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

At the request of Senator Wong, I move:

(1) That the following matter be referred to the Education and Employment References Committee for inquiry and report by the last sitting day in March 2014:

The provisions of the Fair Work (Registered Organisations) Amendment Bill 2013, with particular reference to:

(a) the potential impact of the amendments to interfere with the ongoing operation of registered organisations in Australia; and

(b) the potential of the amendments to impede the ability of employees of registered organisations to carry out their duties.

(2) That for the avoidance of doubt, standing order 115(3) applies to the consideration of the Fair Work (Registered Organisations) Amendment Bill 2013 and any related bills.

We heard earlier, when we asked for this motion to be heard in an earlier part of the debate, that it was denied formality. Now we have the chance to talk more fully about the reasons we have decided we want to refer this particular bill to a references committee: to have more discussion and more consideration. One of the key reasons was that this, along with a number of other key pieces of legislation, was referred at the end of the first sitting of parliament; then we went through a week of Senate estimates. Then we had one week in which this committee had the chance to have a public hearing for one day. Funnily enough, a whole range of these important pieces of legislation, which we first saw in that first sitting of parliament—to be fair, this bill has been working around for a while, but we first saw it absolutely in front of us in the first sitting—all had completion dates of 2 December. There is only one reason for that: it was the intent of the government, which I have to admit they did not hide, to make sure that all these pieces of legislation could come back and be forced through the parliament in these two weeks of sittings. We do not believe that this bill should be able to be rushed through in that way.