Jordon Steele-John (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I would like to thank Senator Keneally for her contribution. I think the Australian Greens are more or less totally in line with your observations as to the problems represented with this legislation currently put before us, the National Consumer Credit Protection Amendment (Mandatory Credit Reporting and Other Measures) Bill 2019, and we'll be supporting the amendments you just outlined to the chamber. We've been reflecting on this piece of legislation for a while now, since it has risen and fallen and risen and fallen again with the government's thoughts about whether or not they have the numbers in the place for it to pass.

For me, it says two things. One is that the government is fundamentally out of step with community expectations when it comes to our trading relationships with our regional and global neighbours. We know that Australians, our community, want to see us work with our friends and neighbours in the region and around the world. We know that there is support for the exchange of goods and services and trade of all kinds as long as they meet the basic standards: human rights, environmental protections, labour protections, transparency and public accountability. These are the mechanisms by which parliament and the people retain an ultimate position of authority over approval of these processes.

In Australia we are in a situation—due to the, I believe, corruptive influence of corporate money on this place—where we do not have a process by which free trade agreements, whole bar, are scrutinised and agreed to by the parliament. My colleague Senator Whish-Wilson, in his previous role as our trade spokesperson, has spoken at length on the issue and the challenges that are presented by mechanisms such as ISDS within our free trade agreement frameworks. What we currently have is a system by which a government-to-government process ticks the thing off and we are given the opportunity here, as a chamber, to have a look into it through a JSCOT process without teeth and then decide whether or not to implement the relevant sections that pertain to our legislative requirements here in Australia. It is not good enough. It is not a process that the Greens support. It is something that we have continually opposed.

What this legislation seeks to do is take one of the few scraps of parliamentary oversight that still exist in our process and turn it back over to the government, to make an already non-transparent process worse. You have to almost suppress a dark laugh when you read the justification for this legislation as proposed by the government. The justification is that it will make the administrative process for the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade simpler. They seek to come before us today and propose a piece of legislation that would remove parliamentary oversight so that the people of DFAT don't have to work so hard. It really is a bit of dark comedy in and of itself. We have hardly any oversight at all, as my colleague rightly mentions, and we are to give back one of the only functions of oversight because having that function of oversight is causing the department to have to work too hard. It is not good enough.

Senator Whish-Wilson interjecting—

It is not good enough at all, particularly when the department, as my colleague points out—a very helpful interjection, Senator Whish-Wilson; thank you very much—often operates as a black box. It is very hard to get information out of DFAT. Even during my time on the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties we found that to be challenging.

That's the first thing I would say, observing this legislation. The other bit would be this, and it's a funny old thing. There are many people on the conservative side of the chamber who I expect have spent a lot of time in their lives seeking to be in federal government—to hold the reins of executive office, to have a majority in this place and to be in government—and it defies belief to see so much of the parliament's time spent on legislation like this: tiny, piddly, fiddly stuff that just burns up the time where an actual agenda should be. This has been on the books for—I'm trying to think back to when we first heard of it—probably the best part of a year now.

An honourable senator interjecting—

November 2019. If you have an evil agenda, could we not fight about the evil agenda? Well, you have an evil agenda, but let's see a legislative evil agenda. Let's engage with some stuff, have a contest of ideas. This is a contest of bureaucratic process. Maybe I shouldn't complain about it, because, if you had more terrible ideas, you might get them through, but it's very odd. It's just like sitting in the lane, letting the engine tick over, collecting your salaries and not really doing much. But there you go. We will be, as I flagged, supporting the Labor amendments as put. We will not be supporting the bill as it is currently written, because it reduces parliamentary oversight in a process that is almost free of parliamentary oversight as it is.