Julian Hill (Bruce, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I have to say that I have just had an experience that I never thought I would have. I did. I felt like I was standing in the coalition party room and hearing a speech on your side of the debate. I thank you for it, because I cannot really disagree with anything that was said by my friend and colleague the member for Berowra.

An honourable member: You are very generous.

I am very generous. But I think it is fair to say that there are some reasonable people opposite on this side of the debate. I read the report last night, because this is a matter in which I have great interest as an Australian and a legislator, and also as someone who represents in this parliament a community—a seat—where 53 per cent of people were born in another country. This is of great relevance to my electorate and in the daily lives of the people I represent. I read the report and I actually cracked up laughing last night. I read the recommendations and my staffer, hearing me shrieking with laughter on the couch, said, 'What on earth is wrong?' I said: 'After all this fanfare, all the forests felled by The Australian newspaper, the 500,000-plus words on this we have had—Crikey actually counted them for us—after all the drumbeats from the monkey pod that we were going to let the racists unleash and say whatever they wanted to say, the answer is "the process." Who knew there is nothing wrong with the law? We don't need to change the law. After six years of scaring the bejesus out of multicultural Australia and people who live in my electorate, it is the process. Fantastic!' When you strip it away, the report really says nothing. It is like the government. It goes on and on, and there is no point to it. It is a great disappointment.

It is fair to say that what the member for Berowra said about the process changes is reasonable. Sure, but it is like reading a report by a business process consultant that you hire—not one of the top-tier consulting firms, but those mid-tier ones when you want a lower daily rate for them to come in and do really bleedingly obvious stuff to re-engineer your processes and give them a bit of an overhaul. But that is the report. Now, of course, if the Attorney-General actually had a relationship with the Human Rights Commissioner and actually had some decency to sit down with Professor Triggs and listen like a normal minister—

A government member: She isn't the Human Rights Commissioner. Do your research.

Sure; thank you.

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