Adam Bandt (Melbourne, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Leave is not granted. If I can explain why and put our position on the record to be clear about the division we will be calling, it is unusual for a bill to come to the House for a second reading with people not having time to consider it, debate happening immediately and then it goes straight to a vote. This is a bill that has financial consequences, as the minister has outlined. It is a bill that was brought to the Senate in similar circumstances yesterday and rushed through in the morning. It is not clear that there is a compelling case for urgency or that this can't be dealt with in the normal course.

I understand that, as a matter of process, it is probably the case that the government and the opposition are prepared to push this through quickly. But on bills that do have financial consequences, especially if something has been known for some time, especially where the context was carried over from the previous government, we should not be in the practice of forcing people in this House, especially when there is such a large number of crossbenchers here, to just take something at face value and push it through without the opportunity to have the usual debate. We are in a position where we don't know enough about this bill to be able to support it because the government is rushing it through.

From what the minister has said, my understanding is that this is in part about how a court interprets an enterprise agreement and what counts as salary for the purposes of superannuation. It is often the case that employees will make trade-offs in doing that and will say, 'I accept a lower wage in return for a bigger package,' and then superannuation is calculated on that whole package. If that's what's happening here, then it may be that the employees have a legitimate argument. On the other hand, it may be that there's a loophole that has been exposed, and, if we had more time to consider it, we might be in a position to agree. But given that it is being rushed through and there's been no basis put as to why it should be rushed through and, especially given that we know that this issue has been here for months and could have gone through the usual parliamentary processes, we can't support it being pushed through on the second reading. The usual practice should apply.

I understand there's a lot that the House has got to get to today, so we won't speak any further on the second reading question. We tend not to divide on the question that will now be put by the government to ensure its passage through—we've made our point about it being rushed through—but we will oppose the second reading, in large part, on process grounds because we don't think that any of us should be put in a position of having to vote on a bill that has only been introduced today when no compelling case for urgency has been made. It sets a very, very bad precedent, especially given that there were weeks in which everyone in this parliament could have been given the content of the bill, told of its significance and able to consider it with their own teams, take advice and come to a genuine position. This is bad process. It's a bad way to start the parliament, and we can't support it.

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