Jacinta Collins (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Cabinet Secretary) Share this | Hansard source

Well, Senator Birmingham, you were not listening to the discussion that just occurred. Let me give you a brief revisit on that, because we had questions that the minister failed to answer, not only from me but from Senator Wong, Senator Conroy, Senator Lambie, Senator Muir and Senator Day—

An opposition senator: And Senator Carr.

And Senator Carr—of course!

He failed to respond on a very critical issue that, as a South Australian, you should appreciate, because your legislation in South Australia does address this issue. Senators had a very important question that the minister has just refused to address.

But these are not the only problems. The process of trying to move this through at lightning speed, ahead of today's—yesterday and today's, or, in Senate terms, today's—lengthy debate has meant that the drafting process has been problematic. The drafting of this bill was so rushed that it was only half complete when it was introduced into the parliament. Now the government is suffering the humiliation of amending its own legislation to rectify its policy failures. I would expect this incompetence from Senator Di Natale and his hapless democracy spokesperson, Senator Rhiannon, but you would hope that the government of the day could do better. I suppose I should have seen the signs of that when the minister—maybe it was not the minister but the government chair of the committee—refused to allow even the department to appear before the Senate inquiry. If you cannot have the department before the inquiry, what confidence can you possibly have about what adequate drafting processes might occur? But, of course, we are not even meant to be asking about things like drafting processes.

We had some discussion earlier about the respected electoral analyst Malcolm Mackerras, although I heard some scoffing from the other side at the time. He said it best when he described the legislation as a 'filthy deal' concocted by 'an unelected, dud Prime Minister and the Greens, that party noted for its moral vanity'. Mr Mackerras said that how many weeks ago?