David Shoebridge (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

A future coalition minister or a future Labor minister may sack the administrator to the CFMEU and appoint Administrator Dutton, who would no doubt be compliant with whatever a future coalition minister would want. Where are the checks and balances in that? We've said we will work with you to try and find a solution to this and that we will work with you so that natural justice can be re-established while giving sufficient powers under a scheme to deal with the unlawful elements—to deal with those organisations and to entrench elements of natural justice. We have provided detailed amendments to the government to try and work this through. In response to these matters of genuine principle and concern that we put to the government, we get these shallow, aggressive political attacks from the minister about how he wants to produce some Facebook squares to address it. Is it any wonder we're frustrated by what the government has been doing and by the refusal to have genuine and fair, open negotiations.

It is increasingly clear what Labor's plan is. They are not willing to negotiate in good faith with the Greens. They are seeking to cut a deal with the coalition to protect their right. We have been saying—and we continue to say—issues of fundamental principle that reach beyond this bill. We have in our mind, other civil organisations, such as protesters, forest protesters and climate protesters, which have been increasingly criminalised by both Labor and the coalition. We have in our mind using terrorist statements and weaponising national security organisations like ASIO to attack the government's political opponents and to advance the attack against other organisations. We have in our mind the way Labor and the coalition together want to ramp up federal powers to the AFP and ASIO and other centralising powers, and we see that one of the essential protections we have in this country is civil organisations that are not controlled and directed by the government or by a minister.

We're not just going to pretend those principles don't exist because it's politically inconvenient for us or because the government wants to rush this legislation through. We will continue to have an open door to get this right— (Time expired)