John Cobb (Calare, National Party, Shadow Minister for Agriculture and Food Security) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Water Amendment (Long-term Average Sustainable Diversion Limit Adjustment) Bill 2012. This bill is about trust; it goes to the heart of Labor's governance of our nation and asks the parliament to trust the Murray-Darling Basin Authority. The changes in this bill would allow amendments to be made without mandatory consultation with the public, without requiring the approval of the minister and via a regulation that is not disallowable. The MDBA would be given full responsibility for making the adjustments. Currently the basin authority does not fill me with confidence. Their public consultation process during the development of the basin plan showed that they just went through the motions. We all thought it would be better the second time, but they were not prepared to actually listen to the logical and reasonable concerns of the community within the basin. The basin plan has largely remained unchanged from the guide and there has been very poor details of, and transparency on, the science used in the decision-making process.

Unfortunately, under these amendments the MDBA will be placed in a more powerful position with no consultation being required and no recourse to the minister or the parliament. Furthermore, while the authority must seek and consider advice from the basin official committee it will not need to heed their advice and can carry on with its own agenda regardless.

The other issue is that the authority cannot make an adjustment that does not reflect an environmentally sustainable level of intake. Unfortunately, with Labor's amendments in 2008, the plan went from a plan to manage 30-odd Ramsar wetlands within the basin to 2,774 environmental sites. Let us be honest, that is a ridiculous overreach. Unfortunately, this amendment will encourage the government, under direction from the Greens, to add more and more environmental sites which are not based on science and force the authority to increase the take and further decimate rural communities. The coalition supports a mechanism that would allow for greater environmental benefits without imposing greater economic or social costs on the basin community. This is different from the government's view on social and economic benefits.

I want to go now to the cost of doing business in the basin. The reduction of water in the basin, without investment in infrastructure, has increased the cost of water production in the basin, which is having an impact on farmers struggling to get over the record drought. You have the same costs, for less water, spread among fewer people. So obviously it has increased enormously in some places, given the lack of planning that went into the buying in the first place. There have been enormous increases in costs for water transfer and water use by the farmers remaining. For example, the cost of doing business has increased by the removal of the 40 per cent AQIS inspection certificate rebate. That is a massive hit on our exporters, especially new and emerging industries, which have seen registration costs go up by 1,000 per cent.

They can talk about the Asian century—and I actually believe very strongly in it, especially with our near neighbours, some of whom they have gone out of their way to upset—but these things are a massive increase in costs that make exports prohibitively expensive. Add to this the world's biggest carbon tax—and irrigators obviously use a considerable amount of power. They are asking our businesses to break into Asian markets against companies from countries that do not pay the carbon tax. I am sure you can get the picture about adding to costs—and that is exactly what is happening with irrigation.

The final point on that is the importance of R&D in growing our production to make the most of it. The government talks about the importance of research, while wanting to reduce its involvement in and contribution to it. It says research and development is the key to capitalising on the Asian century, yet it axed Land and Water Australia and cut $63 million from CSIRO agricultural research—over $33 million was cut from the CRCs, and that means fewer agriculture CRCs are funded each year.

Labor also originally planned to support the Productivity Commission's report which recommended halving the government's contribution to R and D, and they have made no serious attempt at research into irrigation. In other words, you take away the water and people have to produce more with less. I do not see the government backing that with research. So the government says one thing and does another. But I guess we should not worry: they have put 'Asia' in the ministry title of the Minister for Trade, so they must be serious! And that is despite no funding and doing everything they can to undermine a lot of our opportunities in Asia, let alone anywhere else. I am concerned that the amendments in this bill will follow this similar pattern.

Just lately the government finally discovered investments in infrastructure and efficiency as the answer to delivering water to the environment. The government are using all this in their rhetoric now, but the facts are that they have spent $2 billion on water buybacks, while only $500 million of around the $5 billion in water efficiency projects and announcements last week were works and measures. The coalition has always supported priority investments, infrastructure and efficiency because they allow the government to recover water with minimal impact on communities—mind you, that was sharing the savings. On the other hand, while the $2 billion on water buybacks may be good for the stressed-out farmer, selling his water can be devastating for the community that has lost production, jobs and economic activity, leading to a loss in critical mass, leading to a loss in communities. It has actually brought about the situation where it is not the irrigators who are at the biggest risk but the communities that surround them.

