Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the provisions of paragraphs (5) to (8) of standing order 111 not apply to the following bills, allowing them to be considered during this period of sittings:

Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Bill 2006

Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing (Transitional Provisions and Consequential Amendments) Bill 2006

Commonwealth Radioactive Waste Management Legislation Amendment Bill 2006

Copyright Amendment Bill 2006

Customs Legislation Amendment (New Zealand Rules of Origin) Bill 2006

Environment and Heritage Legislation Amendment Bill (No. 1) 2006

Inspector of Transport Security Bill 2006

Inspector of Transport Security (Consequential Provisions) Bill 2006

Medibank Private Sale Bill 2006

Telecommunications Amendment (Integrated Public Number Database) Bill 2006.

I table a further statement of reasons justifying the need for these bills to be considered during these sittings. I seek leave to have the statement incorporated in Hansard.

Leave granted.

The statement read as follows—

Datacasting Transmitter Licence Fees Bill 2006 and Broadcasting Services Amendment (Collection of Datacasting Transmitter Licence Fees) Bill 2006

Purpose of the bills

The Datacasting Transmitter Licence Fees Bill 2006 and Broadcasting Services Amendment (Collection of Datacasting Transmitter Licence Fees) Bill 2006 (the bills) will implement the Government’s decisions relating to the imposition and collection of annual licence fees, by way of taxes, on channel A datacasting transmitter licence holders, based on revenue received by the datacasting transmitter licence operator.

Reasons for Urgency

The bills supplement the Broadcasting Legislation Amendment (Digital Television) Act 2006 (the Act) passed by the Parliament on 18 October 2006. The Act (amongst other measures) provides mechanisms for the allocation of channel A datacasting transmitter licences (Channel A) and channel B datacasting transmitters (Channel B) to provide new services for consumers.

The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) must design a price-based process for the allocation of Channel A and Channel B.

It is important that when Channel A is offered to the market, the offer documents should provide a clear description of Channel A, including all its characteristics and the impositions to which it will be subject. If the allocation process begins without the bills being passed, it would be unclear whether Channel A would be subject to the condition that the licensee will be subject to an annual licence fee. This would create uncertainty about the conditions under which the licences will operate after allocation. It is therefore necessary for the legislation to be considered by Parliament and the outcome of this consideration to be known to allow the offer to be put to market. Preparations have begun in relation to the processes leading to allocation of channel A datacasting transmitter licences with the aim of conducting the allocation as soon as possible in 2007. Therefore the bills should be debated in both Houses of Parliament before the end of 2006 to enable new services to be provided to consumers as soon as possible.

Circulated with the Authority of the Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts.

Mr Deputy President, on a point of order: could that statement of reasons be circulated in the chamber immediately?

It will be circulated as quickly as possible.

Kim Carr (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Housing and Urban Development) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy President, could the Environment and Heritage Legislation Amendment Bill (No. 1) 2006 be treated as a separate item—

Joe Ludwig (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Manager of Opposition Business in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

And the Medibank bill.

Kim Carr (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Housing and Urban Development) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

along with the Medibank Private Sale Bill 2006?

John Hogg (Queensland, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

If that is the request, it is within the province of the chair to divide the question. We will divide the question. Senator Carr, could I confirm for the record that you are referring to the environment bill and also the Medibank Private bill.

Kim Carr (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Housing and Urban Development) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yes, if they could be treated separately.

John Hogg (Queensland, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

All right; that is what we will do.

Chris Ellison (WA, Liberal Party, Minister for Justice and Customs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I agree to the question being divided so as to separate the bills, as indicated. The reasons for urgency of these bills have been set out in the statement circulated in the chamber. I point out to the Senate that so far this year only seven bills have been exempted from the cut-off which, including these bills, is the lowest number in any calendar year since this regime has been in place. I commend the motion to the chamber.

Kim Carr (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Housing and Urban Development) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I oppose the exemption to the cut-off of the Howard government’s proposals contained in the Environment and Heritage Legislation Amendment Bill (No. 1) 2006. The Minister for Justice and Customs has just indicated that the reasons for urgency of these matters have been circulated in the chamber. We have yet to see those reasons. We have not been advised of those reasons. This is a particularly controversial piece of legislation which highlights just how extreme, arrogant and out of touch this government has become. This is the latest in a long list of measures that actually go to attacking the fundamental principles of democracy and which seriously undermine the environment and heritage protection regime that has hitherto existed in this country.

I will remind the Senate of some basic facts. This bill had no exposure draft and no environmental or heritage groups were consulted before the bill was tabled. There are 409 pages of legislation which were introduced into the House on a Thursday. It was debated the following Wednesday. The debate occurred in the House without there being a Bills Digest and before submissions had been received for what is essentially a perfunctory Senate inquiry. There was very little capacity, even at that stage, for environmental or heritage groups to be consulted.

As part of the Labor team that took part in the Senate inquiry into the bill, I was given barely 10 minutes—at best 12 minutes—to question witnesses that appeared before the inquiry. This is the process by which this bill has been introduced and is to be dealt with by this parliament, which highlights just what a travesty the legislative regime in this country has become. Senator David Johnston was absolutely right when, on 18 October 2006, in discussing the explanatory memorandum for this piece of legislation, he told the Senate:

This explanatory memorandum is probably one of the most appalling I have ever seen in the short time I have been in the Senate. It discloses no motivation, no reasoning and no justification for some of the most draconian powers that this parliament can conceivably and possibly enact: rights of search and seizure without warrant and rights of personal frisking without warrant.

