Mitch Fifield (Victoria, Liberal Party, Manager of Government Business in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

I move the following amendment to Senator Gallagher's proposed amendment:

Omit “9 May 2017”, substitute “28 March 2017”.

I will speak briefly to my amendment to the amendment that is before the chamber.

I do need to categorically reject the suggestion from the opposition that the government are in any way, shape or form seeking to ram something through the parliament, or indeed that we have sought, in the course of this week, to ram legislation through the parliament. The only way that you can ram legislation through the Senate is by way of a guillotine. We have not guillotined any legislation, and there is no proposition before the Senate that we guillotine legislation. In fact, all we have done in the course of this week is provide the opportunity for legislation to be debated and for the Senate to sit for as long as required to address the legislation that is before this place. I thought it was important to make that point at the outset.

In terms of the particular piece of legislation that the opposition is seeking to refer for inquiry, the Human Rights Legislation Amendment Bill 2017, when I was chatting to Senator Brandis earlier he made what I think is the self-evident point that the ink is barely dry on the last inquiry into this area. In fact, I think what we have seen by way of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights, the referral it had and the work that it did is a model of good process—a model of good examination of the issues that are raised by people in the community, who, we recognise, can legitimately have different points of view.

We firmly believe that the legislation that we are proposing does reconcile appropriate protections for individuals and freedom of speech, which is something that we on this side hold to be one of the fundamental underpinnings of a free and pluralistic society. It is for those reasons that we do not believe that there is the need for an inquiry of the length proposed by those opposite. We think that there is adequate time to address this legislation by 28 March, largely because of the very good work done by the human rights committee. I should acknowledge the chair, Mr Goodenough, in the other place, and his colleagues. I think each of them discharged their duties in the way that the community would hope that members of parliament do when examining complex issues on which there are strongly held views.

I leave my remarks there, but I urge my colleagues to support the substitution of the date for report so it is 28 March rather than 9 May.