Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for the Murray Darling Basin) Share this | Hansard source

The opposition we will be opposing these amendments. Senator Ludlam has made some reference to the overall tone of the debate tonight and the nature of discussion around previous amendments and some of the opposition’s other amendments. They have been well canvassed. He understands as well as any of us that we would have rather seen a full and rigorous ACCC assessment, as I have said on many occasions already.

With regard to these particular amendments, we believe that, in a similar vein to the previous amendments, to some extent they seek to engage the public more. They seek to provide a longer process and they are very much process driven, but they do not fundamentally change the capacity of the ACCC to make independent decisions free of the government’s interference. In particular, I note in amendment (8) that there is further capacity, even in a Greens amendment, for the minister to set out purposes and intervene to some extent. This is, I think, a case where the Greens, in signing up to a deal with the government, have in many ways given up on many of the things that they so often talk about in this place and given up on ensuring that ministers are held to account and independent statutory bodies are genuinely independent and able to operate of their own accord. This is not a case where the Greens are holding true to the types of things that they espouse so often. So often we hear, particularly from their leader, sanctimonious comments about the need in this place for us to be—