Richard Colbeck (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Agriculture) Share this | Hansard source

a hallmark—that is a better word; thank you, Senator McKenzie—of their administration. And when you have organisations such as the then Cyberspace Law and Policy Centre of the University of New South Wales Faculty of Law saying that they had around 10 working hours to collaborate on, draft and finalise a submission on a matter of this level of moment, I would have thought that it would be obvious that that was inadequate consultation. When you have a number of organisations, including the Australian Privacy Foundation, expressing concern around the consultation on and the preparation of the legislation that was presented to the parliament last year, I would have thought that that would have been an obvious indicator that there were concerns around its preparation. I would have thought that that would have been obvious, given the concerns that were raised and what I believe was the general inadequacy in the addressing of those concerns.

Even in the government's Senate committee report from last year, I do not believe they genuinely addressed the concerns that were raised by people who submitted to that inquiry. Even as an opposition, if they had genuinely wanted to put some framework like this into the public arena, there should have been a full and open and proper consultative process through which you would derive the legislation. You would make sure that the inadequacies that were raised in the previous incarnation of the legislation were given a proper airing, so that those who expressed concern previously would have the opportunity to have those concerns addressed.

I note the concerns around the definitions in the document. Experience would show any legislator that getting the correct terms and definitions in place may have a profound and lasting impact, and getting them wrong may have a bigger and a detrimental impact. It is absolutely incumbent on us all to do the work to ensure those things are right. We have to do that, particularly in relation to matters of privacy. They can have long-lasting and, in many cases, completely unconsidered and negative impacts on the broader community.

The opposition brought this piece of legislation to the parliament without going through due process when it was initially introduced and they rushed it through a Senate inquiry in a short period of time—which, as I said before, was a hallmark of the way that they operated previously. Those are genuine reasons for the government at this point in time not to support this bill.

You would have thought that they would have learnt, as I said earlier. They brought on a piece of biosecurity legislation which would impact across all of Australia and they proposed to give the parliament one day to conduct a Senate inquiry. On that occasion, we were fortunate in that enough members of this chamber said that one day to consider the biosecurity legislation for the entire country was not enough. But obviously, as to the bill we are talking about now, that leeway was not given to the parliament. That is disappointing. There were so many times when the then government used their numbers in this place to ram through pieces of legislation, with short Senate inquiries that did not provide adequate consultation but had effects down the track—think the mining tax, think pink batts, think school halls; you can line them all up.