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

The supply chain issue is there. If you look at the amendment, it deals with both the facilities and the food itself. It deals with both. That interjection shows that not every member of parliament is across the legislation that's in front of us. That's not a reason to vote against it. If we have members who are here in the chamber listening to the debate and giving interjections that are contrary to the legislation that's in front of them, that's the precise reason why we need to make sure that we have a 12-month review.

We are also opening up a change in sentencing, which is the most significant part of sending a message. Often when we change maximum sentencing periods in the parliament, it's off the back of a view that judges have not been bringing down sentences that we believe are consistent with the intention of the parliament, where we think sentences have been too brief and, therefore, we have said: 'No, we will increase the maximum sentence. That will send a message to the legal system.' That's not what we're doing today, because there are no recorded convictions, so it can't be the case that we think the sentences to date have been too soft. That's because, without convictions, there have been no sentences under the current legislation.

We're increasing a maximum to make that public statement, and no-one wants to get in the way of that public statement. But it does mean the maximum sentence that we are adopting today is more than the maximum sentence in some jurisdictions for statutory rape, more than the sentence for human trafficking and more than the sentence for strangulation in a domestic violence circumstance. Working through the implications of that is something we all have to do. We have two jobs in this place. We are members of parliament leading a public debate. We are also legislators. Today, we have decided the importance of leading that public debate is so important that we will take some short cuts. We're all in this. We're all making the same decision—me too. We decided that we will take some shortcuts on what we would ordinarily do in terms of due diligence on legislation. That's the decision we've made.

In the face of that, we shouldn't, in the same breath, say, 'We will never be legislators on this particular issue.' The right thing to do is to say: 'We will send the message today, loudly and clearly. We will make it clear the level of offence that is there for people who've performed these acts. We will make clear the level of support that is there for Australia's strawberry growers.' That's the right decision today; but, at some point, unless we have a review clause in, we will never do the other part of our job as legislators. We do need to work through what the implications are. There might not be any. But we need to have, at some point, the full context of what the long-term implications are of a very significant redefinition of public infrastructure. We do need to work through what the impact is of changing the relativities on different sentencing and whether we believe that we've now got those relativities right, given where it stands next to other crimes that we would all believe are among the most heinous that could be committed.

What the opposition is saying to the government today is, 'We're not going to play the game of moving an amendment insisting on it or having the House have to hang around in case we can get it through the Senate.' We're simply saying that we want everybody here to do all of their jobs. We're all doing the job properly today of leading a public debate. No-one should pretend there's not bipartisan support and cross-party support on that—there is. As we are not applying the normal due diligence we would to a piece of legislation, a review period will make sure that we fulfil that responsibility as well.

See this speech in context