Janet Rice (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

The Greens will be supporting Senator Lambie's amendments. We still don't think they make this bill something that we will support overall, but we feel they are an improvement on trying to reach what I understand is the intent of the bill of removing bureaucratic measures that don't actually improve safety and reducing costs by doing so. But we feel that this bill, as it stands, is still very ambiguous as to whether indeed safety remains the prime consideration and whether indeed, with or without Senator Lambie's amendments, that we will actually be reducing our safety standards.

In his summing up then, Senator Watt said that Labor felt that the bill was going to balance safety with the risk environment and cost, which, in and of its very self says that they are going to be weighing up economic and social factors and potentially reducing safety standards. We continue to be very concerned about that.