Kerry O'Brien (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Primary Industries, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Hansard source

It has come to this. The government pursues the ramming through of the Wheat Marketing Amendment Bill 2007 within a week of its introduction, without adequate consultation with growers or their representatives and without an opportunity for the parliament to examine it through a committee which would have the time to test the various aspects of the legislation and consult with growers and grower organisations, come to a view and make a recommendation to this place to deal with any potential flaws in the legislation and any potential unintended consequences. Usually, when the government rams legislation through the parliament with this haste, we find that we need to come back and revisit it because the government usually gets it wrong in some respect. The drafting usually does not encompass the knowledge that the industry has of itself, because, of necessity, the draftsperson is a specialist in drafting, not a specialist in the industry concerned.

And, as we have seen, not only has the legislation only been introduced a week ago but it has already been amended in the House of Representatives. So much for the control of the subject by the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry. After all of the disputes in the coalition party room, after all of the problems that existed there, one would have thought that the minister—having allegedly, with the assistance of the Prime Minister, thrashed the matter out—could have got it right when he produced the legislation for the House of Representatives. But, no, it had to be amended in the House of Representatives before it came here. Indeed, as far as Labor is concerned, it is still an inadequate legislative approach to the wheat industry.

This is a government that is regularly failing the wheat industry. It is a serial failure with regard to the wheat industry. The first failure was of course—