Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Oh dear! Never mind, I will have one go. I am not going to be complicit in wasting the chamber’s time too much. Senator Abetz says that paragraphs (a) and (b)—which I read out before he came in, belatedly, to the Senate chamber—describe the circumstances relating to a lawyer which would have the lawyer prevented from seeing the client. Well, they do not describe any such circumstances at all. Paragraphs (a) and (b) indicate what it is about a lawyer that may make the lawyer suspect, but they do not give the outline of how it is that you get to a situation of being able to be convinced through some previous behaviour of the lawyer—which would need, of course, to be grounded in fact—that made them suspect under (a) and (b). I was going to ask Senator Ellison about that but I think I am snookered by his absence from the chamber. I will not press this at all with Senator Abetz. We will have to proceed without having the question answered.

I did want to ask some other questions relating to the ways in which the legislation circumscribes the minister’s power to ban organisations. Maybe Senator Abetz could tell the committee how this legislation does that.