          …            …            …

... this legislation should go back to the drawing board.

So it is not just Labor senators and senators from the cross benches who express their profound reservations about the actions of the executive with regard to this legislation; it is members of the government’s own backbench. Here we have a situation where the parliamentary processes of this country are being prostituted to the domineering executive in a manner which is most disturbing. We have a situation in which the parliamentary and public consultation processes have been fundamentally subverted.

Any individual or organisation wishing to make a submission or give evidence on this bill was given about a week to do it. This is a 409-page bill involving some of the most extreme actions a government can take with regard to civil liberties in this country, and we had one week while the chamber was sitting to analyse this through the process of preparing submissions on this bill. If you had an interest in other matters before the parliament during that week, you were rightly somewhat divided in the time that you could spend.

Is it any wonder that there was not one witness before this quick and dirty Senate inquiry who said that they had had sufficient time to examine the implications of this legislation? Experts in the field could not answer questions or give opinions on whole sections of this bill simply because they did not have time to examine the implications of this legislation. So is it any wonder that the environmental and heritage constituencies that this government has employed and manipulated in the past to support its agenda are now in open revolt about being fundamentally ripped off, abused and used by this arrogant government which is essentially treating them all as a bunch of mugs? Is it any wonder that people who know something about the operations of the law have expressed such profound reservations about what this government is proposing to do? Yet in the motion that the government has put to this chamber today we are expected to give the tick on this process without further complaint. I take the view that this chamber ought to say no.

Organisations which are not known for their radicalism in the environmental movement—the National Trust, for example, a highly respectable, thoroughly conservative, middle-class organisation—have simply said, ‘You’ve gone way too far.’ The World Wide Fund for Nature has similarly been used and abused and now says, ‘We’ve been conned by this government.’

Essentially the problem that the government faces is that it is seeking to ram through this parliament highly regressive legislation that explicitly and implicitly promises to make fundamental changes to the way in which our heritage and environmental protections can be undermined for good. It breaks basic protocols on which the government in the past—and I say this on a bipartisan basis—has sought to operate when it came to the question of environmental and heritage management in Australia. This is fundamentally bad public policy which, when exposed, will easily be able to be demonstrated as being based on a government’s ideological precepts that the government feels it now has the opportunity to pursue without proper debate within the community. It is a proposition which has been advanced in haste by a government which has an urgent desire to ram through its program in the run-up to an election year.

We are watching and being asked to acquiesce to a government at its most arrogant. This government has essentially been advised by its own backbench that these actions are totally inappropriate, yet we are told to tick off on this bad public policy. It is quite clear that the government will truck no criticism and will accept no contrary opinion, no matter what side of the chamber it comes from. We have a situation now where our environment and our fragile national heritage will suffer directly as a result of the negligence and arrogance of this government in seeking to pursue its agenda to wind back the clock with regard to environmental and heritage reform that has been in place in various forms throughout the last generation. The government could hardly do less in its attitude to the existing legislation, but now it is seeking to provide the legislative framework in which it will not have to measure up to its responsibilities. This extraordinary proposition is summed up by the simple fact that in these 409 pages of legislation the term ‘climate change’ is simply not used because the government’s approach is very old-fashioned. It is fighting the old wars of the 1970s and it is seeking to reinvent the disputes of that time and to force its position through this parliament at this time.

And it is appropriate for this Senate to say no; it is appropriate for the Senate in these circumstances to say, as Senator Johnston said, ‘This legislation should go back to the drawing board.’ It is not appropriate to acquiesce to the actions of an arrogant executive seeking to impose its will upon this parliament without proper debate and without consultation. It is not appropriate that we should turn a blind eye to such fundamental and far-reaching legislation when such important issues are at stake. I urge senators to reject this motion.

Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Greens will be opposing the motion. It is an abuse of the Senate. It is an abuse of the public’s right to be informed about legislation being dealt with by this parliament and, as Senator Carr has said, it is the height of arrogance by this government, at the end of this legislative year, to be putting through this table of bills without the standing orders prevailing. The standing orders insist that there should be some six weeks to look at legislation. That is so there can be a committee and so the public can look at the legislation at hand and give feedback to the committee. It is so the committee can then adequately inform the Senate, and the Senate can make a much more measured contribution to the debate. All that has been put aside since the government got the control through the numbers in this place, and what we are seeing here today is, as Senator Carr says, a process of accelerating through the Senate, before the election year next year, some particularly nasty pieces of legislation.

My colleague Senator Siewert points to the Commonwealth Radioactive Waste Management Legislation Amendment Bill 2006, and I understand there is a committee hearing about that today. And here we are removing the decent time scheduling for that piece of legislation, which amongst other things may allow for alternative sites to be looked at in this country for a potential nuclear waste dump. The Senate is being asked through this motion to cast all that aside and put this bill through in the next week or two. There is no way the people who are going to be affected by that sort of decision are going to be able to adequately give feedback to the Senate. It is going to be in a remote region of Australia. I will guarantee that the people affected by that, by and large, have no idea that this is being debated here in the Senate today. They are small in number and they are away from the scene, so the Howard government does not care.

