Rachel Siewert (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

The government use the word ‘flexible’. To me, and I suspect to the broader community, ‘flexible’ means they will be flexible with the time lines; flexible about whether the review is independent, so that the government can decide who does the review; flexible about who is consulted—because we already understand the government’s definition of ‘consultation’ from the discussion last night; flexible about when the report is released; flexible about the benchmarks; flexible about whether the government will tell anybody they are doing it; flexible about what the government will look at; and flexible about what they will tell us, especially after they have done it. The government, in other words, want total control over how this legislation is reviewed. It is okay for the minister to shake his head, but that is what we interpret them to mean by ‘flexible’.

If the government were genuine about having a publicly available review, they would put it in the act. Not having it in the act guarantees that the government will call all the shots. They will decide when they want to do it—and, if the time line leaks a bit, they will say: ‘That’s okay because we do not have to meet any legislative requirement. We can decide who is going to do it; it does not have to be independent. We can decide what the terms of reference are. It does not have to be accountable to parliament, because it is not in the act. We can decide whether we are going to publicly release it, and we can decide who we are going to consult.’

As I said, we know what their definition of consultation is. It is: ‘We will tell people after the fact. We will go around and talk to people and we will make a decision. We then will not ask them about whether that decision is right or whether that decision is what they want.’ That is what the government did with this legislation: they went around and talked to people about general issues and got hold of and used as an excuse the Little children are sacred report to implement a whole lot of actions that were not recommended in the report.

By the way, the recommendation in the report does not say this is an emergency situation; it says it is of ‘urgent national significance’, which is entirely different to ‘emergency response’—the government decided that. They then did not go and consult with anybody about the plan they came up with, because they think they know best. Now they are telling people what they are doing, which is very different to consulting. Is that the definition of consultation they are going to have when they carry out the review?

The Australian public is cynical about this. This needs to be in the legislation. If the government were genuine about a review, they would put it in the legislation so that they could be seen to be doing the right thing. They are not. They want flexibility, which means they want total control. They want flexibility about the terms of reference, about how it will be done, when it will be done and about what they will tell the community. That is not good enough. Put it in the act.

Question put:

That the amendment (Senator Bartlett’s) be agreed to.