Alex Hawke (Mitchell, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

That was just a reference to the science behind this issue. That is what is going on here, and it is quite a disgraceful way to govern.

While that might be a light-hearted point, the serious point in all of this is that Australia is becoming a sovereign risk. People do take notice of this. There is human wreckage from the decision of the government today to put this legislation into the House—human wreckage not just from the job losses, the investment that is now gone and the sovereign risk that other investment bodies will be looking at with Australia but also from the ongoing risk to Australians in undertaking their normal commercial and other activities.

Why would you invest in commercial fishing in Australia today with a minister and a government who are prepared, on a whim—on something called 'social uncertainty' in his legislation—to change his mind? How could you put your hard-earned capital into a fishing venture if you wanted to take a reasonable risk without any standard, objective basis for a decision to be made? And that is what we are talking about.

The provision that the government has put in here—social uncertainty—is absolutely ridiculous. The social uncertainty is coming from the government, and it is coming from the government to investors in the commercial fishing industry, which is very important and which I would like to stand up for. I oppose any provision in legislation that says that the minister's whim ought to dictate what happens in any case, particularly when you use a terms like 'social uncertainty' and you do not even make an attempt to define what the term represents. That is no way to do law; that is no way to do business. You cannot run a business and you cannot run a country on a notion like social uncertainty.

Once again we have seen from this minister and this government the live export trade debacle—the changes, the flip-flopping, the uncertainty created, the loss of half of the contracts. And now we see again the potential for great human wreckage and littering, for enormous destruction of an industry in our country, with no regard for the certainty that we need. There is a chance to come into this chamber and propose good legislation and have it looked at carefully. There is a chance for good quality amendments, like the shadow minister for the environment's amendments, to be considered. We have proposed them to improve the quality of this legislation and reduce the uncertainty.

While I may not be an expert on the science of fishing, I am an expert on the science of politics and I do understand what is going on with this legislation. I think all of Australia understands what is going on. I think people in New South Wales understood what was going on when they abandoned the Greens and the Labor Party at the recent local council elections in New South Wales. They see a government that is creating uncertainty in our economy and our society by proposing laws that massively expand the power of government, with no ethical or justifiable basis to do so, and they instinctively oppose governments that would seek to expand their powers with no legitimacy to do so.

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