Kevin Hogan (Page, National Party, Shadow Minister for Trade and Tourism) Share this | Hansard source

Lots—I'll keep going. The bill changed names, which was interesting. I think the bill was originally going to be called 'same pay, same job'. It's been changed now to 'closing the loophole'. There are concerns about the bill, with the cost-of-living. There are concerns about same job, same pay: how do we do this, and how do you measure that? Again, there are lots of problems with this bill, or lots of issues with this bill that need time to be discussed. While the Manager of Opposition Business's amendment to move it to October is very modest, I would like to see a comprehensive Senate committee as well, with an inquiry into this which would travel the country.

If the bill is very important and so desperately needed, as the minister said, we'd like to see modelling from the Treasury before we debate this. What is the potential cost? Has the government gone to Treasury? Has it gone and got economic modelling about what this would be about? Again, there are lots of questions about this. This isn't the first time. We saw this with other bills. We've seen that this is a modus operandi of this government with lots of legislation. They say they consult, but it's with a very select, very small number of people that are signed to confidentiality and non-disclosure agreements. They introduce it into parliament, and then they gag it. They have their new changes to standing orders that they move as well, which mean you can only debate the bill for 24 hours. We saw it on the gas policy. We saw it on other bills.

This government went to the last election and promised the Australian people, this chamber and the crossbenchers that this would be a really transparent government. This is again showing they're not. If you consulted, you're holding people to non-disclosure agreements, you're introducing a bill that has huge ramifications and unintended consequences that you probably don't know yet and you're holding the bill up and putting it through as quickly as you can without the committee inquiries—or the fact that we could go out and talk to the stakeholders who were consulted. As an opposition, we should have time and should be allowed to go out, consult stakeholders who have been involved in this process for the last few weeks and months and get their insights into this. That's very difficult to do when the government proposes to bring this forward tomorrow, and they will close the debate on the day that it's being debated because they wants to ram this through.

The Australian public and Australian businesses that I know want to know that this bill isn't just about paying the union pay masters and that we have a transparent process, a process that has been longstanding and tried in this parliament. I fully support what I think is a very modest proposal from the Manager of Opposition Business to extend the adjournment of this debate.

See this speech in context