The Medibank Private Sale Bill 2006 is a hugely important piece of legislation. It is privatising an important institution for the Australia people. The Greens will be opposing that legislation. What the government is saying through this process is: ‘Let’s not have a proper public debate about this. Let’s get on and privatise’—with legislation that has come through here and that is going to be effectively catapulted through without a proper public debate on it, simply because the government does not want a public debate on that piece of legislation.

Then we come to the Environment and Heritage Legislation Amendment Bill (No. 1) 2006. As Senator Carr says, it is 409 pages and it is pretty complex. But it is also very evident what has happened here. Firstly, let me point out to you, Acting Deputy President, that the minister for the environment, whose bill this is, is absent from the chamber. Yet, from his own contribution to the chamber earlier, we know that the government has been considering this legislation for two years. When we talk about the government considering legislation to weaken the one piece of environmental legislation laying out the Commonwealth’s responsibility for protecting this great nation’s natural and cultural heritage, there needs to be a very careful look at that. We did not get that; we got, again, an accelerated, totally unsatisfactory, two short days of hearings.

Most of the people who are affected by this legislation have no idea it is being rushed through here. What the legislation does is extract teeth from a piece of environmental protection law that actually needs more teeth put into it. The issues of the environment, like climate change and the massive impact that is going to have on accelerating the extinction of species in this country, deserve to be looked at very prudently by government and addressed with laws to turn around the processes which are killing this natural heritage.

We are not going to get that. What we are going to get is legislation which weakens the ability of the minister or the government of the day—or I should say the responsibility, because the minister has shown no great ability—to protect this nation’s biodiversity and to ensure that we do not have worsening climate change, for example, with the impacts of bushfires, drought, coastal erosion, extinction of species and loss of snow cover, and a huge impact on the agricultural industries of this country, for one. Instead of putting teeth into this legislation which says, ‘If there are projects in Australia which are going to make climate change worse, the minister has a responsibility to do an assessment and to not allow that damaging process to go ahead’, the legislation effectively weakens the minister’s hand. It should be introducing a trigger on climate change. Instead of that, it is removing some of the very limited protections there are already.

Let me cite the forests of Australia. That legislation, Acting Deputy President Lightfoot, you will be alarmed to know will prevent citizens in future from going to the courts to take legitimate action against the government because it calls for a surety up front. If you cannot put millions of dollars up for Gunns woodchipping or whatever it might be then you cannot take court action. Or, to look at the same corporations powers—I am talking about the Gunns corporations powers—this legislation is going to make it clear that in the fostering of the Gunns pulp mill in Tasmania the minister will not be required to look at the impact on forests; in fact, he cannot do so. If there was any doubt about that, this legislation is there to say that the Minister for the Environment and Heritage cannot look at the environmental impact on forests of a pulp mill that is being built in Tasmania.

That brings me to the very important underlying reason for this legislation being jumped through the Senate in this unseemly fashion. Yes, the government has been looking at it for two years, even though it did not tell anybody here, and even though it did not level with the Australian public. Behind closed doors, the forestry and mining industries in particular have been fashioning this legislation. This is not so much government legislation as it is resource extractors’ legislation, and they do not want a public debate. Of course they do not. They do not want the public to be empowered. They want themselves to be empowered to avoid public scrutiny. They want to avoid the public being able to say, ‘We want to protect our nation’s environmental and cultural heritage.’

And we have a prime minister at the moment who says that he is concerned about the environment. This legislation points out that in fact the Prime Minister is an environmental heretic. He says one thing and he does another. We have one piece of legislation for the protection of this nation’s heritage, the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act. The Prime Minister says he is concerned to protect this nation’s heritage, and what we have before the Senate today is a bill to weaken the one piece of legislation there is—to make the government’s responsibilities less. This is a fortnight after a High Court decision which empowered the Prime Minister through the corporations power to reach out and make things more difficult for working people all across this country, to give the corporations effectively what they wanted in disempowering working people in Australia. We get a sort of reverse process going on here where the government say that they will divest themselves of power to protect the nation’s heritage, the very thing the people of Australia would want them to do, because the corporations do not want that.

One of the difficulties with this legislation is trying to raise the issue. I tried to bring it up again this morning at the doors, where the press turn up and ask you about issues of the day. I tried to raise this issue. You could hear the clicks as they turned off. You could see the eyes roll up because it is complex and not well understood and the long-term impact is not understood. This is corrosive, erosive legislation as far as Australia’s environmental amenity and the federal government’s absolute responsibility for looking after that amenity are concerned. It is appalling legislation. It is a travesty of the Prime Minister’s responsibility to this nation. But the whole aim of the government—and it will be licking its lips about this at the moment—is to get the legislation through here in the next fortnight without anybody understanding it or its impact.

The Greens will be taking that legislation on when it comes into this place, when it is rushed in here in the next 24, 48 or 64 hours because it is critical legislation for this nation. It is going to have a huge impact against the nation’s heritage. We would expect from a government in 2006 strengthening legislation, not poisonous legislation like this to disable the Commonwealth carrying out its obligations to protect this nation’s heritage. The process is under way; it is all being orchestrated out of the Prime Minister’s office. The corporations have been working with the government for a couple of years to get this result. It will be done largely unrecorded, without there being any public clamour and in the run-up to Christmas. Who cares? And the nation’s heritage is going to suffer for it forever and a day.