I have no confidence that this government will invest in infrastructure over the longer term. Labor, supported by the Greens, will just revert back to the buyout of rural communities, because that is what the recently restored South Australian senator did. She just bought water without referral to where it was needed, without referral to any plan—without any plan, as a matter of fact, as I am sure the member for Watson is well aware.

If you go to Deniliquin, Griffith, Swan Hill, Mildura or Shepparton and ask anyone on the streets whether the water buyback has been good for their communities, there will be a loud and resounding, 'No,' echoing from the empty business houses. This bill does go to the heart of the government's credibility. As a government, we had a plan. The plan was investing in the infrastructure and the farm work to the irrigation and saving the river by doing efficiencies and working with the industry, not getting rid of it.

Mr Burke interjecting—

I should not respond, should I, across the table, Deputy Speaker Adams, so I will not, except to say that the member for Watson knows very well that was only a contingency in certain circumstances. He knows that very well.

We know that when it comes to agriculture—if you will excuse the pun—agriculture is at the bottom of our food chain. Everything they have done in government backs that up. Since 2007 the annual operating budget of the department of agriculture has more than halved. But this should not surprise you, as the department of agriculture has actually removed the word 'agriculture' from its mission statement, which is now:

We work to sustain the way of life and prosperity of all Australians.

Okay, well, that is a good thought. But it would be good to think about the people who actually live, work and own—for whom agriculture is what they do. But they do not get a mention anymore. Under the previous government, the department's mission was:

Increasing the profitability, competitiveness and sustainability of Australian agricultural, fisheries, forestry and food industries and enhancing the natural resource base to achieve greater national wealth and stronger rural and regional communities.

That actually sounds like a mission statement for a section of the community that goes out of its way and punches above its weight and always has in Australia. However, none of those things apparently matter anymore. If the minister for agricultural is not standing up for agricultural then who is? I do not care what party you come from: when you have that job, your job is to work for it.

Getting back to the specifics of the issue, a mechanism that allows for a reduction of water required to achieve a target is a good thing. If the government can deliver outcomes to the environment by implementing investment in works and measures and that means outcomes can be achieved with less water, I am all for it. It is really the environment doing the same as the farm sector by learning to do better with less water. Perhaps, as I just said, those who work the environment can learn that as well. Farmers pride themselves on continuing to improve productivity and have been doing this for decades. If you water a wetland section by section, it makes sense that it will take less water than flooding the whole thing at once. It is the principle under which irrigation farms have operated for years. The world's population is heading to nine billion by 2030, so we cannot just cut production; we have to increase efficiencies, and we do have to learn to do more with less, which is why R and D should support that.

I will make a couple of comments in response to a speaker I heard earlier in the debate. Labor's member for Kingston said that if we do not restore this river there will be nothing: wetlands and flood plains will die. It does sound a bit like reckless negativity to me—I am not sure whether it is the Macquarie definition before or after it has been changed to suit the government. One thing is clear: the decade-long drought is over, the river is flowing and there are no RIP signs up on any of the wetlands. Yes, we do need to manage the river, but the government has no water plan on how to use the existing water. So the claims by the member for Kingston can only be a reflection on the government's inability to show how water will achieve improved environmental outcomes, because currently it is quite obvious that neither the government nor the Murray-Darling Basin Authority have any idea how they are going to use the water that is being lined up simply for the environment.

The big lie in this debate was when Kevin Rudd stood at the mouth of the river and said, 'Give me an ETS and I'll fill the river.' Actually, it filled without one. Droughts do come to an end, even one that was the biggest in the lifetime of anyone in this place. I do not step back from the fact that we need to look after the environment. But that was a lie.

Labor and the Greens must come to the realisation that, while it may be good for niche markets to grow organic food, if the whole world went organic the world would starve. Perhaps the recent delegation of Senator Wong to the second spot, since reinstated, as I hear—I will correct myself if that is just a rumour; perhaps the member for Watson—

Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I've got no idea what you're talking about.

John Cobb (Calare, National Party, Shadow Minister for Agriculture and Food Security) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Okay. The word is that the delegation of Senator Wong to the second spot has been reversed. Somebody stepped down, which would be a big thing to do, and it was before they had developed a watering plan which showed how outcomes could be achieved.

