Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern Australia) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you for that. But, if it is good for the goose, it is good for the gander. If you need the advice of this expert committee—and I think it is a good idea—in one instance, why do you not if you are going to revoke it? The same considerations might apply. In a circumstance which I cannot quite think of at the moment, revocation might be attributed to what you referred to as a ‘politically influenced decision’. Were that the case, the same would apply.

We should bear in mind that this legislation does not come in for another 19 months—that is, until 1 July 2011, as I understand it. I acknowledge that this is not going to determine my decision on how I vote, and I am sure that it will not in the end determine Australian support for or opposition to the legislation, but it might just support the Australian majority view that we are perhaps rushing into this. I know that the minister will say that we have been talking about this for 10 years, two years or 18 months—I think that she said since March this year—but these quite substantial and on the whole very beneficial amendments that the government has, kicking and screaming, agreed to need some scrutiny, not scrutiny on the overall impact but scrutiny on the things that I am raising with the chamber at the moment. It seems contradictory. Therefore, I wonder why we are being asked to sit night and day to rush this through, bearing in mind that it will not take effect until 19 months from today.

Minister, I would appreciate your response to the technical question but also your comment on why it is essential to do this now when there are these little things to work through—and this is one that I happened to come across. I am only looking at the explanatory memorandum. I followed it through in the legislation, but that did not give me much help. It takes time to clarify these things. I hope that are able to work these things out. Perhaps if I sit down the minister can answer (a) the technical question that I raised and then (b) why it would not be appropriate for us to spend a bit more time going through these relatively minor issues. But they are things that relate to the operation of the scheme—which, once it is introduced in 19 months time, we need to have schmick and down pat. We do not want complaints in 19 months time with those affected saying: ‘Hey, the minister has revoked this determination without getting the advice of the domestic offsets integrity committee. Why did she do that? She had to get advice from this expert committee when she introduced it and when she amended it. We might be happy with it the way it is, but now she is going to revoke it and she is not getting the advice of this committee.’ It seems an inconsistency. Perhaps it is not. Perhaps the minister will be able to wave it away. But it causes me to worry that the actual implementation by the government of the day needs to be as good and smooth as it can be. This sort of inconsistency, from my experience, would make that difficult.