The best we can do here is to vote against that sort of legislation and to vote against this sort of tawdry process the minister puts forward to fleet-foot the legislation through a place where it should be not only knocked out but replaced by something more responsible and appropriate for this year, for this nation and for this nation’s cultural and environmental heritage. We will oppose it.

Jan McLucas (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Aged Care, Disabilities and Carers) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to also oppose the exemption of the cut-off on the two bills identified by Senator Carr, the Environment and Heritage Legislation Amendment Bill (No. 1) 2006 and the Medibank Private Sale Bill 2006. I particularly want to speak to the ludicrous suggestion that it is important and necessary to exempt from the cut-off the Medibank Private Sale Bill which the government has proposed.

I want to take us to the purpose of having the cut-off principle. We had in this place, long before I came here, a situation where bills were being introduced late in a session. That caused a problem for the process of dealing with matters in a seemly way. For many years the Senate had attempted to introduce measures that would enable an appropriate and orderly dealing with matters. That is why, in 1994, the then Leader of the Opposition, Senator Hill, suggested that we introduce what we are now debating, the principle of the cut-off—and that is that legislation has to be introduced in the first two-thirds of a session in order to be dealt with in that session.

Labor accepts that there are times when the exemption has to be applied, but I can find no reason why that exemption should be applied to the Medibank Private Sale Bill. We know that the Medibank Private Sale Bill was introduced into the House of Representatives on 18 October this year. On 19 October the bill was referred by the Senate to a committee to report today. We have not had the report of that committee. We do not know what the Senate committee of inquiry says, but here we are making a decision about dealing with this bill expeditiously. Even before we know what the committee says in its report we are going to agree, if all of the people who sit on that side of the chamber dutifully follow their riding instructions, to exempt the Medibank Private Sale Bill from the cut-off.

The inquiry was advertised on 25 October—one advertisement; that is all. Then we had one day of hearing into a bill that will privatise the largest provider of private health insurance in this country—a one-day hearing, in one city. We did not go into any state, just to the ACT, and we are going to make a decision on the basis of one quick inquiry. I put on the record our thanks to those community organisations and health representatives who could make that extremely short deadline. I also put on the record the fact that there are many organisations who wanted to contribute to that debate and simply did not have the time to do so. We have come to expect that in this place now. That is the normal way that we operate: we just rush things through. I think the community understands that the Senate and its processes are continually being abused by this government.

But the thing that annoys me most is the way the Department of Finance and Administration has treated our Senate inquiry. We are talking about the sale of an entity that will bring between $1 billion and $2 billion in revenue to this government if the bill is passed, yet the Department of Finance and Administration and the Department of Health and Ageing did not bother putting in submissions. I suggest that they probably thought they should, and I say here that I am sure it was on the direction of their respective ministers that they did not do so. We had the committee hearing on 3 November and a number of questions were asked that could not be answered. That is normal process, and department officials took those questions on notice. As I said, the report of the committee is to be tabled today. This morning we received from the Department of Finance and Administration a number of answers to those questions, but not all of them. I do not think that by the time the report is tabled this afternoon we will have received answers from the Department of Finance and Administration. That is the way this government treats scrutiny; it says, ‘Just roll this one right through.’ Between $1 billion and $2 billion is the expected revenue from the sale of Medibank Private, but we do not even want to wait for the Department of Finance and Administration to provide some answers. I suggest they are not going to at all.

We know that there are still significant legal questions remaining about Medibank Private: who in fact is the entity that owns it, and will compensation arise? We do not know the answers to those questions. It would have been prudent, in our view, to at least wait until there was some clarity over whether or not you can sell this thing; but, no, we are just going to push right on through with exempting the bill from the cut-off in order to avoid scrutiny. It is kind, I think, to say that this government is dealing with this sale bill with unseemly haste, but I think the truth of it is that this abuse of our Senate processes is for purely political purposes. This is no way to conduct business, much less a democracy. I have to concur with the explanation that is in Odgers’ Australian Senate Practice on why legislation was coming in late in a session. Odgers says:

... a view frequently expressed was that ministers or departments deliberately delayed the introduction of legislation until late in a period of sittings in the hope that it would be passed without proper scrutiny.

I concur with that. That is why we established the cut-off principle, and that is why it is good policy. That is why it is good practice to operate the Senate in a respectful way and it is important to ensure that scrutiny remains.

As I said, sometimes it is appropriate to exempt certain bills from the cut-off: if the bill is urgent for some reason or if it has been introduced late in a session in order to deal with issues that could not have been predicted. But I suggest to the Senate that the Medibank Private Sale Bill does not meet either of those criteria. It is not an urgent bill, and I have to say that the reasons proffered by the government to suggest that it is urgent are simply a joke. I will read them into the Hansard because I think it is important that people understand this. The statement of ‘Reasons for Urgency’ says:

On 12 September 2006, the Government announced its intention to sell Medibank Private Limited through a share market float in 2008.

It is going to sell it in 2008. It goes on:

The legislation is essential to the sale of the Commonwealth’s share in Medibank Private Limited, and the sale timetable is dependent upon the legislation being enacted.

