Sam Birrell (Nicholls, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

It's been fascinating to see how parliament works as a new member. I've been very impressed with what I've seen in the Senate recently with the omnibus bill. An omnibus bill is when you chuck everything in. Overall, it's a bad piece of legislation, in our view, but it has some good things in it. What the Senate has done, which I think is very sensible, is to take out the bits that we all agree on that are important and that are important to pass immediately and to do that so that we can get on with debating the stuff that we don't agree on. That's a very sensible thing to do.

As both the member for Bradfield and the member for Paige said, I've sat on these benches during the debate on industrial relations, and the urgency in which some of these things need to be passed has been expressed by all members who've spoken on the bill. We need to get it done. We need to make sure that these things are enacted in legislation so that workers are protected. In this case, it's redundancy payments for small businesses that might have become bankrupt or insolvent. Given that urgency was expressed when the senators, in their wisdom, took out those parts that we agreed on and said, 'Let's pass those to get them done urgently, and we'll debate the rest later,' I would have thought, as a new member of parliament, that that's one of the more sensible things I've seen the Senate do—and the Senate doesn't always seem like a sensible place from where I sit. But they've done that. It's constructive. It's proactive. It means that good pieces of legislation get pulled out of bad omnibus bills and that we can pass them. We can show the Australian people that we're not about politics, but we're about getting good pieces of legislation, which have bipartisan support, agreed to.

This is a test for the government. Is this about politics? Is this about either passing the whole bill or passing none of it? Are you prepared to do something for the Australian people? Are you prepared to work constructively with the opposition who have come into this place and said: 'Okay, guys, we're having an argument about this bill. That's the way parliament works. We understand. But there are some pieces that we agree on'—in this case, it's the small business redundancy exemption? Well done--it's a good piece of legislation in a bad bill. You can then show us that we haven't wasted our time with all of this goodwill by saying, 'Let's pass those good pieces in a bad bill today and get them into law,' and then the urgency that has been expressed by those opposite—in this case, in relation to small business redundancy—can have the effect for the Australian people and look after the workers that most of us, I think all of us, in this place are very keen to look after. Here's the test. Is it about politics? Is it take it or leave it? Is it all or nothing--a bit like some other legislation or referendum that has been put up this year? Is it that no nuance will be entered into? Or is it: okay, this is a good part of a bad bill; let's work together and pass it, get it into law, get those protections working for Australian workers, which is what we're interested in, and then we can have the debate on the other stuff further down the track? It's over to you, government. I wish you well in your deliberations. The Australian people would be really proud of this place if it pulled the bipartisan-agreed parts out, voted on them and got them into the statutes today.

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