Andrew Bartlett (Queensland, Australian Democrats) Share this | Hansard source

I might clarify for the record what is before the chamber at the moment. We are not debating the merits or otherwise of particular pieces of legislation but rather the merits or otherwise of whether those pieces of legislation should be able to be rushed through all stages of debate in this chamber before the end of next week. The motion before us lists 12 pieces of legislation, a couple of which will be taken together as packages, which the government want to have debated before the end of next week. That is not all they want debated before the end of next week: there is another series of legislation that does not need to be exempted from the cut-off. The reason this motion is necessary is that all of those pieces of legislation were first introduced into the parliament only quite recently.

The motion referred to in the standing orders actually has a heritage going back to the 1980s. It was originally called the ‘Macklin motion’ in recognition of my predecessor from the Queensland Democrats, Senator Michael Macklin, who was a key player in putting in place the standing order in relation to this motion. It was then modified somewhat in the early 1990s, but the principle was still the same—that legislation that has only recently been introduced into the parliament should not be able to be dealt with before the end of that same sitting period unless there is a good reason.

In many cases there is a good reason, such as the time line for implementation or the issue the legislation seeks to address. But the core aim of the standing order, which still exists, is there for a very good reason: we as a house of parliament, a legislature and a law-making body should not be rushing pieces of legislation into law until there has been a proper chance for scrutiny. That does not just mean a proper chance for those of us in this chamber to give it scrutiny—that is obviously essential and important—it also means a proper opportunity for public scrutiny and public debate, because all wisdom and all knowledge does not reside in the 76 people who happen to currently be senators in this chamber. I would hope that we would all acknowledge that there is much wisdom, expertise and knowledge out in the wider community that we all benefit from continuously. The only way that we can effectively consider the expertise and knowledge out in the wider community is if members of the community have sufficient time to look at the legislation and provide that feedback.

The key question here is whether or not the various bills that are put before us in this motion have had adequate scrutiny, given what is in them and/or given the immediacy of the need to implement some of the provisions. I believe that the simple problem here is that many of the pieces of legislation contained in this motion which the government is seeking to fast-track are not needed before the end of the year. There have not been good reasons given for them to be finalised before the end of the year.

This reflects a very common attitude now in the federal government. The government is more interested in getting legislation through than it is in getting the legislation right. It is not just a matter of whether you agree with the policy decisions underlying the legislation or whether you support the policy intent underlying, for example, the Environment and Heritage Legislation Amendment Bill (No. 1) 2006 or the Copyright Amendment Bill 2006; it is matter of whether the legislation as it is drafted properly implements that policy intent, whether there are unintended consequences, whether it could be worded more clearly and whether it will mean that the best law will then be implemented, which all of the people of Australia—and, in many cases, more widely—will have to be subjected to.

That is the fundamental part of our role in this chamber. When you scrape away all the differences about whether or not we support selling off a particular government asset or whether we support this power or that power being given to a minister, the core role that we play, surely above all else, is to at least make sure that the fundamentals of the legislation that we are putting into law are properly drafted and have been properly scrutinised. When you get to a situation where a government is more interested in getting legislation through than it is in getting the legislation right, you have reached a serious juncture from the point of view of democracy and from the point of view of our role as the law-making body in this country.

The role of public debate and public awareness about laws is as important, I would suggest, as the content within the laws. It is worth stepping through the various pieces of legislation that are listed in this motion, because some of them have not had much attention. There are a few listed in this motion that the Democrats do believe have sufficient grounds for urgency. I think history quite clearly shows that the Democrats, as a matter of principle and process, have always been willing to examine legislation on its merits and to look for ways to improve the workability of legislation even where we do not necessarily support the policy intent. But the government is denying those of us who seek to work constructively the ability to do so, and it is doing that to the wider community as well.

A good example is the anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing legislation—which I do not think has been mentioned much by previous speakers. That bill is currently before a Senate committee inquiry. That committee has still not reported, so I cannot reveal what is going to be in that report—not least because I do not know. The committee is due to report tomorrow, 28 November, though it possibly may extend by another day or so. But I think it is clear from the evidence given to that inquiry that, whilst there is broad recognition of the need to improve our anti-money laundering legislation and to prevent the misuse of our financial system for the financing of criminal activity—whether it be terrorist or otherwise—there are still concerns about how the legislation is drafted.

