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

The opposition will not be supporting this amendment from Senator Lazarus. We understand where Senator Lazarus is coming from in relation to this amendment which says to us that Senator Lazarus has concerns about the operation of the bill before the parliament. If Senator Lazarus had no concern about this bill, he would not be looking for a review of the operation of the amendments. My view is that this is well intended, but in reality if you have concerns about the operation of the bill, Senator Lazarus, you should not be supporting the bill today. That is the bottom line.

You have put forward a proposition and negotiated with the minister, as I understand, but really what does it do? The minute the minister causes an independent review to take place, the review considers the effect of the amendments and any other matter the minister specifies—who knows what that may be; I am not sure. Then the person who undertakes the review provides a written report to the minister and the minister causes a copy of the report to be tabled in each house of parliament within 15 days of receiving it. Big deal! What does that do? It does nothing, absolutely nothing. Fine, you do a deal with the minister. That is up to you, but if you have concerns about the operation of the bill, the time to deal with it is now.

Do not support the bill

Do not put up a proposition that allows the minister to determine issues in a report that she receives and simply tables with no compulsion to do anything other than table the report. I think that this amendment is well-intentioned, but if you have problems, Senator Lazarus, do not support the bill, because this amendment does not fix the major problems in this bill.