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

I thank Senator McKim for moving the motion. We're in the third-last sitting week of parliament, and Minister Burke suddenly pulls out of nowhere three bills, one of which is 100 pages long, another of which is 56 pages long and another of which is 20-odd pages long. Without any prior consultation, without any prior notice, he pulls out these three bills three weeks out from the end of the sitting calendar this year and now wants to send them off to another secret committee, a secret committee dominated by the war and security parties, who have never seen a war they haven't wanted to join or a secret they haven't wanted to hide or a whistleblower they haven't wanted to put in jail. That's the committee that's going to look at these three bills, almost 200 pages of super-secret legislation making it harder and nastier for anyone who wants to actually tell the truth about what's going on in this place. That's what we're seeing.

We've got a rudderless government which can't seem to bring in any effective measure to deal with what people actually want addressed—cost of living, housing and trying to pay grocery bills. And what have they been spending their time doing? Working up some secret deal with the coalition to whack 300 pages of pro-security, pro-ASIO, pro-secrecy legislation to a secret committee populated by the war parties. Nothing changes in this place. People don't want to see another secret hatchet job between Labor and the coalition trying to give increased secrecy powers to the security agencies in this country. They'd like a government that is open and honest about how they're actually going to fix the real problems Australians are facing, problems about being able to pay the grocery bills, to afford unreasonable rents and to sort out housing, but there's nothing like that from the government. Instead, Minister Burke has been working in some dark, smoky room to produce hundreds of pages of super-secret legislation that he now wants to send to a secret committee.

If you wanted to have proof positive about how out of touch this Albanese government is with what people want this parliament to be doing, here it is. They have no serious solution to housing, no serious solution to the cost of living and no serious solution to things that millions of Australians want this government to address. Instead, they've been working on hundreds of pages of secret legislation with a secret deal with the coalition to go to a secret committee to do another job on Australians. That's the Albanese government 2024.