Scott Buchholz (Wright, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to add my support for the member for Lyne with his position of strengthening the existing powers of compliance and also to address the 64 amendments that have been put before the House as we speak. With reference to this legislation, I come from a transport background in Queensland so I have tried in all faith to meticulously go through the bill and, at very short notice, the amendments. On election to this place I gave a commitment to the people of Wright that I would stand up and be the voice of the silent majority. I commenced my investigations into this issue with the 29 submissions that were received in the lead-up to the inquiry. I was overwhelmed by the government's position, given the evidence to the inquiry, because only nine of the 29 submissions received were supportive of it. When you go through and digest those submissions, you find that predominantly, with the exception of three academics, the remaining organisations that were supportive had the word 'union' in their title. When you look at the remaining 20 who were not supportive of it, they predominantly had the word 'transport' in their title. The list is publicly available for everyone to look at. I thought: that is the overwhelming will of the transport industry. The list of submissions is available for you to have a quick look at. When I spoke with members who gave submissions to the committee, their issue was that there was another layer of compliance, and they raised genuine concerns about it. I trust that in the minister's response he will allay those concerns.

In addition to that, the process by which this bill should come through the House should have been open and transparent, but that was somewhat perverted as well. I believe the bill was introduced into the House before the recommendations of the committee had been tabled. As a new member, I would not suggest that that is the common practice of the House. So I have concerns that full and frank debate was not available. When you couple that with the time frame in which these amendments have hit this place, there just seems to be—

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