Claire Moore (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Women) Share this | Hansard source

In the short time I have to speak, I will carry on with the concerns that we on this side of the House have about this bill. The Commonwealth Inscribed Stock Amendment Bill 2013 has had a great deal of media coverage over the last couple of weeks, and there has been language used in the debate in the media—not yet in this place—which would not be considered reasonable in any sense. I noted with interest a media interview last night, which I saw this morning, where the Prime Minister, Mr Abbott, refused to have, and questioned, 'loaded language' being used in a debate. If there has been loaded language used recently about any issue, it certainly has been around this particular bill. When there have been accusations that the opposition are behaving in a way that is similar to the Tea Party in the US, that can only be seen as completely loaded language.

In terms of our position—and that will be explained more fully when our shadow minister talks about the concerns that we have about it—what we are saying in this process for this bill is that there needs to be constant scrutiny by the parliament of any request to raise our debt ceiling. I think that is an agreed principle in our parliament—that we do have scrutiny. What we are saying on this side of the House is that there is no problem with looking at raising the debt ceiling. What we are saying is that the quantum by which the government are proposing, in their first action in parliament, to raise this debt ceiling is not commensurate with the need. We believe that there needs to be a reasoned approach to looking at what the debt situation is, looking at what the demands by our parliament are, and then, as required, bringing the debate back into the parliament, justifying the need for the rises and having effective scrutiny of the rationale that is brought forward. We do not believe that this is the case with this bill. We do not object to the rising of the debt amount and we certainly do not object to having the process debated in the parliament, but we believe that it should be at a lower level. In terms of the process, I know that we will be moving an amendment, but it is important that the parliament has an understanding of what is going on at any time.