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

I rise to continue my contribution to the debate on the Safety, Rehabilitation and Compensation Legislation Amendment (Exit Arrangements) Bill 2015. As I was saying last night, I am Chair of the Education and Employment Committee, which was tasked to produce a report on this legislation. Senator Lines made assertions last night about the lack of consultation in the development of this piece of legislation, and, contrary to the picture she attempted to paint of the committee's attempts to shut down public discussion about it, I stand here before the Senate as the chair of that committee to reject those assertions. We did indeed, as I said last night, receive four submissions. We promoted the inquiry in the usual way that we do in Senate committees—online, in newspapers, and we sent letters to various stakeholders such as unions, businesses, state governments and the like. We got four submissions back—one from the Department of Employment, there are no worries there; one from the ACTU; one from the ETU; and one from the CFMEU-controlled Victorian government. When the secretariat read those submissions they advised the committee that the report be done on the papers. I believe in transparency, I believe in a committee process that allows all senators to have their say and for stakeholders in the community to have their say, but in the interests of time and because of the fact that there were only three submissions, we did actually do the report on the papers without having to go through a public hearing.

I stressed to senators in the committee that we do have a process of questions on notice when we are doing a report into legislation, which for those listening to this fascinating debate today is a process whereby any senator from any political persuasion has the right to submit questions to those stakeholders that have submitted to an inquiry—whether it be the department, the ACTU, the ETU or the Victorian government—to flesh out in a little more detail anything about their written submissions that a senator thinks might be appropriate to bring to the public debate. After I listened to Senator Lines yesterday, I was quite concerned that she felt she had not had the chance, I think the words she used were, to delve a little more deeply into the written submissions and pull out some more conversations.