Louise Pratt (WA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Manufacturing) Share this | Hansard source

The Labor Party, of course, understands and very much shares the concerns about the nature of draft rules and putting them into delegated rules. We understand, though, that it's also the role of this place to consider the substantive urgency of the provision before us. It's not the fault of those here that the government has not done its due diligence and got these rules written in time for us to see whether they would need to be disallowed or not. We certainly share the concerns around the role of delegated legislation and, indeed, draw attention to the fact that this government does seem to overly rely on it. However, it's not just about this place getting its due diligence up and running, it's also about the capacity of those out there who are going to use the scheme being able to get organised to make it happen. I understand that's harder to do with rules that are still in consultation and which stakeholders can comment on until 24 November. That doesn't really give the parliament a lot of time to deal with this question.

Without the benefit of understanding that stakeholder feedback, in terms of the highly detailed amendments and putting these in legislation, it's not possible for us to support what Senator Patrick and others have said—to simply substantively legislate all of the draft rules. On that basis, we are opposing this amendment. I call on One Nation and others, if they want to be able to influence the outcomes of this bill before us, in terms of scrutiny and oversight, they should consider supporting Labor's amendments so that there is greater scrutiny on the operation of this legislation, because that is also in the Senate's power today.