Yes, the sale timetable is dependent on it being enacted—in 2008. There is a fair bit of time from now till then to get this process in train. I have to say, this is hilarious. Is anyone in the sector going to read this and actually think that that was the true reason for exemption? The government is an absolute joke. To say that you have to start the timetable now to sell something in 2008 is hilarious. How did we deal with Telstra? Did we take two years to work out how the process for the sale of Telstra was going to occur? Did we need two years or 18 months for that? I do not think so. It is just absolute arrogance to suggest that that is a reason for dealing with this legislation now.

Has there been anything that has come up in the last while that we could not predict that requires this bill to be dealt with after the cut-off? No, there has not—absolutely nothing. The simple reason this government want this legislation dealt with now is political. They know that the community does not support the sale of Medibank Private and they also know that 2007 is an election year: ‘So let’s try and get this issue off the plate, get it dealt with in the lead-up to Christmas, hope that the community forgets and then we can get on with having an election, clear of the reality that the community does not support the sale of Medibank Private.’

The community do not support it for a whole range of reasons. There are three million members of Medibank Private. Their membership of Medibank Private Ltd is actually in question. We do not know whether compensation will be able to be raised by class action of those members. We simply do not know. We do know, though—and the AMA, along with a whole range of other health economists, supports us—that premiums will rise. We know that. That indicates pretty clearly why government want to put off the sale of Medibank Private Ltd till after the 2007 election. They do not want to deal with premiums rising in an election year: ‘Let’s get the debate on before Christmas so that we can have a clear run toward the election next year.’ We also know that there is real potential that a float of Medibank Private Ltd will impact on the private health insurance sector right across the country. All private health insurance providers could well be affected by the sale of Medibank Private Ltd, but the government does not want the community to have further scrutiny of that.

There is no legitimate reason for this legislation to be exempted from the cut-off. There is only a political reason. That political abuse of this Senate has now been going on since the government got the numbers in this place. It has been getting to the point where we sort of expect it now—we know that it is going to happen. But, on behalf of the three million members of Medibank Private Ltd, who are annoyed that the government is pushing this through, I suggest to the government that it should delete this legislation from the cut-off in order to deal with it appropriately and with respect for the operations of this Senate.

Andrew Bartlett (Queensland, Australian Democrats) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I might clarify for the record what is before the chamber at the moment. We are not debating the merits or otherwise of particular pieces of legislation but rather the merits or otherwise of whether those pieces of legislation should be able to be rushed through all stages of debate in this chamber before the end of next week. The motion before us lists 12 pieces of legislation, a couple of which will be taken together as packages, which the government want to have debated before the end of next week. That is not all they want debated before the end of next week: there is another series of legislation that does not need to be exempted from the cut-off. The reason this motion is necessary is that all of those pieces of legislation were first introduced into the parliament only quite recently.

The motion referred to in the standing orders actually has a heritage going back to the 1980s. It was originally called the ‘Macklin motion’ in recognition of my predecessor from the Queensland Democrats, Senator Michael Macklin, who was a key player in putting in place the standing order in relation to this motion. It was then modified somewhat in the early 1990s, but the principle was still the same—that legislation that has only recently been introduced into the parliament should not be able to be dealt with before the end of that same sitting period unless there is a good reason.

In many cases there is a good reason, such as the time line for implementation or the issue the legislation seeks to address. But the core aim of the standing order, which still exists, is there for a very good reason: we as a house of parliament, a legislature and a law-making body should not be rushing pieces of legislation into law until there has been a proper chance for scrutiny. That does not just mean a proper chance for those of us in this chamber to give it scrutiny—that is obviously essential and important—it also means a proper opportunity for public scrutiny and public debate, because all wisdom and all knowledge does not reside in the 76 people who happen to currently be senators in this chamber. I would hope that we would all acknowledge that there is much wisdom, expertise and knowledge out in the wider community that we all benefit from continuously. The only way that we can effectively consider the expertise and knowledge out in the wider community is if members of the community have sufficient time to look at the legislation and provide that feedback.

The key question here is whether or not the various bills that are put before us in this motion have had adequate scrutiny, given what is in them and/or given the immediacy of the need to implement some of the provisions. I believe that the simple problem here is that many of the pieces of legislation contained in this motion which the government is seeking to fast-track are not needed before the end of the year. There have not been good reasons given for them to be finalised before the end of the year.

This reflects a very common attitude now in the federal government. The government is more interested in getting legislation through than it is in getting the legislation right. It is not just a matter of whether you agree with the policy decisions underlying the legislation or whether you support the policy intent underlying, for example, the Environment and Heritage Legislation Amendment Bill (No. 1) 2006 or the Copyright Amendment Bill 2006; it is matter of whether the legislation as it is drafted properly implements that policy intent, whether there are unintended consequences, whether it could be worded more clearly and whether it will mean that the best law will then be implemented, which all of the people of Australia—and, in many cases, more widely—will have to be subjected to.

That is the fundamental part of our role in this chamber. When you scrape away all the differences about whether or not we support selling off a particular government asset or whether we support this power or that power being given to a minister, the core role that we play, surely above all else, is to at least make sure that the fundamentals of the legislation that we are putting into law are properly drafted and have been properly scrutinised. When you get to a situation where a government is more interested in getting legislation through than it is in getting the legislation right, you have reached a serious juncture from the point of view of democracy and from the point of view of our role as the law-making body in this country.

