Joe Ludwig (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Manager of Opposition Business in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

by leave—I foreshadow a further amendment to the motion relating to the Selection of Bills Committee report:

At the end of the motion, add “but, in respect of the Human Services (Enhanced Service Delivery) Bill 2007, the Finance and Public Administration Committee report by 12 June 2007”.

We are seeking to move a number of amendments and I intend to speak to this amendment for a couple of minutes. What needs to be made clear here today is that in terms of the access card—if I can use that short phrase—the government’s intention is to ram that through before Easter. That will not allow privacy interests, civil interests, the Australian Federal Police, who might have an interest, and all of those other relevant bodies and the community to be involved in the debate about the access card. It is imperative that this government allows sufficient time for this committee to be able to examine the access card.

I have already heard murmurings from the government backbench about this. It is necessary and desirable for this committee to have sufficient time to call for submissions, deal with those submissions and properly hold hearings through the committee process—it is not desirable that this government shorten the time frame to such an extent and use its numbers to ram this through. It is inappropriate and wrong of the government to take this tack on such an important card. It is clear that this is the type of bill that requires scrutiny, and this government should be ashamed that it is taking this course. The minister has allowed me a short time only to put this point; I would otherwise take a lot longer. On that basis, I will reserve my comments for another opportunity.