Christian Porter (Pearce, Liberal Party, Attorney-General) Share this | Hansard source

I will make a brief comment on some of the matters mentioned by the shadow Attorney-General in his addressing of the amendments. Yes, it is the case that I indicated in a letter that we were intending to move the amendments in the Senate. That was based on an agreement between the shadow Attorney-General and me—and I'll be very specific about this—that the parliamentary joint standing committee would report yesterday in a way that would allow us to move the bill through the House of Representatives yesterday. So, the undertaking to move the amendments in the Senate was based on the agreement that this bill would already be in the Senate now. Indeed, we agreed, if I recall correctly, that there would be a very small, limited number of speakers so that we would be able to facilitate this bill through the House yesterday, and that didn't happen; that agreement was breached. And last evening, in trying to extract the report from the joint committee, I corresponded with Senator Wong, who was dealing with this. I said to her that I really don't want a fracture on the parliamentary joint committee, that I'd spoken to Pyne—our affectionate term for the Leader of the House—and I said, 'How about the committee signs off on the unanimous report tonight, we table the report tonight, you have the report and the amendments and we proceed first thing tomorrow?' and the response was, 'We'll work towards that.' So, the idea that somehow we're in breach of an agreement is totally false. This is a procedural effort to cause problems in another area of national security by procedurally jeopardising a national security bill, and we will not let that stand.

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