Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Manager of Opposition Business (House)) Share this | Hansard source

I rise in support of the Criminal Code Amendment (Food Contamination) Bill 2018 that's in front of us, and I suspect everybody will be supporting the legislation. The shadow Attorney-General, the member for Isaacs, made some points about the request by the opposition for a 12-month review. I refer to those, and in doing so I'm in no way indicating that anybody should oppose the legislation before us, but there are good reasons why there ought to be a 12-month review. It's something we are asking the government to consider, because we want to deal with it in the House and not have it come here after going to the Senate. The appropriate way for that to happen would be for government to bring in an amendment for a 12-month review, which is a simple piece of drafting and quite possible to be turned around quickly. There are good reasons for it.

It is very rare for us to deal with legislation of this sort of urgency. The last time I can remember an emergency shadow cabinet meeting that took place only just having received a draft of legislation was back in 2005, when an amendment to an antiterrorism law was brought forward by the Howard government because people were planning an actual attack on sites in Sydney. There was a real threat, the legislation went through both houses that day and arrests took place a few days later. What we're doing today is a very unusual thing. With that in mind, all the normal processes of inquiry understandably aren't able to happen when it is that unusual. A review period allows the parliament to still do its job.

Many of the speeches we're hearing from each side make clear that to some extent today in the parliament we are using a piece of legislation to send a message far more substantive than changing the law, and no-one wants to stand in the way of that message. To oppose the legislation would create the worst of all messages, and no-one's going to do that, but it is worth thinking through why there ought to be a review. What we have in front of us, while incredibly serious, is different to the emergency terrorism legislation we dealt with under the Howard government, with all the advice of the agencies that came through at that time. I don't know what the implications are, other than for this particular issue, of redefining our legislative definition of public infrastructure to include a strawberry, but that's in front of us right now.

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