The reality is the Labor and the Greens have no skin in the game when it comes to seats in the basin and will never have any understanding of the basin communities. And it would seem they have never cared by the way they have processed this from day one. I repeat that: the problem here is that the Labor Party have no skin in the game when it comes to the Murray-Darling Basin, which is about half of one electorate. I support this mechanism but not without ministerial or parliamentary oversight so that the water required is lowered to achieve environmental outcomes, not to allow the government to expand its environmental imprint at the expense of basin communities. So I am unable to support this bill in its current form.

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

I rise to speak on the Water Amendment (Long-Term Average Sustainable Diversion Limit Adjustment) Bill 2012. The adjustment mechanism referred to in this bill has some agreement within the Australian community from the various parties, including the ministerial council. Because of that, it deserves to be taken seriously. I believe there are still some deficiencies in that plan, but I am hoping the minister can progress the negotiations and reach a good, sustainable outcome for the river from one end to the other.

There are some deficiencies in this bill which will be addressed by the coalition's amendments, and I will come to those a little later. It is planned to return 2,750 gigalitres to the river and, as it has quite a lot of support across a number of communities, it deserves to be taken seriously. All of this falls within the coalition's long-term vision for the river system.

The sustainable diversion limits actually allow for flexibility within the management of the system. It seems to me to make sense that, as improvements are made within the system—whether funded by public funds or otherwise, but presumably funded by the taxpayer—the management plan has room to adapt. In that sense, I think a flexible arrangement is a good idea. If farm practices can be improved, presumably by public moneys, if production can be held stable or improved within the communities along the river, and if those communities are healthy in a financial sense, it makes some sense that there could be a reallocation of the water. Equally, if public moneys are spent to reengineer the river system and remove some of the constraints, to actually manage the water better in the flooding of the wetlands as we go down the river—and I am sure there are always improvements to be made in this area—then equally it makes sense that more water may become available for agricultural diversions. So it makes sense to have flexibility.

Importantly, decisions by the Murray-Darling Basin Authority must be made on sound scientific evidence, and the coalition has long been a supporter of this position. However, we do draw the line at a totally hands-off approach, divorcing the parliament from all responsibility. That brings us to the coalition's amendments in this area. Yes, the governing council, the Murray-Darling Basin Authority, should make the independent, scientifically driven decisions, but at the end of the day, we cannot totally muzzle the people's voice in this area. We live in a democracy and it is important that the people's voice be heard, and the parliament is the people's voice. That is why the coalition amendments seek to restore ministerial responsibility in this area. I hope we will be supported by the government. I think they are very good amendments.

In the end, decisions made by the Murray-Darling Basin Authority could conceivably have large impacts on the federal budget or even, depending on the appointments of the commissioners, make decisions that are not well based—decisions of the heart rather than of science. In that case, the government, the parliament, must have the room to intervene. For those that worry that the allocation of water would then become a political football, I would say they should watch an old episode of Yes Minister. I think the words would be: 'Any minister who chooses to overrule his independent authority is a very courageous minister.' I think it is right that we should put some power back in the hands of the minister but it should be used with great care. I am sure it would be, because any opposition worth its salt that would see a minister overruling his scientific council would wear some criticism.

It is important in this debate that the parliament understand the great significance of the Murray River in South Australia. The average diversion limit to South Australia from 1997 to 2010 was seven per cent. Of that, 75 per cent is for primary production.

As a representative of an electorate that has no irrigation in it but is a recipient of the Murray water—and the Murray water is very important to my electorate—I would just like to put the case at this stage for the sometimes much maligned non-irrigation use of water out of the river system. I make the case that anybody paying $3.73 a kilolitre for water is unlikely to waste it. In fact, they are likely to put it to very good use indeed. That price has risen by 50 per cent in South Australia in the last two years and that has led me to some criticism of the state government over a number of issues. Water has risen to $3.73 a kilolitre or by 50 per cent over the last two years.

If we take the City of Whyalla, which is often raised in this place by the government, it uses around 15 gigalitres a year. It supports a population of 23,000. None of that city could be there without the River Murray water. The water has a very high multiplier effect, and is very important to communities all through South Australia, including our irrigation communities. It is also important to note, from a South Australian point of view—I know members from the eastern seaboard may be a little tired of hearing this—that extractions from the river have been capped in South Australia since 1969: a period of 43 years.

Progress on achieving an outcome for national management of the Murray Darling Basin has been slow. And there has been a series of mis-steps and mistakes by the government, including the sight of irrigators burning the draft report of the Murray-Darling plan—an exercise, I think, which antagonised all players in this game. I think, in retrospect, even the minister may wish that that original report had not gone out in that form and that it had some more careful consideration before it went out. I believe that that very confrontational blooding of the public to the views of the report entrenched positions and made it harder to achieve an outcome later.

