Joe Ludwig (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Manager of Government Business in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

In any event, I did not want to start an argument with respect to that. The short answer is that we are maintaining it in the way that it was structured in the 1996 legislation where, yes, it had freedom of association provisions and it had, in addition to that, the ability to have a conscientious objection. So both of those provisions are there. If you see some difficulty with them I am not sure I could persuade the advisers to remove the conscientious objection provisions on the basis of the argument you put forward but I am willing to give it a go.

Question put:

That the amendments (Senator Bob Brown’s) be agreed to.