Nick McKim (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I won't unduly hold up the Senate but I just wanted, as Senator Patrick has done, to respond to Labor's position. I note and pay credit to them that they haven't been disparaging of these amendments in any way. If the Senate was minded to amend this legislation, it could just be put down to the other place today. I think it unlikely in extreme that that would cause any significant or even meaningful delays to the passage of this legislation. I've seen this approach by the Australian Labor Party in regard to other legislative areas in this parliament, specifically around national security issues, where Labor—and fair enough too—does negotiate outcomes with government.

I would urge the Labor Party to not close its mind to further amendments on the floor of the Senate. That's the job that we're chosen to do by the people that vote for us. It is part of our job as legislators to try on the floor of this Senate and of the other place to make improvements to legislation which comes to this parliament. We genuinely believe that if our amendments proposed today were accepted by the Senate it would make this a more robust piece of legislation. It would allow the many people in this country who have concerns about how this app will operate to have an increased level of confidence and may in fact lead to an increased rate of download of this app. We do commend our amendments to the Senate.

Question negatived.

A request I made earlier was that, in lieu of a division, our votes and the votes of Centre Alliance can be recorded.

Bill agreed to.

Bill reported without amendments; report adopted.