But it is important, I believe, that the coalition be part of the solution—that we do not frustrate an outcome in this area but actually work with the government to try and bring about the right results for the river. Now, let me say that while the figure of 2,750 gigalitres has been broadly agreed amongst some of the major parties, exactly how we arrive at that 2,750 gigalitres is still part of the debate, and I know the minister is probably working on this on a fairly regular basis. And I wish him well on achieving the right outcome, because whatever our political background, Australia will not thank us if we do not reach an outcome. And I want the minister to achieve that outcome.

That deals with this bill and the amendments that pertain to this bill, but it brings me back to the announcement by the Prime Minister and Jay Weatherill, last weekend, of the extra 450 gigalitres. We are still waiting for the detail of that announcement. It worries me that it appears to be another of the cheap and fairly empty commitments from the government.

Look at the government's recent form on the NDIS, the Gonski report, the national dental health plans, the recently announced participation in the Asian century and, now, the Murray River. These are all announcements without specific funding. There are plenty of lofty goals and no money. And they are all outside the life of this government and even outside the life of the forward estimates. So they become very empty promises. Empty promises about a river that was recently empty are really not good enough. I believe, with the government's form across all of those subjects, the government has resigned itself to losing the next election, and is setting up to attack the incoming government from opposition.

However, I do want to be part of positively moving this forward. So we wait to hear what those new commitments are that were made on the weekend. If the guarantees for future increases in environment flows are supported by irrigation efficiencies funded by the government, even though there does not appear to be much money in this announcement, then we should be flexible enough to allow for new circumstances. If the government of the day can find the money to fund these engineering works, both on farm and in the river, to release more water then we should be flexible enough to allow for new outcomes. But I think we need to draw some kind of line in the sand about the buyouts of licences that are currently occurring. We simply cannot afford to achieve all of those outcomes through buyouts. The minister knows that that would rip the guts out of too many communities. That is why we know this will be some kind of compromise between the parties.

It is very important that the government finds the money for the engineering works that can release water to the environment without damaging the communities down the river. That is something that I and the coalition have maintained ever since John Howard first announced the Murray-Darling rescue packages. It has been the long plan of the coalition to go down this path. We should continue to go down this path and we should continue to find the way that causes the least damage to the irrigation communities the length of the River Murray.

Bob Katter (Kennedy, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Water Amendment (Long-Term Average Sustainable Diversion Limit Adjustment) Bill 2012. Once again, I find myself in a minority of one in this place. As the writer of a history book—we have sold 16,500 copies at $35; available at all good newsagencies—I can speak with some degree of pride about my country. Amongst its many great achievements I think the Snow Mountains Scheme was probably our greatest achievement. People with vision and determination—people like Minister Lemmon and Ben Chifley and the Liberal David Fairbairn—were very much a part of driving this idea. They could think big; they could see big.

Let us have a look at what this achieved. Half or maybe as much as 60 per cent of Australia's agricultural production comes from the Murray-Darling. The vast bulk of that comes from irrigation. Eight million mega litres are taken out of the 22 mega litres and used for irrigation purposes.

The people that ask for more water down the river are the greenies and people that want to go back to nature who do not believe we need any food. I, at one big debate, said there are 2,000 million people going to bed hungry of a night and there are going to be a hell of a lot more going to bed hungry of a night if we close down the Murray-Darling. They said we have got too many people. I said that is an interesting way of fixing it up; we starve them to death to get rid of that excess number of people. I had not thought of that idea before. But these people were not people with a sense of humour and none of them laughed. Ian Causley—one of the finest members of parliament I have served with in this place and a very successful minister for water, lands and agriculture in the New South Wales government—said 'when it rains the river runs and when it doesn't it doesn't'. Really, for those of us that live on these rivers, we know that is profoundly true. You can build all that dams and do everything you like and take backward somersaults at yourself but when it rains it runs and when it does not it does not.

