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

I may not go that far. We have seen a range of amendments to this area of native title. I have built an argument around certainty for stakeholders, certainty for those who want to engage in the process and certainty that appeal systems are in place—that certainty should come out of the native title system. In addition, Labor has been seeking a much speedier outcome all up, because to date the government has not demonstrated an ability to ensure this process moves smoothly, cleanly and without technical problems, slow-downs and a range of other things. The government has not been able to ensure that in the native title area agreements are made and we move forward. The government has now set in train a process where I am not confident, and Labor is not confident, that you will find that this area is left for the native title holders—those people who hold the customs and laws of Indigenous people in their hands—so that they are able to seek to deal with their determinations and deal with their land in accordance with the native title legislation.

The government have addressed this legislation overall in a technical sense, but I think sometimes it takes more than that to ensure that this process works—and works effectively. The government are quite clearly not going to answer the questions that I asked earlier today. They are not going to provide the certainty that the stakeholders have asked for. The answer that the government provided earlier was that they will bring forward regulations—and that is not surprising. It is not surprising for the government to bring forward regulations after the bill has been moved, passed and gone on to be utilised.

It is not surprising, but when will that happen? Will those regulations deal with all of the matters that the Labor Party has raised? That is the germane issue that the government has failed to answer. We are yet to see what the regulations will do. True, they may be disallowable instruments, and we will have an opportunity to look at those again, but in that process we will not have an opportunity to ask questions in the committee stage, where the government has the onus on it to provide certainty for stakeholders. The government should take the opportunity during this committee stage to demonstrate that it is serious about improving the system, that it is serious about ensuring that all the stakeholders get a fair deal out of this and that the technical amendments go to ensuring that outcome. The government should ensure that it speeds up the process because no stakeholders think that the current progress has been fair for all parties—in fact, I do not think even the government thinks that.

Those are the complaints I make—and I make them seriously—not only about the way the government has addressed this amendment but more broadly about the overall process. It is not sufficient in this area for the government to deal with this process the way it has. If you look at the way the government did nothing for quite some time and hid behind the line that the system would work, you will see that it was not until the numbers built up to 600-odd outstanding cases that the government finally acted. It did not act in a comprehensive way, but it did act. We will now wait to see how it will follow through. We now find that there are technical amendments and more technical amendments that go to addressing it.

As I said during my earlier contribution to the second reading debate on the bill as well as in the consideration of it earlier this evening, Labor will support this legislation. However, I am suspending judgement on how it will ensure that the issues that I have raised are addressed—that we will end up with a speedier process and get certainty for the stakeholders. The stakeholders will benefit all round; it is beneficial legislation, but it is incumbent upon the government to make sure that that is the outcome of it.

Before I depart from this area, I reiterate the value of the committee process. What we heard earlier today was a government denying the Senate the opportunity to have a committee inquiry into this area of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander issues. It said that there was no requirement for a committee inquiry—it rejected the committee process, even a short one for that matter—to deal with this legislation because it wanted the legislation dealt with urgently. I do not think the reasons for urgency that were outlined by the government this morning stack up.

The government has the numbers in this place, so when it decides to allow the committee process to work, it will find that it can pick up recommendations that will improve the overall ability of the bill to achieve its purpose. When the government acts in the way that it did this morning, it denies itself the opportunity to achieve its objectives, which are to ensure that stakeholders and other parties to the legislation—those who have to work under it—have effective legislation, that the legislation will work and that it will not have to be brought back into the parliament for further technical amendments. With those short words—