, agreed to.

See this speech in context