Mitch Fifield (Victoria, Liberal Party, Manager of Opposition Business in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

I acknowledge that the amendment that the government moved and was passed in the House did go some way towards addressing the recommendation of the Senate committee, but I want to follow up on what the parliamentary secretary was saying before. A lay person reading the amended legislation would see that the chief executive has great powers of compulsion. I appreciate that the way a mechanism of this sort operates in reality may not be as blunt as it appears in the legislation. Are you saying that, if an individual elects not to pursue action themselves or they do nothing, by so doing they have in fact elected to subrogate their responsibility to the CEO? Although it may look in black and white as though the chief executive is directing that something happen, in fact the way it will operate in practice is that the individual is in effect electing to make a choice and to subrogate some of their rights to the CEO.