Natasha Stott Despoja (SA, Australian Democrats) Share this | Hansard source

I rise also to endorse the comments of the Democrats Whip, Senator Bartlett, in relation to this debate. There are a couple of key issues here. It is not only the alacrity with which we are dealing with this important, arguably urgent—certainly from the government’s perspective—legislation. This morning the office of the Attorney-General kindly organised and offered my office a briefing. That is still relatively short notice, because we are dealing with a piece of legislation that is being introduced and exempted from the cut-off and that will probably be debated today. The first that my office was aware of this legislation was this morning. The office of the Leader of the Australian Democrats, Senator Allison, was aware at around eight o’clock last night. I believe that a statement of reasons was tabled in this place yesterday, and I acknowledge that, but, regardless of this timeframe, I think the chamber can agree that this is a very fast process.

Now, that would be okay on perhaps two grounds: (1) if urgency is put forward and accepted or (2) if the complex or other nature of a piece of legislation is considered. With the benefit only now of a briefing, a cursory look suggests that this bill is quite controversial and has huge legal implications—and not just for cases that may or may not be underway. It also deals with a fundamentally controversial and debatable principle in this place, certainly from the perspective of the Australian Democrats: the issue of retrospectivity generally and retrospectivity specifically in relation to criminal law. We have put on record many times in this place our concerns with and, in fact, our down-right objection to retrospectivity in legislation. We have often considered it also a fundamental human right to not be subject to retrospective criminal sanctions. That is what, on my understanding, this legislation is about.

When we are talking about these broad ranging, fundamental and complex concepts, there is a very strong argument that the parliament take some time to analyse and scrutinise this legislation. For me, that means not being informed yesterday, or indeed this morning, and then only now having a debate about exempting a bill from the cut-off provision—I say ‘debate’, but so far there have been two speakers in this debate concerning the exemption, and they are myself and Senator Bartlett. I am not sure what the official position is of the opposition but I think, like us, they are still getting their heads around what is quite a controversial piece of legislation. But when I look on the Notice Paper it is the third bill. Essentially, we will be debating this legislation today. I know that it has been put forward in the debate that that has occurred previously through the minister—certainly through Senator Abetz—and more generally and publicly by the government, that there is the principle of the Senate mandate, the dominance of this place, that the numbers are being used wisely and that it is about putting forward a policy agenda. This is not putting forward a policy agenda. This is ramming through legislation. We are back in sausage factory mode and it is unacceptable. It may be that we are all wrapping up because we have an election that is about to take place—