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

We have just seen, with that motion, a reversal of a decision that was made by this chamber only this week about having an inquiry with a longer reporting date on a significant issue in this year's budget. This is unprecedented for the Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee. I have gone back and checked the records, and at no stage have we had a decision to consider a bill, one that saves billions of dollars for the government and affects hundreds of thousands of our pensioners, without having an inquiry and allowing people to provide evidence to our committee. Never before—I take that back. In the last 15 years, at no stage has the community affairs committee ever done an inquiry of this nature based only on the papers.

Mr Deputy President, we are disappointed about this decision. We will take the argument up in the debate next week. But it is a real change for the community affairs committee to be rushed into such a process on such an important piece of legislation. We know the deal has been made; the government and the Greens have done a deal on that—