For those people that want to say this is a problem, all right you address the problem by looking at—and I pay tribute to Pat Byrnes at the National Civic Council—the idea of environmental dams. If you want to get back to nature then you return the Menindee Lakes and the Lake Alexandrina to their natural state, which is no water in them. That saves nearly a million mega litres of evaporation a year from the Menindee Lakes—artificial lakes created by and for what purposes we are not entirely sure—and Lake Alexandrina, which seems to me to be entirely stupid since Lake Alexandrina is only a stone's throw from the sea. If you want to see a huge body of water, head 20 or 30 kilometres south and you can see the ocean; that will make you happy. But do not take a million mega litres out of the Murray-Darling.

The Clarence River diversion put up by Mr Coffey and his firm, Coffey and Partners, is a magnificent scheme. It is one of those ideas whose time should have come. To protect the waters and people that live in the Clarence River basin from the huge flooding that occurs in that river and to capture a little bit of the flood water and send it back through the range, take a little bit of water from the Clarence but put a huge amount of water into the Murray-Darling.

The recycling of water is a very simple thing. Simply taking the water from your washing and putting it into your septic or sewerage water is a very simple thing to do yet it halves—arguably more than halves—the consumption of water in the ordinary household. In Brisbane the stupid Labor government or the stupid Liberal government—I cannot remember which—banned the use of water tanks and then made them compulsory 10 years later. So there are a dozen ways in which you can approach this problem if in fact there is a problem. I need a lot more convincing. I remain the only member of parliament that has gone to all of the seminars on the Murray-Darling Basin in this place. I like to think that as a patriotic Australian and a thinking Australian I should have a good handle on it.

Please God, in my lifetime may some government in this place might be enlightened enough to do something about the waters of northern Australia. The northern third of Australia has three quarters of the nation's water. And none of that is being used except a couple of tiny little dams. Virtually not a single drop of it is being used. I take great pleasure in advising the House that my political party, as small as it is, is diametrically opposed to any further cutbacks in the Murray-Darling and wants a restoration.

I will be doing a tour through the back of New South Wales very shortly and I will be telling the people in each town that you are going to be a ghost town because half of your entire income is going to vanish. The stupid people in the white house in Canberra have taken away three million mega litres of your eight million mega litres. They have taken it away and you will not get it back unless you start thinking about voting for a party that believes that we should be bigger nation than we are, that we should have a bigger economy and that we should have the great vision of our forefathers that drought proofed one tenth of the this nation with that magnificent scheme.

When Strzelecki discovered Mount Kosciusko, he said he would name it after Kosciusko because Kosciusko was a man whose life was devoted to freedom and this is a freedom-loving country. He went on to say that the waters of the Snowy Mountains can change Australia and are one of the few undeveloped water resources left in the world that can achieve great things for a nation. I wish Strzelecki, the great Australian that he was, had come to North Queensland. We would have changed his attitude a bit on that one. This mighty scheme took was what was effectively a dustbowl of the lower Murray and the upper Darling and the Murrumbidgee and turned that dustbowl into a productive resource that feeds arguably 40 million people, most certainly over 20 million people. They turned it into a magnificent scheme that provides even today a 10th of our peak load power. Once again, the disgraceful people in this place tried to sell the greatest asset owned by the Australian people. They voted to sell it.

So we will do everything within our power, the little party that we are, to try and stop any further cutbacks and to return that water. And if there is a problem out there, then there are a dozen ways of solving it. We will get off our backsides and solve those problems, and put more water down, if you want more water down—not a great problem; not a great problem at all.

Once again, I finally return to the greatest builder in Australian history by a long way, Dr John Crew Bradfield, who built the Sydney Harbour Bridge, the Story Bridge, the University of Queensland, and the Sydney underground railway system, for which he got the international award for engineering for that year and should have got it, quite frankly, for that decade. Today we still use the underground railway system in Sydney; it is a strategic part of our traffic flows in Sydney, as is that bridge. What great foresight! What great vision!

This man said, 'If you fill up Lake Eyre you will have a hell of a lot of evaporation,' and I will be very technical: you will get over 30 million megalitres of evaporation a year. Remember that the Murray-Darling only has 22 million megalitres; you would get 30 million megalitres of evaporation, and it would be blown over the top of the Murray-Darling Basin.

The inquiry at the time, back in the thirties, said it would not work. It was a three-man committee, but the only one who knew what he was talking about was the meteorologist and he said that it would work. He was the only person on that committee who was technically qualified.

If you say, 'It won't work and it's not going to cause rain over the Murray-Darling,' then where is the 30 million megalitres going to go? Is it going to jump over the Great Dividing Range and set off into the Pacific Ocean? Is it going to go backwards? Is it going to go up into the atmosphere and cause carbon dioxide problems? No. I simply think that, like all water that goes into the atmosphere, it will precipitate when it runs up against a mountain range; that mountain range is the Great Dividing Range, and it would be blown up against that.

