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

I move the following amendment to Senator Brown’s proposed amendment:

Paragraph (a), Omit “October”, substituting “September”.

Omit Paragraph (b).

Subparagraph (c)(ii), omit:

“is in accordance with the wishes of the Combined Aboriginal Organisations of the Northern Territory and the New South Wales Aboriginal Council”.

I do not want to hold up the chamber but I think I need to put on record the reasons. The amendment moved by Senator Brown would defer the bill to the first day of sitting in October. I do not believe, and the Democrats do not believe, that that is desirable. The advertisement in the newspaper today, promoting views of Aboriginal organisations, called for the legislation to be deferred until September. There is quite a possibility that we will not be sitting in October because of an election but there is no reason why we should not be sitting in September to consider it. The Democrats do not believe that we need to allow a redoing of the entire second reading debate, valuable though it was. We also believe that a further amendment singling out any individual organisations is not necessary. We want to consider the views of everybody, not just particular groups. The Democrats have made it clear throughout this debate that we are trying to engage constructively with the legislation. We have significant problems with the content of the legislation. We will vote for the second reading stage because we support the stated intent and we are doing everything possible to constructively engage with the process.

As many people across the spectrum have said, there needs to be more listening and more improvement of this legislation, and that is what the committee stage is for. The Democrats amendment would enable us to do that consideration adequately by reconsidering the legislation on the first sitting day in September. That would still ensure that it was passed at that time, ideally in an amended form, but it would not run the risk of it not being passed at all because an election was called before the first sitting day in October. Frankly, I think that if we had the second reading debate all over again we would be at risk of being accused of deliberately holding it up. That attack from some people, saying that any attempt to properly consider this legislation and consider amendments is just deliberately trying to stop it, is false, certainly with regard to the Democrats’ approach. We are trying to engage constructively with it, but if we put it off until October and have the second reading debate all over again it would give some validity to the criticism that it is a delaying tactic.

I do not want to delay action. I just want to make sure that that action is effective. Rushing through without properly scrutinising the legislation, without properly understanding what we are doing and without listening to the people who have the expertise and will be directly affected makes it much more likely that the action will not be effective. So we do not want to rush into this without having a full understanding of the issue and without properly consulting and hearing from the expertise that we have not had the opportunity to hear to date. But we also do not want to defer it for a prolonged period of time. We would like to engage with it in an informed way and proceed with it as soon as possible.

I think that the Democrats amendment that I have moved does that in a more balanced way than Senator Brown’s amendment, with respect, and I take this opportunity to indicate the reasons why the Democrats will vote in support of the second reading. We believe that it is worth making every attempt to engage constructively with the stated intent of properly assisting Aboriginal people in the Territory with regard to family violence and child protection. But clearly we would be doing so in the hope that there would be significant amendments made in the committee stage. That will be a big test of whether the government is prepared to listen to some of the suggestions that are put forward and, indeed, some of the comments that have been made by many in the wider community, including Indigenous leaders across the spectrum, who have called on the government to not show the intransigence towards improvements that they have accused others of showing by raising concerns.