Bridget McKenzie (Victoria, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

It gives me great pleasure to rise tonight to speak on the Safety, Rehabilitation and Compensation Legislation Amendment (Exit Arrangements) Bill 2015. Unfortunately, I do not think I will get to complete my contribution, but I am really looking forward to the full 20—full bottle—on this particular piece of legislation when we next have it before us. I am chair of the committee that Senator Lines is deputy chair of. I sat in my office and listened to the tirade from Senator Lines, and I am looking forward to correcting so many of the false assumptions that she put on the Hansard, as if they were somehow fact—as if somehow because she says them they must be true. She complains that the committee did not undergo a full and transparent assessment of the submissions. The inquiry was conducted under the usual practice of the Senate. Public submissions were sought, and we got not hundreds, not thousands but four submissions—from, as we like to say in the game, 'usual suspects'. We had the ACTU, the ETU, my own state government of Victoria, and the Department of Education—so, four submissions. With the workload that the current Senate committee is under—and it is not just my own committee; this is the case right across the Senate at the moment, thanks to the Greens' inquiries and thanks to the numerous reference committee inquiries from those opposite and indeed from the scrutiny of bills process, which is referring so much of the government's legislative agenda, which it has a mandate to deliver, off to committee in a tactic to delay us delivering on election promise after election promise for the Australian people—in that deliberate tactic by those opposite to use those Senate committees, there is an enormous burden. If those opposite want to consider the workers of Australia, then they need to actually consider the committee secretariats and the workload that they are currently under. So, when we get four submissions saying what we all knew they would say—

Debate interrupted.