Rowan Ramsey (Grey, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I support the opposition's premise that this should be debated now. I'm grateful that the Senate dealt with this last week and got what I'd say are the good parts of the government's bill debated and through. It seems to be a tendency of this government to mix up the good and the bad—to hide away, for instance, when we were dealing with the previous IR bill; that had more rights for union access and the possibility of bringing back the Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal. There were good bits wrapped up in that bill as well, and this is the same. I guess it's a way of trying to lever public support for things that may be quite unpalatable.

I don't know how the government is going to vote on this motion or whether we on this side of the chamber will be gagged. But it would be difficult to believe that the government would vote against its own legislation. I see the minister for industrial affairs over there smiling; I suspect that's where we're heading on this one. It would seem inconceivable that, on these four bills that are directly lifted from their omnibus bill, they would come into this chamber and say, 'No, we don't want to do that at all, because it is much more important to keep the sweet bits in the legislation for later on, when we might be dealing with the nasty bits.'

These four pieces of legislation stand in their own right. They are about workers' rights. I remember when the bill to put in 10 days leave a year for sufferers of domestic violence came through this place, and we supported that. I supported the legislation. I made the point at the time that I thought it unfair that employers would meet the cost of it and that it should have been a public expense or a broad expense rather than one on individual employers, because I thought it might lead to distortions in the market and decisions on who may or may not get a job. But, as to this legislation, which refers to issues around handling dangerous products or asbestos-like products—we know what those are; they are those beautiful kitchen tops that create dust when people cut them—if it's urgent to do, and I think it probably is urgent to do, or it is urgent to do, we should deal with it now. We don't want to see it put off to next year, the middle of next year or the year after, or maybe the next term of government. If it's important to deal with, and all the industry agrees that it is important to deal with, we should be dealing with it now.

Similarly, the bills that deal with the first responders—in another sphere, we say, 'We believe you.' Well, apparently, we don't believe first responders, that their stress is caused by the situation that they're put in. We, on this side of the House, agree with the government. So it should be pretty easy to do. We all agree. So let's pass this through the place now and get on with it, because it's quite clear that the rest of the legislation is going to be held up for a while. So let's do the good bits. Let's move on. That goes across all the four tranches here. We've got agreement—we've got agreement between the two major parties; we've got agreement with the crossbenchers. One would think it wouldn't be all that hard to get those bills through the House of Representatives. All we need is the agreement of the government.

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