Stephen Jones (Whitlam, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you, Deputy Speaker. A few weeks ago the Treasurer stood in your party room and said, 'This bill is ready to go.' But today they have been forced into an embarrassing admission that the bill was anything but ready to go. How can you have faith in what they are telling you now, when it has been pointed out to you that three million Australians are about to be stapled to dud funds? You can have no faith in what the government is telling you. You can have no faith in what your Treasurer is telling you. I ask the crossbench to consider this as well.

Another factor that our amendment goes to is the timing of this bill, because in four weeks time this bill will become effective in every Australian workplace. The tax office isn't ready to implement it. Small-, medium- and large-sized businesses aren't ready to implement it. Australian workers know next to nothing about it—and certainly the superannuation funds will not be able to implement this bill either. So the timing needs to be considered. Our sensible amendment is on the side of small and medium-sized businesses in this country. It will push back the implementation of this bill as amended and as proposed to be amended by Labor.

One of the excellent speeches that was made in the second reading contribution on this debate was the speech given by the member for Warringah, a former barrister, a law officer, of New South Wales, who pointed out that the reverse onus included in schedule 3 of this bill turns the law on its head. Normally a reverse onus in law is something that is only confined to the most egregious of criminal offences. We don't, for example, apply a reverse onus for heinous sex crimes. We don't apply a reverse onus for heinous drug crimes. But apparently not having your books in order is a worse offence than a serious sex offence. Apparently, not having your books in order is a worse offence than importing drugs into this country. This government has got their priorities all wrong. It is a simple amendment, a sensible amendment, and I ask all members of the House to support it.

We want this bill to work. We support performance management. We support the amendment that has been moved by the government in removing this heinous power—more appropriate to this book here, Das Kapital, than a modern Australian economy. So, if these amendments fail, we ask all members of the House to support the amendments that Labor has foreshadowed and I have just spoken to.

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