Brendan O'Connor (Gorton, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Hansard source

It is seconded. I would like to explain exactly why. We know that this government has, firstly, predicated an election on two bills. There was the double dissolution election—of which, of course, one bill was not quite debated yesterday. We had a gag to not debate the ABCC legislation and not have consideration in detail on that bill.

The Manager of Opposition Business has, I believe, compellingly argued the case that members of this place deserve a right to consider the detail of this bill, a bill that is supposedly so important that the Prime Minister chose to run an election on it. Of course, he did not mention this bill or the bill that was gagged yesterday for 55 days during the election campaign. We barely heard that mentioned in the entire election campaign, one of the longest election campaigns this country has ever seen—a very good tactical move by the Prime Minister, I might add.

We have some serious issues to raise with respect to this bill. As the Manager of Opposition Business has made perfectly clear, we are not happy with the attempts to stop members of parliament speaking on this matter. In particular, those new members of parliament that sit behind me now, that were elected to this place for the first time, have never contributed to this area of public policy, this particular bill. And, as the Manager of Opposition Business has made perfectly clear, we did not have an opportunity to go through the proposed amendments we sought to make to this bill because when the Prime Minister chose to prorogue the parliament—you might remember, Mr Speaker, we had a situation where two bills were also the basis upon which that parliament was prorogued.

You might recall, the Prime Minister wrote to His Excellency the Governor-General, and he referred in that letter to two bills that were so important that we had to prorogue the parliament. I have to say. I think they dragged His Excellency the Governor-General into a stunt. And that is not a reflection on the Governor-General; I think it was unfair. The hollowness of the sincerity of the Prime Minister was shown on the occasion of our return to parliament in that week because this bill was not debated in this place or in the Senate, despite the fact that they raised with His Excellency the Governor-General that it was of such importance the parliament had to be prorogued. This is the length that the government is willing to go to to play politics with this issue.

If they are so confident in the merits of this bill, why not have a debate in this place? This motion will not fix all of these matters—indeed, it will still restrict the matters insofar as all members speaking—but at least we would have an opportunity to consider in this place, the people's chamber, the proposed amendments that are foreshadowed and will be foreshadowed in my response to the second reading speech and will be moved in the Senate.

They are significant amendments. They are not just political amendments. These are amendments that, firstly, consider why, instead of having the registered organisation bodies, we will have ASIC, the regulator of companies, be the regulator for registered organisations. That is a significant amendment and it is one, I believe, the Leader of the House, acting on behalf of the Minister for Employment, should be responding to in this place in consideration in detail on this bill. But, if the Leader of the House votes against the amendment moved, he is saying, 'I'm not willing to answer questions in relation to the government's views on this matter.' He is also not willing to consider the whistleblowers protection that we believe should be afforded to people in registered organisations, or the fact that we would like to see auditors have high levels of accountability in their conduct in such bodies, or the fact that—and this might be, perhaps, the real reason we are not getting consideration in detail—we will seek to move an amendment to this bill that would have electoral disclosure laws at $1,000, not only for candidates of registered organisations but for candidates at federal elections.

We know that Malcolm Turnbull, the Prime Minister, likes to talk about transparency and donation reform. If he supports donation reform, they will consider our amendment to this bill that will mean that candidates who want to run in federal elections, to run the country, will have the same laws apply to them as candidates who run in union elections or employer body elections and in the same way. Why not have one law for all elections that are governed by the Australian Electoral Commission? That is the sort of thing we wanted to talk about in this place, but it would appear that the government will gag this amendment, gag this debate on the bill, which is a dreadful shame.

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