Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Finance) Share this | Hansard source

Once again, we find that debate in this chamber is being gagged. Yesterday we had what must have been close to a record number of gag resolutions put through this chamber. We start today and we are back with more.

This is one where there is no excuse on the part of the government for this bill having been introduced so late. While the Leader of the House has clearly been given advice that there was a view that the legislation might not have to be put in before 1 July, it has actually always been the case that this legislation would have to be ready to be fully enacted by 1 July this year. Even the Minister for Finance's department's website had stated as early as 30 May this year that the bills would be introduced to parliament in the week of 2 June. Had they been introduced in that week, all the ordinary processes would have been able to take place for the opposition to be able to work through the bills and for parliament to be able to have a sensible debate on this legislation. At one level when you are dealing with public governance and performance accountability it is often viewed as very much a beltway political issue and technical detail of governance, but there is also a lot riding on getting this right. There has been a lot of work done by both the previous government and this government on this piece of legislation. For the operation and governance measures of our departments and agencies, a lot rides on getting the detail of this legislation right.

I do not think anyone can pretend that a bill that was introduced yesterday and that is now going to be rammed through with the government using its numbers today is going to have any of the scrutiny that this parliament is here to provide. Members of this parliament on both sides have been elected and put here to actually provide that level of scrutiny. People can do speed reading, they can flick through the words of it as quickly as they want, but let's not pretend that anyone is going to be across this. The effect of this is that we have deferred our role as legislators entirely to the public servants who have been working on this. I have good faith in the public servants who have been working on this, but I do not think that gives us an excuse to give up our role as legislators.

It was on the website that this bill had to be introduced in the week of 2 June. It was not. And we now find that, as part of the grand strategy this week of spending a whole lot of time dealing with as much as possible so that there is a distraction from the budget, this bill gets tied up in it. And what's the bill about? Governance. The bill itself is actually about making sure that you have due process. And the process that we are being left with in this parliament really is a disgrace for any bill to go through it. There are times when there is genuine emergency, but this bill ought never to have arrived so late. We should not have been put in the situation where whoever was doing the checks and balances to try to get the bill in its best possible form before it was introduced to parliament decided that their job was more important than our job as legislators to work through the legislation.

I agree that this bill needs to have been fully dealt with by 1 July. I think the handling of this bill by the government has been absolutely appalling. I do not blame the Leader of the House for this one. I will blame him for most atrocities that happen in this room—

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