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

There are a couple of issues here. I appreciate the fact that the minister has to take things on notice—and it is certainly preferable that he does that rather than not answer or give us an incomplete or misleading answer—but it goes back to the core problem we have here. As was mentioned earlier today in this chamber, Senator Abetz—I appreciate that it was not Senator Scullion—has been out there, around the media, slagging off the Senate and saying that we are deliberately dragging out this debate, deliberately filibustering, deliberately trying to hold it up. I do not think that anything the Democrats could have done would have made it clearer that we are not trying to hold this up. But this is what happens when you do not let the Senate have a proper Senate committee hearing. You have to ask these questions here in the chamber because there is no other way to get the details on the record. It is not just for us to make an informed decision in our vote, although that is important; it is for the community. It is just not good enough to pass laws and say, ‘We’re still working this stuff out.’ You cannot continue to use the excuse that it is an emergency to keep doing that. Frankly, it just reinforces the reason why the Democrats consistently argue that this bill should be brought back in the first sitting week in September—when we will be sitting, when an election will not have been called and when we will have a clear idea of what all this stuff means. Basically, as has just been indicated, these things are still being worked out. The powers are far reaching, and there are more far-reaching areas than this in the legislation, but certainly this in itself has its own significance in the imposition it puts on people. It is not a matter of arguing about the intent; it is a matter of talking about the implementation and the consequences.

Having made that comment, the question I would like to ask is with regard to the auditing of publicly funded computers under section 29 of part 3, where people responsible for a publicly funded computer must ensure that the computer is audited twice a year, on 31 May and 30 November, and on any other day determined by the minister—so, potentially more than twice a year. Is the cost of conducting that audit going to be worn by the body that has the publicly funded computer? Senator Siewert asked a question earlier about the definition of ‘publicly funded computer’, which is any computer owned by an organisation that is publicly funded. So it is not actually that the computer is bought with public funds but that the organisation that owns the computer is publicly funded in some way. Of course that means non-government organisations, some of whom are already active in these communities, bodies like Oxfam and Mission Australia and, I am sure, others. Are they going to have to bear the cost of auditing these computers? To use the example that was given in a slightly different context yesterday or the day before by Senator Crossin of people who are taking computers—laptops and the like—in and out of communities, is there any requirement for them to be audited or checked, or is it just those computers that are in the communities on those particular audit days? If that is the case, does that mean that as long as the computer is not present in the relevant place on that day then it is not going to be subjected to an audit?