James Paterson (Victoria, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Cyber Security) Share this | Hansard source

In a moment, I have a question for the minister, but first I have to take the opportunity to thank Senator Shoebridge—through you, Chair—for perfectly illustrating how ill equipped the Greens political party are to be members of this committee. In Senator Shoebridge's contribution and in the contributions of his colleagues in the second reading debate, they made a number of assertions about the failings or alleged failings of the PJCIS in recent years to oversee various issues. Most recently, Senator Shoebridge says, how did the PJCIS miss this alleged issue between KPMG and Defence? How did the PJCIS, in his words, 'sign off on' various previous submarine deals? Well, I've got an insight for you, Senator Shoebridge: the PJCIS doesn't have oversight of the Department of Defence. It doesn't have oversight of submarine contracts. It doesn't have any visibility at all over anything that KPMG might or might not have done with the Department of Defence, because that is not the role of the PJCIS. Senator Shoebridge referred a number of times to the act. If he'd read the act, if he understood the act, he'd understand that the role of the PJCIS is to oversee the intelligence community, not the defence department or the ADF. So thank you for illustrating perfectly why the Greens don't understand the function of this committee and are ill equipped to serve on it.

My question is to the minister and in light of those contributions: has the government done a deal with the Greens to get this bill through the chamber? Will the government vote for or allow through the Greens amendments to remove Dennis Richardson's bipartisan recommendations from the legislation? If not, how does the government intend to get this bill through the Senate today? If the coalition doesn't support the bill and the Greens don't support the bill, it's not clear how this bill will pass this chamber.