Chris Bowen (McMahon, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Climate Change and Energy) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On behalf of the Leader of the House, I move:

That:

(1) the resolution of appointment for the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights be amended to replace paragraph (l)(a) with the following:

(a) the committee consist of 12 members, four Members of the House of Representatives to be nominated by the Government Whip, two Members of the House of Representatives to be nominated by the Opposition Whip or by any minority group or independent Member, two Senators to be nominated by the Leader of the Government in the Senate, two Senators to be nominated by the Leader of the Opposition in the Senate, one Senator to be nominated by the Leader of the Australian Greens in the Senate and one Senator to be nominated by any minority group or independent Senator;

and;

(2) a message be sent to the Senate acquainting it of this resolution and requesting that it concur and take action accordingly.

Paul Fletcher (Bradfield, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Government Services and the Digital Economy) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The government's proposed changes to the membership of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights are ones that the coalition does not believe are necessary or justified, and the government has made no credible attempt to make the case for these changes.

There is no groundswell of opinion in the broader Australian community that the human rights committee of this parliament needs to be expanded. There is nobody saying, 'Ten is not enough; it needs to be 12.' We've had no rationale given by this government. The idea of expanding the human rights committee was not in the bill that was introduced into this parliament. The idea of expanding the human rights committee was not considered by the committee that looked at the bill. It was not an issue addressed by government senators in the committee report on the bill. There were certainly no letter-writing campaigns or email campaigns coming into electorate offices around this country saying, 'What we need is 12 people on the parliamentary committee on human rights, not 10, because 10 can't do the job; only 12 can do the job.' Nobody sought to make that argument because such an argument would be patently ridiculous and entirely unsupported by the facts or the evidence. There is no credible policy reason for the change the government is seeking to slip through in this motion moved by the Minister for Climate Change and Energy. They've made every attempt to try and disguise what's going on and they've offered no plausible, convincing, substantiated, detailed argument. Their argument is about as threadbare as you can possibly find, even from a government which has in, just two short years, established quite a track record of threadbare, hopeless, entirely unpersuasive arguments.

What is the real rationale for what's going on here? Why is this a priority for the current Prime Minister? It's certainly clear from the track record of this Prime Minister that the things he's concerned about are entirely at odds with the priorities of the Australian people—bringing down the cost of your mortgage, bringing down inflation, addressing social cohesion and addressing the risk of growing antisemitism. On the contrary, what we've seen from this government is a continued willingness to pursue matters entirely at odds with the day-to-day concerns and priorities of the Australian people. We've got a weak government incapable of making the right calls, led by a weak prime minister. That weakness is reflected in the motion before the House—a motion moved by the Minister for Climate Change and Energy, a motion which the government has sought to portray as simply a minor, business-as-usual matter.

As it turns out, there were a lot of very sensible recommendations made by Senator Scarr in the other place. He identified a number of important improvements that could have been made. There were serious recommendations made about the rules dealing with the transfer of proceedings and the circumstances in which a transfer is 'in the interest of justice'. The bill being used by this government as the excuse to put forward this expansion of the committee was stated to be about the issue of the transfer of proceedings. The government could have used this opportunity to improve the explanation of jury preparation and jury selection processes. The government could have used this opportunity to provide better guidance around the criteria to be used by the sheriff. All these were substantive, important matters that were contained in the bill that was considered in the other place. But, rather than the government seeking to engage on those important matters, they have completely ignored those matters, and they have engaged in some Instagram level virtue-signalling; that's what we've seen here. The government could have devoted its time and energy to improving protections, to delivering substantive effective measures against forced marriage—as the coalition recommended when we looked at this bill. There are many serious and concrete improvements that the coalition identified and that we've made recommendations about, having looked at the bill—the bill which has been used by this government as the trigger and excuse to instead go in a completely different and a completely baseless direction, and that is the direction of increasing the size of this committee. This government's bold policy initiative is to add two more spots to a committee. The government tabled supplementary explanatory materials, but they do a remarkably poor job of explaining why this House ought to agree to expand this committee. There are 500 or so words in these so-called explanatory materials, and not one of them gives an adequate, persuasive, compelling or even moderately respectable explanation.

Why would this be happening? Why would the government suddenly increase the size of a committee? Why would the government leap on this particular bill as the excuse to do so? Well, you don't need to be a very experienced observer of the track record and practices of this Albanese Labor government to work out what's going on. A secret deal has been cooked up between this government and members of the crossbench. This week the Prime Minister and his incompetent Attorney-General have used the human rights committee as a bargaining chip. They've engaged in some horsetrading to shore up crossbench support and to advance their political agenda. The prize that they have handed across to the crossbench is to increase the size of the human rights committee from 10 to 12, giving effect to a policy priority which no mainstream Australian has called for, which no mainstream Australian would regard as necessary. This is the advancement of concerns which are entirely political.

This is a move which disrespects the committee, discredits the Attorney and discredits this government. The coalition opposes this motion. This motion should be rejected.

Milton Dick (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The question is that the motion be agreed to.