Katy Gallagher (ACT, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Finance) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to make a few comments. We've made it really clear our unhappiness over the unilateral referral of the Religious Discrimination Bill to the Joint Standing Committee on Human Rights. Labor believe there should be a genuine inquiry that allows both MPs and senators to participate. Our preference was for a joint select committee to examine this issue before it's considered further in the House or the Senate but we were unsuccessful with that approach to the Morrison government. We also participated in and supported various inquiry referrals to the Senate on several occasions during this sitting period. I think those votes have been tied in every instance and lost, so we haven't been able to refer it to a Senate committee. All of those options were rejected by the Morrison government. We think it is really unfortunate that this resulted in deadlocked votes in this place and no results but this is the approach that the Morrison government has decided to take on this issue.

Labor do think that we should have been able to reach agreement across the chamber with everybody about how to proceed with an inquiry and it's most unfortunate that the government has been unwilling or unable to work with the Senate on that. We don't believe this position is going to change. We have been talking across chambers and to multiple people to convince the government to take a different path, and the government is refusing to do so. So we will be supporting the non-referral amendment by the government and we will also be working to make sure that the referral to the Joint Statutory Committee on Human Rights is a genuine inquiry and properly examines this very important issue before full consideration by the parliament.