I must also say that the scheme of that great man, Bradfield, centred upon two possibilities, One, which of course we would do today, is simply to dig a canal up from Spencer Gulf and fill Lake Eyre with water, which is well below sea level. Alternatively, you could take a little tiny proportion of the massive floodwaters of North Queensland—but I do not think we would send that all the way down to Lake Eyre; I think we would use that on the black soil plains of Queensland. I think that is a much better idea than to fill Lake Eyre.

People say these ideas are ridiculous. Well, during the Great Depression in the United States they built the Tennessee Valley Authority which then produced more electricity than we produce in the whole of Australia put together—free, forever. They built a huge water highway, a channel through the Mississippi River; it went up 1,000 kilometres. It was navigable by quite big boats, actually. And of course they flood-proofed a lot of America as well. They also created the great agricultural juggernaut of the world, the United States' agricultural production. They did all of those wonderful things. Well, our forebears did too. But in this place today we are closing down what our forebears did. The pygmies are at it again! And on that note, I conclude.

Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank all contributors who have been involved in this debate. I should, in summing up, first of all explain the process from here, because a lot of people, with the different bills and the different parts of Murray-Darling reform, have been asking, 'What are the different votes that will come to the parliament?'

The vote that we take this evening is about the structure that a Basin Plan is allowed to have. It deals specifically with the codification of what is being referred to as a mechanism. Effectively, it is a way of saying that the recommended number—which, at the moment, we have seen is 2,750—has economic, environmental and social consequences; for each of those three, you cannot take backward steps, but if you can improve one of the three without hurting the others, the mechanism allows you to do so. There are some processes and some formality built into that in the bill that is before us. And that is the only decision that is effectively being taken tonight.

I will be introducing another bill which will explain how the government intends to interact with that mechanism. That will be the moment when the parliament has an opportunity to discuss the announcements that were made by the Prime Minister and the Premier of South Australia last week.

The third issue will be when I sign off on the Murray-Darling Basin plan. If anyone moves disallowance then that disallowance motion will also be before the parliament. I will not be in a position to do so until the bill before us now has been carried by both houses, because it actually underpins some of the structural aspects that would be contained within that plan. So either two or three of what I have just described will find their way through, to be in front of us in this parliament for the remaining sitting period.

To return to the bill in front of us, I thank everyone for their contribution to the debate. I acknowledge that there has been a strong and consistent refrain from the opposition on ministerial prerogative. I want to make clear both why that is not the government's position and why, when we get to the in-detail section, the government will be willing to look at a compromise proposal which has been negotiated effectively, as I understand it, with the opposition.

In the first instance, the argument that the opposition have been putting has been that it should not be an independent authority on its own; the decision should then fall back to the minister to approve or reject what the authority has recommended. Part of the reason that Prime Minister Howard and the then minister for water, the member for Wentworth, designed the Murray-Darling Basin Authority and the Water Act the way they did was to take the decision out of the hands of politicians, and that is our preference. For that reason I am reluctant to have processes which whack the decisions back into the hands of politicians after a plan and a structure have already been put in place. I do not believe it is the ideal way to go with policy. However, I do appreciate that the structure of how a mechanism can work is something that should have, in structural terms, a workability that is acceptable to both sides of the parliament.

With that in mind, while I understand that there is an amendment from the opposition already on the Notice Paper that deals with the ministerial prerogative part of it, I indicate now before we move to that stage of the debate the government has an amendment that incorporates all the aspects of the opposition amendments but adds a part that says that if that ministerial prerogative is exercised then any amendments that the minister puts through would be disallowable. We will deal with that when it comes. Given that our amendment incorporates all aspects of the opposition amendment, it is important to put on the record the context, which is that the government has arrived at this on the basis of the different contributions that have been made by the opposition in the course of this debate. It is not our preferred course of action. But we believe that the compromise that it offers will provide a way through. I commend the bill to the House.

Kirsten Livermore (Capricornia, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Before calling the next speaker in this debate, I will deal with the division that was called after 6.30 pm. I took the view that the deferred division should not be proceeded with until the minister speaking at 8 pm had completed his speech, and so I did not interrupt the minister. The debate is adjourned and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for a later hour.