Stephen Conroy (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Government in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

Senator Brown, I think you do the Prime Minister an injustice. I do not believe he treats this glibly or lightly. If you read his contribution in the Monthly Magazine I think you will see he has a deep commitment to wanting to address these issues at an international level and at the domestic level. I think you do him an injustice. I cannot agree with you that, because he has not written back to you, it means he is not interested in your views. I assure you that you should not take it personally.

The point I was making about this amendment not going far enough is that it is poorly targeted, because you are not targeting the people who created the problem; you are targeting the victims. When I say that it does not go far enough, it does not go far enough because you are actually not addressing the very people who deserve to be addressed. This is an important and substantive issue and it deserves to address the broader corporate sector and not just be amendments. I am not being pejorative when I say this: you said, ‘We don’t just want to move amendments.’ We are offering you the opportunity to do much more than that: to be part of a process that will deliver a substantive policy and not just be an amendment. As I say, I am not being pejorative when I say that; I am responding to how you described it. You do have more ideas and you have got a broader agenda than simply this amendment. The best way to progress that broader agenda and those broader ideas is to work with Allan Fels, to work with the Productivity Commission so that we actually address those that deserve to be dealt with.

As you would be aware from my past responsibilities, I have put forward many, many suggestions about how to curb corporate excess. I have a range of ideas that I would like also to see incorporated by the Productivity Commission and the government’s response to this disgraceful behaviour. I would say to you, though, Senator Brown, that I have never thought of you as jaded. You have been in the chamber a lot longer than me. I know that you have moved many amendments over many years. It is a bit like Senator Murray, who I think kept a tally of all the times he moved one particular amendment and was defeated. He was never jaded, either. I think you do yourself a disservice to suggest that you are jaded by wanting to pursue this policy agenda. I myself pursued it for over six years—in fact, before that: I was active before I was even on the front bench.