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

We support the amended motion before the chamber. There is a longstanding norm in this place of support for any senator who wants to refer any bill to a committee for scrutiny. It is important that senators have the right to do that and that they get the support of this place to do that. In fact, that is doing our job. We note that there are some significant time frame urgencies in some elements of the bill, and that is why we are supporting the truncated time for review. There is also an issue around the fact that anyone who brings in such a compendium of issues in one piece of legislation makes it very difficult for us in this place to do our job. I think there are at least eight different elements of this bill, which means that to have any effective scrutiny is very difficult, particularly when there are time frames involved. There is also the need to ensure that the appropriate part of this legislation is referred to the appropriate committee, and that has led to the need to have an amended motion put before us, because there are now three committees that need to work to ensure that the issues are covered. On that basis, we support the referral and we just make a note about our concerns about this form of process in trying to do such a large piece of legislation in one go.