The role of public debate and public awareness about laws is as important, I would suggest, as the content within the laws. It is worth stepping through the various pieces of legislation that are listed in this motion, because some of them have not had much attention. There are a few listed in this motion that the Democrats do believe have sufficient grounds for urgency. I think history quite clearly shows that the Democrats, as a matter of principle and process, have always been willing to examine legislation on its merits and to look for ways to improve the workability of legislation even where we do not necessarily support the policy intent. But the government is denying those of us who seek to work constructively the ability to do so, and it is doing that to the wider community as well.

A good example is the anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing legislation—which I do not think has been mentioned much by previous speakers. That bill is currently before a Senate committee inquiry. That committee has still not reported, so I cannot reveal what is going to be in that report—not least because I do not know. The committee is due to report tomorrow, 28 November, though it possibly may extend by another day or so. But I think it is clear from the evidence given to that inquiry that, whilst there is broad recognition of the need to improve our anti-money laundering legislation and to prevent the misuse of our financial system for the financing of criminal activity—whether it be terrorist or otherwise—there are still concerns about how the legislation is drafted.

Of course this is important, but we should not confuse important issues with urgent issues. We do want to get improved anti-money-laundering laws in place as soon as possible but we do want to get them right. This legislation will impose very significant compliance burdens on a whole range of financial institutions and other people, and they are the ones who will have to pay the costs involved in implementing the legislation—and in many cases those costs will flow on to the consumers. If these measures are essential and necessary parts of a strong anti-money-laundering framework, that is a price that I am sure we would all accept is one worth paying, but you do not want to be having extra unnecessary compliance and loopholes in the legislation—you want to get it right. Pushing this legislation through before the end of next week will reduce the chances of getting it right. Surely that is the least people can expect from us.

The Commonwealth Radioactive Waste Management Legislation Amendment Bill 2006 is also listed in the motion. The Democrats oppose this legislation—and we have been clear about that. In one sense, the government could say, ‘You’ve all decided what your view is, so why not just get it through?’ But there are also important components in this legislation that, particularly in areas like this, should not just be dismissed. The parliament should not be just a number-crunching machine—‘We’ve got the numbers, so we’ll roll it through; that’s all that matters.’ The parliament should enable proper scrutiny, proper public debate and public awareness.

Before the motion that we are now debating was moved, there was a motion moved to allow the Senate committee that is looking into the Commonwealth Radioactive Waste Management Legislation Amendment Bill 2006 to hold a hearing during the Senate sitting today—a practice that I think that we are starting to undertake far too often. The consequence of that motion, when you combine it with this motion to fast-track that bill, is that the people who are most directly affected by this legislation will not have a chance to be heard. The radioactive waste management legislation seeks to enable the views of the traditional owners or the local owners of a piece of land to be overridden by a land council if the federal government wants that land for a radioactive waste facility.

Leaving aside what you think about radioactive waste facilities—and there are different views on that, and I think there is some validity in each of those views—the simple fact is that the people who are most directly affected, the traditional owners of the land that the facility is going to placed on, will have their views directly overridden by the legislation. By fast-tracking this legislation, we will also preclude their views from public debate and from being scrutinised by the Senate committee. Frankly, I think that shows gross disrespect. The least we can do, if we are going to be bulldozing over the basic rights of the owners of the land in question, is to hear from those people. The committee is not going to go to the Northern Territory; it is going to hold hearings in Parliament House at the same time as parliament is sitting—which will reduce further opportunities for scrutiny of what is going on—and the voices of the people who are directly affected will not be heard.

If we tried that with any other group in the community by saying ‘We’re going to change the laws so it will be easy for us to put a radioactive waste facility on your land’, most people would not be terribly happy about that for starters. But it is worse if we say, ‘We’re going to do it, we’re not even going to listen to you; we’ll pass the legislation and we’re not going to listen to your views. We’ll have an inquiry into it, we’ll hear from everybody else but we’re not going to listen to you.’ Unless it is absolutely necessary—and it is simply not necessary that it is done in the next two weeks—there is no reason that it could not be done in February of next year to at least enable views to be heard.

We have heard a couple of other speakers talk about the environment and heritage amendment legislation. Again, I will not go to the merits of the legislation. There are actually some positive components within it; there are some negative components as well, but I will not debate the legislation here. The simple fact is that it is 400 pages of legislation amending an act that is even bigger than that. It was brought in without consultation with the wider community, dropped in here, immediately referred to a committee and immediately forced through that committee, which had to report back within a few weeks. Even that process demonstrated flaws in the way the legislation is structured, let alone the policy intent.

Again, it is not urgent. There is absolutely no reason why those changes must go through in 2006 and could not go through in February 2007 after another month or two of proper examination and raising of community awareness. The people that actually live with and use this law every day would then not only be able to have input into it but also be more aware of what is coming down the track. The people that actually work with that law and many of these other laws know more about it than we do. They know more about the practical impact of these changes than we do, but we are not only not allowing them to inform us about what we are doing but also not allowing them to even inform themselves and others in the wider community about what is happening.

