Anne Ruston (SA, Liberal Party, Minister for Families and Social Services) Share this | Hansard source

When we came into the coronavirus pandemic, one of the very core understandings was that the powers that were given to me by this chamber—and there were powers given to the Treasurer, in the other chamber—were almost unprecedented because of the situation. The basis of that was the inability of the parliament to sit to make legislation, pass legislation or create regulations. It has often been a very strongly held view that we should, wherever possible, embed any powers in primary legislation, especially powers that are as significant as these. So the reason that the government has sought not to accept the amendment that would grant me an extension of quite extraordinary powers in this area—powers that were very much warranted back in the turmoil of the initial stages of the pandemic—is that now that we are in a situation where the parliament is able to meet we believe that the power of the parliament should be respected and that we should allow the parliament to make those decisions when the time comes and when we have more information about what may be required post 31 March. At the moment, we clearly don't know that. So, Senator Pratt, the reason why the government is not seeking to put provisions in this bill to extend those powers is that we believe, principally, that powers of that nature and magnitude should be embedded in primary legislation.