Of course this is important, but we should not confuse important issues with urgent issues. We do want to get improved anti-money-laundering laws in place as soon as possible but we do want to get them right. This legislation will impose very significant compliance burdens on a whole range of financial institutions and other people, and they are the ones who will have to pay the costs involved in implementing the legislation—and in many cases those costs will flow on to the consumers. If these measures are essential and necessary parts of a strong anti-money-laundering framework, that is a price that I am sure we would all accept is one worth paying, but you do not want to be having extra unnecessary compliance and loopholes in the legislation—you want to get it right. Pushing this legislation through before the end of next week will reduce the chances of getting it right. Surely that is the least people can expect from us.

The Commonwealth Radioactive Waste Management Legislation Amendment Bill 2006 is also listed in the motion. The Democrats oppose this legislation—and we have been clear about that. In one sense, the government could say, ‘You’ve all decided what your view is, so why not just get it through?’ But there are also important components in this legislation that, particularly in areas like this, should not just be dismissed. The parliament should not be just a number-crunching machine—‘We’ve got the numbers, so we’ll roll it through; that’s all that matters.’ The parliament should enable proper scrutiny, proper public debate and public awareness.

Before the motion that we are now debating was moved, there was a motion moved to allow the Senate committee that is looking into the Commonwealth Radioactive Waste Management Legislation Amendment Bill 2006 to hold a hearing during the Senate sitting today—a practice that I think that we are starting to undertake far too often. The consequence of that motion, when you combine it with this motion to fast-track that bill, is that the people who are most directly affected by this legislation will not have a chance to be heard. The radioactive waste management legislation seeks to enable the views of the traditional owners or the local owners of a piece of land to be overridden by a land council if the federal government wants that land for a radioactive waste facility.

Leaving aside what you think about radioactive waste facilities—and there are different views on that, and I think there is some validity in each of those views—the simple fact is that the people who are most directly affected, the traditional owners of the land that the facility is going to placed on, will have their views directly overridden by the legislation. By fast-tracking this legislation, we will also preclude their views from public debate and from being scrutinised by the Senate committee. Frankly, I think that shows gross disrespect. The least we can do, if we are going to be bulldozing over the basic rights of the owners of the land in question, is to hear from those people. The committee is not going to go to the Northern Territory; it is going to hold hearings in Parliament House at the same time as parliament is sitting—which will reduce further opportunities for scrutiny of what is going on—and the voices of the people who are directly affected will not be heard.

If we tried that with any other group in the community by saying ‘We’re going to change the laws so it will be easy for us to put a radioactive waste facility on your land’, most people would not be terribly happy about that for starters. But it is worse if we say, ‘We’re going to do it, we’re not even going to listen to you; we’ll pass the legislation and we’re not going to listen to your views. We’ll have an inquiry into it, we’ll hear from everybody else but we’re not going to listen to you.’ Unless it is absolutely necessary—and it is simply not necessary that it is done in the next two weeks—there is no reason that it could not be done in February of next year to at least enable views to be heard.

We have heard a couple of other speakers talk about the environment and heritage amendment legislation. Again, I will not go to the merits of the legislation. There are actually some positive components within it; there are some negative components as well, but I will not debate the legislation here. The simple fact is that it is 400 pages of legislation amending an act that is even bigger than that. It was brought in without consultation with the wider community, dropped in here, immediately referred to a committee and immediately forced through that committee, which had to report back within a few weeks. Even that process demonstrated flaws in the way the legislation is structured, let alone the policy intent.

Again, it is not urgent. There is absolutely no reason why those changes must go through in 2006 and could not go through in February 2007 after another month or two of proper examination and raising of community awareness. The people that actually live with and use this law every day would then not only be able to have input into it but also be more aware of what is coming down the track. The people that actually work with that law and many of these other laws know more about it than we do. They know more about the practical impact of these changes than we do, but we are not only not allowing them to inform us about what we are doing but also not allowing them to even inform themselves and others in the wider community about what is happening.