Senator McLucas spoke about the Medibank Private Sale Bill 2006. The justification given that this has to be railroaded through next week or this week so that we can sell it in 2008 is simply ludicrous. That has to be the worst excuse I have ever heard for why this is urgent. The only reason it is urgent is that the government wants to push it through, try to get it off the political agenda, and try to ensure that there is no uprising of concern even within their own ranks—which is the same thing as they did with the sale of the Snowy. They bulldozed that through before half of them even knew what was going on. Six months down the track, community outrage—combined with eventual dissatisfaction building up in the coalition—led to a backflip. The simple fact in this case with the Medibank Private Sale Bill is that it is not urgent. It is a flagrant abuse and dismissal of the principle that is inherent in the standing orders of this chamber. Standing orders are not just these optional extras that we can pay attention to when we feel like it. They are put in place deliberately. In particular, standing orders like this were put in place after a good amount of consultation, after a lot of consideration, and after the Procedure Committee back in the early 1990s decided that this would be the way to go. That is simply being dismissed.

The other piece of legislation that I have not mentioned, and I do not think anybody else has mentioned it, is the Copyright Amendment Bill 2006. I think the fact that it has not been mentioned is perhaps an example of how it has somewhat gone under the radar compared to some of the other issues before us. This again is legislation—it has 12 schedules in it—where the government is saying, ‘This is urgent because it needs to be put in place before 1 January 2007 to ensure compliance with the Australia-US free trade agreement.’ It is true that one of those schedules does. I still think that schedule needs improving, but it may be that we need to improve that schedule over the next two weeks such that it is in place so that we are not breaching our compliance with the free trade agreement. But the vast bulk of the legislation does not need to be passed before the end of the year. It does not relate to the US-Australia free trade agreement but it does have very long-term consequences for a whole lot of Australians—including our educational institutions and many ordinary Australians involved in all sorts of uses of items that have copyright over them.

The, again, disgracefully short Senate committee inquiry into this did bring up enormous concern amongst many people in the community about not just the intent of it but also, particularly in this case, the adequacy of the drafting. People from all different sides—and there are many different sides in copyright issues—complained about the workability of various provisions. The government said, ‘If everybody is unhappy, we’ve probably got it right because we have that balance.’ It could mean that, but it more likely means that they have got it totally wrong—so wrong that everybody recognises it is not workable.

I hear that there will be some amendments to the legislation from the government, but we do not know what is in them and we will have a very short time frame to look at them. Given that it is not urgent, given that this is the end stage of quite a long consultation process where there have still been significant flaws identified, why on earth are we trying to push it through before we get it right? It is that simple matter I come back to; that is the key principle here. It is not whether or not the Democrats, or anyone else here, like some of these bills and dislikes some of the others. That is not the point. The point is that these motions should only be agreed to when there is a credible case to be made that they are urgent pieces of legislation and/or that there is absolutely no harm in putting them through in the immediate future. Otherwise the default option, the precautionary principle or the safety net is that we make sure that there is proper scrutiny. And that does not mean just scrutiny by all of us here; it means scrutiny by the community, scrutiny by people who are much more likely, frankly, in many cases, to pick up mistakes and to identify problems. What we have here is a classic example of the clear attitude of the government that they are more interested in getting legislation through than they are in getting it right, and that is an abdication of responsibility.

I suggest it is one of the biggest signs you can get of the hubris of this government. The Prime Minister often talks about how he is always wary of any signs of hubris—quite rightly—but this is as big a sign as you can get. This government has adopted a ‘them and us’ mentality, the clearest example of hubris and arrogance you can get. This government has flagrantly breached the commitment it gave, when it discovered that it had control of the Senate, that it would not abuse that power. It has clearly, time after time, abused that power, and this is another example of that abuse.

The ‘them and us’ mentality that has developed has meant a complete refusal to listen to any criticism or any concerns. In some cases, there has been a complete refusal to even provide the opportunity for those concerns to be expressed. That is not only offensive, frustrating and appalling; it means, above all else, that you will get bad law. If people are not even prepared to listen to valid criticisms and valid concerns, then it is inevitable you will get bad decisions, and that is what this motion allows.

Rachel Siewert (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There are a number of points that I think the government has missed regarding its statement of urgency for the Environment and Heritage Legislation Amendment Bill (No. 1) 2006. It is obviously quite keen to rush this legislation through before the National Audit Office completes its audit over the last five years on the implementation of the bill. I very strongly suspect that there will be some key points that come out of that review that should be included in legislation. I ask the question: why is this legislation being rushed through before the National Audit Office has completed its review of this legislation?

If this government is truly trying to improve this particular piece of legislation, surely they would wait for that audit to see if there were key things that should be included in the legislation. But, no, we have this bill being rushed through the parliament with an absolutely inadequate amount of time for those that use this legislation—the community and environmental groups—to comment and for the Senate committee to adequately review the depths of these changes.

There are 400 pages of legislation and we were given but a few weeks to review the implications. I suspect it will be the same as other pieces of legislation that have been rushed through this place: it will come back for amendment to fix inadequate legislation that was rushed through without being given proper scrutiny. Surely we should be waiting for the report from the Audit Office to come out so that we can include what I think would be well thought out suggestions that could improve the legislation.

