Scott Ludlam (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I just have one or two questions to follow up and then I am happy to commit this amendment; I am happy to move on through the running sheet. Attorney, perhaps you could explain to us why you think it is necessary to have potentially six or eight months delay between deciding to add a new service provider or a new content of metadata to be captured. This extraordinary delay—40 sitting days—could, I think you would agree, go for seven or eight months, depending on the sitting schedule at the time.

We both accept the fact—I am not going to offer any contention—that technology changes and there will be new services designed and new categories of material. You see those coming. You have it identified that it needs to be brought into the scope of the bill. You bring forward a relatively uncontroversial amendment and then the parliament signs it off. Why this extraordinary eight months delay? Why has this been crafted in the bill as, effectively, an executive decision which the parliament is to catch up with months later. Why not do it using the ordinary legislative process?