Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

I make no reflection but, just in case Senator Fielding is listening, his presence in the chamber would be helpful in relation to my consideration of this raft of 44 separate items. I can indicate that we in the opposition support amendments (10), (11), (12), (13), (14), (15), (16), (30), (32), (33), (35) and (44). I think it has already been indicated that Senator Xenophon has a certain attitude in relation to all the amendments. Therefore I would not seek to delay the chamber for too long, in explaining why the opposition has certain views on other of the amendments, if Senator Fielding were to be so minded as Senator Xenophon. But, whilst we give him the opportunity to return to the chamber—and I fully accept that there would be reasons why he had to leave the chamber, so that is not a reflection on him at all—I will say this to any judicial officer in this country in the event that they ever have to interpret item 10 of the amendments. These days, I understand, judicial officers or the judiciary cast far and wide to assist them in interpretation, but what I would invite them not to do is to go to Senate practice to determine how to interpret the term ‘directly relevant’. In sessional orders we now have the term ‘directly relevant’, which ministers are required to be during question time. If judicial officers were to see the practice in the Senate and say, ‘Yep, this is how we get to understand what “directly relevant” means,’ I think it would give very wide powers in relation to this particular clause. So, in the event any judge, in trying to determine how to interpret this, happens to read the Hansard, I would dissuade him or her from looking at Senate practice in relation to this.

It looks as though we will not have the presence of Senator Fielding, as I was expecting, so I will briefly say that, whilst we as a government—and I remember taking a certain piece of legislation through this chamber—made special amendments and provisions for the TCF sector, and we believe that it is a special sector with special requirements, we do believe, on balance, that many of the extra provisions in relation to right of entry et cetera go beyond that which we would find acceptable. We believe that the right-of-entry restrictions in relation to the general framework are appropriate and we do not support these extra powers. We do understand the difficult and different circumstances in the TCF outworkers section. Coalition committee members had certain recommendations and submissions put to us from those engaged in that sector and they did make a good and powerful case. Yet I do say that, on balance, we are minded not to support all those other changes that were not included in the list of those that I indicated we support. The reason I read out the list of those that we support is that that is a substantially shorter list, but we would not seek to delay the chamber or divide on it unless there was an indication that Senator Fielding was minded to support us in that.