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

I'll respond very briefly to two matters that the Attorney just referred to in his summing-up speech in relation to the Bankruptcy Amendment (Discharge from Bankruptcy) Bill 2023. Firstly, the Attorney knows full well that a member of the Greens was in attendance at the briefing, as I, in fact, referred to, and it was our relevant spokesperson. So, for there to be some implication that we hadn't been briefed—I made exactly the opposite comment.

Secondly, I note that, despite an invitation, nothing in the Attorney's summing-up speech went to the urgency of this, in terms of why it is that members of the crossbench are being asked to vote on a bill which we only got briefed about this morning and which has been on the Notice Paper for about 12 hours. Transparency matters in this place. If there was a compelling case for urgency, the Attorney could have made it, and he chose not to. We repeat the point, especially as we head towards the end of the year, that, when legislation is introduced into this place, every one of us here as members of the crossbench are entitled to the time to consider legislation and take advice on it. Who knows? We may well have ended up supporting it, had we been given that time.

I repeat that we are going to oppose the rushed passage of this bill through the House and reserve our position in the Senate. Next time, I implore the government to treat the crossbench with a bit more respect and give us time to consider this legislation.

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