Then, of course, we have the State of the environment report 2006, which is due out at any time. Again, I strongly suspect that this will once again highlight the parlous state of the environment in Australia—for example, Australia’s coral reefs. I very strongly suspect it will highlight the threats that climate change poses through both coral bleaching and acidification. I think it will also highlight the declining nature of our biodiversity in this country—the loss of species that continues apace in this country, building on the fact that Australia has the highest rate of mammalian species extinction in the world and that the threats are ongoing, particularly the threats of climate change.

I suspect that the report will look at the health of our wetlands in Australia, which continue to decline—the Gwydir wetlands and the Macquarie Marshes wetlands are but two. And the state of our rivers is a national disgrace. The quality of our rivers continues to decline. As I said, species loss continues at an alarming pace. But we still have not seen the minister’s report on the triggers of national environmental significance. Under the current act, the minister is required to review every five years what are commonly called the national triggers or the points of national environmental significance. We have not seen that report. I am given to understand that it has been completed, but we have not seen it. I would have thought that that report should have been made public so that senators reviewing the legislation and the broader community could actually look at whether the amendments the government is proposing adequately pick up the findings of that report.

We should look at some of the issues that the government and the minister, in particular, are required to consider at the moment. One very close to my heart is, of course, the Burrup Peninsula. The minister was supposed to make a decision a while ago. He extended the consultation time, as is provided for under the act—in fact, comments close tomorrow, 28 November. If this legislation goes through, the minister can postpone making a decision on the Burrup Peninsula virtually indefinitely. This is rock art of world significance. It is arguably the most important rock art site in the world. A decision on the future of that may be delayed indefinitely by the minister once this legislation goes through.

I can actually see why the government wants to rush this legislation through and exempt it from the cut-off. It is so that nobody gets to review the State of the environment report 2006 prior to the amendments going through and so that people do not get to review the National Audit Office’s review of the current act. This is fundamental input into the review of this legislation and the government does not want to see it before it makes these changes. Why don’t they want to see it? Are they scared of what is going to be in that report? Why hasn’t the government released the report into triggers of national environmental significance when they are required to do a review? Why hasn’t that report been made public so that people can review that?

There is a great deal of evidence that we need new triggers around climate change and water. We all know of the water crisis facing Australia, and I think the State of the environment report will also pick up on those. We all know that there are a number of crucial decisions that the minister needs to make, including on the 500 critical habitats to be possibly listed on the national lists.

It seems to me that these are urgent issues that the government in fact wants to avoid. This is important legislation for the protection of our environment, at a most critical time. We are facing crises over climate change and water in particular. You would think that the government would want to review this legislation in light of those crises. You would think that the government would perhaps amend the legislation to deal with those two critical issues and to deal with land clearing, for example, as that also leads to biodiversity loss and species loss. And does not the name of this legislation include biodiversity conservation?

I too oppose the motion to exempt this legislation and the Medibank Private Sale Bill 2006 from the cut-off. I believe that if the government were truly intent on developing better environmental and heritage protection legislation, they would allow the three critical reports that I mentioned to be released and considered before rushing this legislation through this place.

Chris Ellison (WA, Liberal Party, Minister for Justice and Customs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I totally reject comments that we have not provided sufficient notice in relation to these reasons for applying urgency. I think Senator Carr might have mentioned that. The reasons for applying urgency to all of these bills, except for the datacasting bill, were incorporated in Hansard on 9 November this year. The reasons for urgency for the datacasting bill, I understand, were circulated last week. That is more than adequate notice in relation to the reasons for urgency.

On the issue of the government abusing its ability to seek the cut-off now that we have the numbers, I remind senators that this year the bills that we have sought to exempt from the cut-off number about a third of Labor’s average when it was last in government, in 1994-95. That demonstrates a significant deal more restraint than the previous, Labor, government. This is something that we approach on an as-needed basis. We have circulated the reasons for urgency for the cut-off and we stand by those reasons. I understand that we will deal with these bills in two parts.

Kim Carr (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Housing and Urban Development) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Three parts.

Chris Ellison (WA, Liberal Party, Minister for Justice and Customs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Three parts. The government stands by its position that in all of these cases there is a matter of public interest and urgency, for the reasons I have circulated in the chamber.

Claire Moore (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The question having been divided, the first question before the chamber is that the provisions of paragraphs (5) to (8) of standing order 111 not apply to the Environment and Heritage Legislation Amendment Bill (No. 1) 2006.

Question put.

John Hogg (Queensland, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The question now is that the provisions of paragraphs (5) to (8) of standing order 111 not apply to the Medibank Private Sale Bill 2006.

Question put.

John Hogg (Queensland, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The question now is that Senator Ellison’s motion be agreed to in respect of the remaining bills.

Question agreed to.

Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would like the Greens’ opposition to that motion to be recorded, please.

John Hogg (Queensland, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It will be.

Andrew Murray (WA, Australian Democrats) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would like the Democrats’ opposition to that motion to be recorded with respect to the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Bill 2006, the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing (Transitional Provisions and Consequential Amendments) Bill 2006, the Commonwealth Radioactive Waste Management Legislation Amendment Bill 2006, the Inspector of Transport Security Bill 2006 and the Inspector of Transport Security (Consequential Provisions) Bill 2006.

John Hogg (Queensland, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That will be done.