Richard Colbeck (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Hansard source

I indicate that the opposition will not be supporting this particular amendment. It gives a clear demonstration of the problem that the government has got itself into with this bill, whereby the regulations are not fully available yet and so nobody really understands the fundamentals of how a breach of the act might occur. Hence we see the Greens again trying to expand the operations of the legislation versus what might occur in the regulations—which the minister has said are supposed to be available shortly and some of which are already available.

The fundamental difference between the European system, the FLEGT system, and what is being proposed here in Australia is that the European system is in fact a voluntary process, where countries make nation-to-nation arrangements that deal with the specifics of the relationships between the two countries. This is a catch-all piece of legislation that deals with everything in one hit. So there is a good reason to have a difference in the way that the definitions are put together in this context, because we are dealing with a number of pieces of legislation and a number of arrangements in a number of countries. For example, the land tenure issues in an individual country will be very different in one place to another place. In the EU circumstance, given that it is a voluntary process and those arrangements are dealt with under the umbrella of the FLEGT system on a nation-to-nation basis, there is a very good reason to have a process where you might be more specific in the way that you deal with it.

In this circumstance, the government is again reinforcing the reasons that the coalition is concerned about the way that this bill is being brought on. The fact is that we wanted the opportunity to be able to use the Senate process to scrutinise the regulations prior to the bill being enacted, so that we could make sure that these sorts of problems did not occur and we could cover off with them as part of the Senate process. Whether or not that occurs, I am not sure. I am not whether the minister is going to have them ready by 24 December—which was his commitment to Mr Abbott in the letter he wrote to him. I would hope that would be the case. One of the things that the coalition wanted to see was that the Senate had the opportunity to look at the regulations prior to the bill being enacted and the high-level effects coming into effect under the legislation. But, in this context, the opposition will not be supporting this particular amendment, amendment (4) on sheet 7202.

Question negatived.