Michael Sukkar (Deakin, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Social Services) Share this | Hansard source

I second the motion. Never before has the Minister for Climate Change and Energy been accused of hiding his light under a bushel—and that would be a bit of an understatement. This is a minister who, surprisingly, does not want to debate and speak on his bill that my good friend the member for Fairfax has just outlined. We think it is unacceptable that the Federation Chamber is increasingly being used by this government as a clearing house for bills that are politically difficult for them and, importantly, bills where there is significant opposition to what is being proposed. Here we're talking about a bill that makes retrospective changes. For most members in this House, there are few things that require more care, more debate, more argument and more attention than a retrospective change. Here we have, again, the government insisting on a controversial, important, significant bill that is before this House being sent off to the Federation Chamber.

We move this motion today partly in response to a similar decision that the government took last week, in kicking the Criminal Code Amendment (Hate Crimes) Bill 2025 off to the Federation Chamber against the request of the opposition. Again, today, it's against the request of the opposition. By any definition, whether it's last week's hate crimes bill or the electricity infrastructure legislation, these cannot be described as uncontroversial bills that can be kicked off to the secondary Federation Chamber. As the Practice notes, it's supposed to operate by agreement between the government and the opposition. That's how it has always operated, by the way.

For those members of the Australian public watching today who might be wondering what the arcane debate of a bill being kicked off to the Federation Chamber, the secondary chamber, means, this is a huge departure that has been habitual from this government. In the last parliament, 18 bills were referred off to the Federation Chamber, because our view was, quite rightly, that bills, by definition, should be debated in the main chamber—preferably with an opportunity for members to speak on behalf of their electorates, on behalf of the people who send them to this parliament, and to make their case. Eighteen bills were referred to the Federation Chamber. We're now getting towards nearly 180 bills in this parliament having been sent off to the Federation Chamber, which, again, supports our contention that the Federation Chamber is being used as a clearing house for bills that the government is too embarrassed to debate or which are trouble, otherwise, politically.

So I absolutely second this motion from the member for Fairfax. I suppose there's no surprise that the government want to kick this off to the Federation Chamber with as little scrutiny as possible, because they refuse to tell Australians how much offshore wind will cost or how much more Australians will have to pay in their power bills. They're changing the rules after the fact, which we know just creates uncertainty for anybody affected. They've largely ignored the relevant stakeholders in the industry, which the member for Fairfax outlined.

We know that communities around this country are utterly fearful of the decision-making of this minister and utterly fearful of the decision-making that he has displayed over the last 2½ years. So it's totally understandable that those communities are very nervous when the not-so-camera-shy minister does not want to front up to this chamber to justify or argue for the retrospective changes that are now being kicked off to the Federation Chamber. It would be a shocking precedent if the government continued down this path of sending controversial bills to the Federation Chamber. And that's why I second the motion.

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