Bridget McKenzie (Victoria, National Party, Shadow Minister for Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Development) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Senator Polley. I think we've all known enough lawyers to know that you can get an opinion on almost any issue to reflect your chosen outcome. That is not disparaging of the legal profession; it is actually how it works. It's the type of profession which articulates opposing views, and lawyers are very well schooled in being able to argue both sides of any given topic. They're very good at it. So whilst I respect that Senator Pocock has found a lawyer who says that these amendments will make the territory rights bill unworkable in the ACT or the NT, I'm sure we could find an 'opposing view', shall we say, somewhere else in the legal profession.

But I know the clerks of the Senate very well, and I know that when they draft amendments for all of us, or when they draft private senator's bills for us, that they do that to the very, very highest standard. They will have drafted these amendments to ensure that if the Senate chooses to adopt them—and it sounds like it won't—that they wouldn't render the territory rights bill inoperable, because that would be against the intention of the senator who sought their advice.

On that note, I do love the days that we are our very best selves in this place and the way that the friendships that have been developed over a long period of time are able to come to the fore and that we're sitting next to people we never sit next to in our everyday work. And it only works because we do treat each other with respect at work, and I would seek that we have more days like this. Thank you.