Michaelia Cash (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Hansard source

I want to respond to the comments made by Senator Gallagher. You'd think that this government, based on the comments made, was giving the Senate adequate time to review what is a very complex piece of legislation. The irony of what Senator Gallagher said is not lost on me, because, when this part of the day finishes, guess what we're about to do, colleagues? Yet again, in typical Labor style, bang—we're going to guillotine another piece of legislation. They're going to slip in today an amendment that until last night nobody had actually seen. This is a government, colleagues, that—just remember—talked big about transparency prior to the election; I'll go through shortly the words the Prime Minister liked to utter on a regular basis. Since they have been elected they have used their numbers in this place—and to those journos who are saying the IR legislation is a huge win for Labor, I suggest you look at the numbers that Labor deals with in the Senate now. It is hardly a big thing to get your legislation through, particularly given the numbers we dealt with when we were in government—at least 10 crossbenchers across the spectrum.

Today we're going to jump in with the Greens and support the Greens here. Why are we supporting the Greens' amendment on this? Because they actually, like us, want to review this legislation properly. This is a huge piece of legislation. The AAT has directly fed into it around 400 pieces of legislation. In terms of the stakeholders I have already spoken to, I can tell you they are not in any way over this legislation.

There is need for improvement in the AAT. We tried to improve it over successive governments. It is a huge tribunal—one that makes very serious decisions. Ramming this legislation through the parliament without the proper scrutiny from the Australian Senate is an affront to the actual piece of legislation and goes against everything this government said it would do prior to the election in relation to transparency. We'll get onto the Attorney-General of Australia shortly because, I tell you, he still likes to talk to this day about transparency, yet he is the one minister in this government who, when it comes to transparency, just likes to use the numbers and push things through the Senate with little to no review.

The role of the Australian Senate is very basic. It's taught in politics 101 classes. In fact if you asked a year 10 student in school to write about it they'd tell you the basic role of the Australian Senate is to be a house of review. We actually take that role seriously, particularly given the fact that the government uses its numbers in this chamber to ram through piece after piece after piece of legislation. The average Australian doesn't know what the government's doing in this place. But guess what? Over the next few months and years, they will feel the impact of the legislation across the board, portfolio by portfolio, that this government, by using its numbers in the Senate, is ramming through this place with little to no scrutiny. That is actually dangerous.

The role of the Senate is to understand the impact of legislation. It is to understand whether or not the legislation that is being put forward, in this case, is actually going to make the system better or, as the case may well be, make the system worse. That's all we want to do. That's all we and the Australian Greens want to do, and the Australian Greens and I are not often in the same place. I tell you that, in the interests of transparency, in the interests of discharging our role as the Australian Senate and in the interests of those people who are actually affected by decisions of the AAT, we need to take this seriously. We need to stand up to Mr Albanese, the Prime Minister, and stand up to Mr Dreyfus, the Attorney-General, and say to them: 'No, we're not going to cop this. We're actually going to do our job and review this legislation.'