Kim Carr (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The situation here is very simple. It's a lesson that all senators should take note of. If the facts change, what do you do? You change your mind. That's been the custom and practise of good political operators for time immemorial. It's all very well for you to quote from the Hansard. I'm quite capable of changing my mind if I have the facts. The facts are these: We now have a situation in this parliament where we pass something like 2,000 bills a year; 50 per cent of them are carried with measures that contain instruments for delegated legislation. Of those in recent times, 20 per cent of all the legislation we've been carrying has a non-disallowable instrument built into it. We ourselves are taking away our rights to examine legislation.

I've been on the front bench of this parliament for some 23 years. In this parliament, I've had the privilege of serving on other committees. As a consequence of that, I've had the opportunity to look at the detail in which this legislative practice has grown, instrumentally, under governments of all descriptions, where we've turned over our responsibilities to the Public Service, and we should not allow that to continue. That's the fundamental principle that this amendment proposes: that we address our responsibilities. If there's a problem, we have the chance to fix it. It is no more complicated than that, Senator Roberts, you great expert on international trade. It's no more complicated than our capacity to say, 'Sorry, Mr Bureaucrat, you've got it wrong.'

What I can also tell you is that, in those 23 years of service on the front bench, repeatedly I understood how free trade agreements could be abused—particularly the rules of origin and the capacity of various companies and various countries to shift goods around the globe. We should not allow these measures to be shifted off to some minor consideration by a parliamentary committee without the resources, by members of parliament without the resources, to deal with these questions properly. JSCOT is not an appropriate vehicle for parliamentary scrutiny. It is a joke. It is a joke to suggest that anything other than a rubber stamp measure is going to be applied.

Our job as members of parliament is to ensure the protection of the interests of the Australian people. We have been abrogating that responsibility by allowing so much of the legislation that goes through this parliament—and I'll hazard a guess, Senator Roberts—unread. We find the circumstances when we examine the facts: 50 per cent of it is allowing delegated legislation to be sent off by unelected, faceless bureaucrats, and to 20 per cent of that we have denied ourselves the chance to say, 'No, that's not right.'

This amendment simply says that the proposal this government is trying to impose on us now—to take away the right that is there now—should not be taken away. You say, 'Oh, it's never been used.' Well, that's no excuse to take it away. How ridiculous! That's the sort of mentality that One Nation comes up with, isn't it—like your 'detailed research'. You've got to get it from a ministerial office. You've got to get approval from a ministerial office before you'll come to some consensus with the government. And you call yourselves senators. What a joke.