Senator McLucas spoke about the Medibank Private Sale Bill 2006. The justification given that this has to be railroaded through next week or this week so that we can sell it in 2008 is simply ludicrous. That has to be the worst excuse I have ever heard for why this is urgent. The only reason it is urgent is that the government wants to push it through, try to get it off the political agenda, and try to ensure that there is no uprising of concern even within their own ranks—which is the same thing as they did with the sale of the Snowy. They bulldozed that through before half of them even knew what was going on. Six months down the track, community outrage—combined with eventual dissatisfaction building up in the coalition—led to a backflip. The simple fact in this case with the Medibank Private Sale Bill is that it is not urgent. It is a flagrant abuse and dismissal of the principle that is inherent in the standing orders of this chamber. Standing orders are not just these optional extras that we can pay attention to when we feel like it. They are put in place deliberately. In particular, standing orders like this were put in place after a good amount of consultation, after a lot of consideration, and after the Procedure Committee back in the early 1990s decided that this would be the way to go. That is simply being dismissed.

The other piece of legislation that I have not mentioned, and I do not think anybody else has mentioned it, is the Copyright Amendment Bill 2006. I think the fact that it has not been mentioned is perhaps an example of how it has somewhat gone under the radar compared to some of the other issues before us. This again is legislation—it has 12 schedules in it—where the government is saying, ‘This is urgent because it needs to be put in place before 1 January 2007 to ensure compliance with the Australia-US free trade agreement.’ It is true that one of those schedules does. I still think that schedule needs improving, but it may be that we need to improve that schedule over the next two weeks such that it is in place so that we are not breaching our compliance with the free trade agreement. But the vast bulk of the legislation does not need to be passed before the end of the year. It does not relate to the US-Australia free trade agreement but it does have very long-term consequences for a whole lot of Australians—including our educational institutions and many ordinary Australians involved in all sorts of uses of items that have copyright over them.

The, again, disgracefully short Senate committee inquiry into this did bring up enormous concern amongst many people in the community about not just the intent of it but also, particularly in this case, the adequacy of the drafting. People from all different sides—and there are many different sides in copyright issues—complained about the workability of various provisions. The government said, ‘If everybody is unhappy, we’ve probably got it right because we have that balance.’ It could mean that, but it more likely means that they have got it totally wrong—so wrong that everybody recognises it is not workable.

I hear that there will be some amendments to the legislation from the government, but we do not know what is in them and we will have a very short time frame to look at them. Given that it is not urgent, given that this is the end stage of quite a long consultation process where there have still been significant flaws identified, why on earth are we trying to push it through before we get it right? It is that simple matter I come back to; that is the key principle here. It is not whether or not the Democrats, or anyone else here, like some of these bills and dislikes some of the others. That is not the point. The point is that these motions should only be agreed to when there is a credible case to be made that they are urgent pieces of legislation and/or that there is absolutely no harm in putting them through in the immediate future. Otherwise the default option, the precautionary principle or the safety net is that we make sure that there is proper scrutiny. And that does not mean just scrutiny by all of us here; it means scrutiny by the community, scrutiny by people who are much more likely, frankly, in many cases, to pick up mistakes and to identify problems. What we have here is a classic example of the clear attitude of the government that they are more interested in getting legislation through than they are in getting it right, and that is an abdication of responsibility.

I suggest it is one of the biggest signs you can get of the hubris of this government. The Prime Minister often talks about how he is always wary of any signs of hubris—quite rightly—but this is as big a sign as you can get. This government has adopted a ‘them and us’ mentality, the clearest example of hubris and arrogance you can get. This government has flagrantly breached the commitment it gave, when it discovered that it had control of the Senate, that it would not abuse that power. It has clearly, time after time, abused that power, and this is another example of that abuse.

The ‘them and us’ mentality that has developed has meant a complete refusal to listen to any criticism or any concerns. In some cases, there has been a complete refusal to even provide the opportunity for those concerns to be expressed. That is not only offensive, frustrating and appalling; it means, above all else, that you will get bad law. If people are not even prepared to listen to valid criticisms and valid concerns, then it is inevitable you will get bad decisions, and that is what this motion allows.