Ian Campbell (WA, Liberal Party, Minister for Human Services) Share this | Hansard source

The great thing is that my colleagues whom Senate Lundy quotes are all supporting the legislation that is going before the Senate and the Labor Party are saying that they will not support it. Labor are all over the place. Here is a measure to save billions of dollars in welfare fraud. We want to ensure that we have a strong economy and you cannot have a strong economy if you have welfare cheats and Medicare fraudsters ripping off the system. Labor honestly said last night, ‘Let’s just put the billion dollars we will spend on the smartcard in the bank and collect the interest.’ We know what Labor does when it comes to putting money in the bank and collecting interest: they take money out of the bank and then pay the bank interest—billions and billions of dollars. We want to stop the welfare fraud.

In terms of the Senate Finance and Public Administration Committee inquiry and the process of bringing the smartcard to the Australian people, we have had the legislation out for public consultation for nearly two months now and we have referred it to the Senate committee for just under six weeks. I recall how things were when this rabble on the other side were in power. Let us look at, as Senator Watson will remember, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission legislation. They brought legislation to set up the entire financial services regulation of Australia in here on the Tuesday, referred it to a committee on the Wednesday and had it passed on the Thursday.

We have put this new smartcard out for public consultation. We have set up an independent committee under Professor Allan Fels to make sure that people who want to have a say about it can have a say about it. We have had the legislation out there for months so that people can look at it. We have referred it to a Senate committee for a six-week inquiry. Quite frankly, if a Senate committee cannot look at a relatively simple piece of legislation like the smartcard legislation for a period of six weeks, it is a reflection on the people on the other side who are on that committee. I suggest that they put in the same effort and the same work to ensure—