Doug Cameron (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Human Services) Share this | Hansard source

I want to be clear about this. If we are talking about certainty and we are talking about having certainty for investment, what you have just outlined is a process that provides no certainty. If the commission finds a problem with the agreement then the whole process commences again and you have another six months. If at the end of that six months we still have a problem with the commission not accepting the agreement, it could run again for six months. This is a big problem. That is why we took the view, consistent with the panel, that there should be a process of arbitration introduced into this whole agreement-making process.

You have an open-ended issue that you have not dealt with, and we have an issue that would bring it to some finality in a short period of time after the six months. My view is that the longer we go tonight, the more concern there is in relation to the issue of certainty for projects, given what you have just indicated to the parliament. Would it not be better to adopt an arbitration process as outlined by Labor in its amendments?