Nick Sherry (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Superannuation and Corporate Law) Share this | Hansard source

The government will not be supporting these amendments. It is a subject which does warrant proper consideration. The government is firmly committed to the Racial Discrimination Act and will not make any laws which are inconsistent with the principles of that act. That is why we have carefully crafted the bill we are currently considering to ensure there are no new provisions which exclude the operation of the Racial Discrimination Act, and the new R18 measures we were debating earlier were designed as a special measure.

The amendment moved by the Australian Greens seeks to amend the original racial discrimination provisions enacted by the previous government—cross-amend, effectively—across the whole package of Northern Territory emergency response laws. That goes well beyond the limited range of issues we are considering in this bill, and it enters into a much broader discussion which warrants its own consideration and debate.

The independent review board specifically considered the issue of the application of the Racial Discrimination Act in the review of the emergency response measures. The government takes the view that the NTER will not achieve robust long-term outcomes if measures do not conform to the Racial Discrimination Act. I repeat: this particular bill contains no new provisions that exclude the operation of the Racial Discrimination Act. This bill is not the place for that wider consideration. Legislative amendments to bring existing NTER legislation within the scope of the Racial Discrimination Act, as I have already indicated on a number of occasions, will be introduced in the spring parliamentary session next year. Therefore, the government does not agree with these amendments.