Sarah Hanson-Young (SA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

The stitch-up is in, isn't it? The two big parties are desperate for distraction and desperate to get something done in this space so quickly before anybody looks at the detail and before they've worked out they've got no answers to the real questions. They want to smash through before Christmas this bill that kicks young people off the internet. They want to smash it through the parliament with a fake inquiry of only five days. What a joke. Have the courage of your convictions to put forward legislation and have it scrutinised properly.

Why are they smashing this through so quickly? Why do they not want anyone to look at the details and to ask the hard questions? Their very own joint social media inquiry report, handed down only on Monday this week, didn't recommend this as a measure. In fact it was the exact opposite. All of the experts have said that, if you want to protect young people online, you have to make these platforms safer, you have to regulate them properly, you have to put in place guardrails and you have to work with parents to make sure their needs and their children's needs are being met. But you are desperate to get a distraction, because nothing else is getting through this parliament this fortnight. Your mis- and disinformation bill is a bloody bin fire. That's what's going on. This is a distraction because you haven't even been able to run the argument on your own response to mis- and disinformation, so you ram this through as a big distraction.

It's not very often, I must say, that I agree with Senator Canavan, but on this particular issue, on social media, I agree that this should not be rammed through. This should not be put through, on such a complex issue, without proper review and proper scrutiny. But, of course, we know what's going on here: the government's desperate for a distraction because of the mis- and disinformation bill bin fire, and the opposition are split on the issue of social media, so Mr Dutton wants this done as quickly as possible, before anyone realises that he can't keep his own team in the tent. That is what is going on here.

We're about to see it all over again on the next bill, which is, of course, the electoral reform legislation, another stitch-up. When the two big parties decide to get together and ram stuff through in this place, you know they are failing the public debate. They are always failing the public debate when they want to ram stuff through with no real inquiry, no review and no scrutiny, because they have no bloody answers. It's a disgrace.