Anne Urquhart (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I present the 13th report of 2024 of the Selection of Bills Committee, and I seek leave to have the report incorporated in Hansard.

Leave granted.

The report read as follows—

Selection of Bills Committee

REPORT NO. 13 OF 2024

MEMBERS OF THE COMMITTEE

Senator Anne Urquhart (Government Whip, Chair)

Senator Wendy Askew (Opposition Whip)

Senator Ross Cadell (The Nationals Whip)

Senator Pauline Hanson (Pauline Hanson's One Nation Whip)

Senator Jacqui Lambie (Jacqui Lambie Network Whip) Senator Nick McKim (Australian Greens Whip)

Senator Ralph Babet

Senator the Hon. Anthony Chisholm

Senator the Hon. Katy Gallagher

Senator Maria Kovacic

Senator Matt O'Sullivan

Senator Fatima Payman

Senator David Pocock

Senator Gerard Rennick

Senator Lidia Thorpe

Senator Tammy Tyrrell

Senator David Van

Secretary: Tim Bryant 02 6277 3020

1. The committee met in private session on Wednesday, 20 November 2024 at 7.14 pm.

2. The committee recommends that—

(a) the provisions of the Free TAFE Bill 2024 be referred immediately to the Education and Employment Legislation Committee for inquiry and report by 27 February 2025 (see appendix 1 for a statement of reasons for referral);

(b) the provisions of the National Broadband Network Companies Amendment (Commitment to Public Ownership) Bill 2024 be referred immediately to the Environment and Communications Legislation Committee for inquiry and report by 6 February 2025 (see appendix 2 for a statement of reasons for referral);

(c) the provisions of the Oversight Legislation Amendment (Robodebt Royal Commission Response and Other Measures) Bill 2024 be referred immediately to the Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee for inquiry and report by 30 January 2025 (see appendix 3 for a statement of reasons for referral);

(d) the provisions of the Scams Prevention Framework Bill 2024 be referred immediately to the Economics Legislation Committee for inquiry and report by 30 January 2025 (see appendix 4 for a statement of reasons for referral); and

(e) the provisions of the Workplace Gender Equality Amendment (Setting Gender Equality Targets) Bill 2024 be referred immediately to the Finance and Public Administration Legislation Committee for inquiry and report by 30 January 2025 (see appendix 5 for a statement of reasons for referral).

3. The committee recommends that the following bills not be referred to committees:

Help to Buy (Consequential Provisions) Bill 2023 [No. 2]

4. The committee deferred consideration of the following bills to its next meeting:

Electoral Legislation Amendment (Electoral Communications) Bill 2024

5. The committee considered the following bill but was unable to reach agreement:

(Anne Urquhart)

Chair

21 November 2024

Appendix 1

SELECTION OF BILLS COMMITTEE

Proposal to refer a bill to a committee

Name of bill:

Free TAFE Bill 2024

Reasons for referral/principal issues for consideration:

To allow the Committee to scrutinise this legislation.

Possible submissions or evidence from:

Interested parties and stakeholders.

Committee to which bill is to be referred:

Education and Employment Legislation Committee

Possible hearing date(s):

January 2025

Possible reporting date:

27 February 2025

(s igned )

Wendy Askew

Appendix 2

SELECTION OF BILLS COMMITTEE

Proposal to refer a bill to a committee

Name of bill:

National Broadband Network Companies Amendment (Commitment to Public Ownership) Bill

Reasons for referral/principal issues for consideration:

To allow the Committee to scrutinise this legislation.

Possible submissions or evidence from:

Interested parties and stakeholders.

Committee to which bill is to be referred:

Environment and Communications Legislation Committee

Possible hearing date(s):

January 2025

Possible reporting date:

27 February 2025

(signed)

Wendy Askew

Appendix 3

SELECTION OF BILLS COMMITTEE

Proposal to refer a bill to a committee

Name of bill:

Oversight Legislation Amendment (Robodebt Royal Commission Response and Other Measures) Bill

Reasons for referral/principal issues for consideration:

To allow the Committee to scrutinise this legislation.

Possible submissions or evidence from:

Interested parties and stakeholders.

Committee to which bill is to be referred:

Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee

Possible hearing date(s):

January 2025

Possible reporting date:

30 January 2025

(signed)

Wendy Askew

Appendix 4

SELECTION OF BILLS COMMITTEE

Proposal to refer a bill to a committee

Name of bill:

Scams Prevention Framework Bill 2024

Reasons for referral/principal issues for consideration:

To allow the Committee to scrutinise this legislation.

Possible submissions or evidence from:

Interested parties and stakeholders.

Committee to which bill is to be referred:

Economics Legislation Committee

Possible hearing date(s):

January 2025

Possible reporting date:

17 February 2025

(signed)

Wendy Askew

SELECTION OF BILLS COMMITTEE

Proposal to refer a bill to a committee

Name of bill:

Scams Prevention Framework Bill 2024

Reasons for referra1/principal issues for consideration:

To examine the Bill in more detail and hear from stakeholders

Possible submissions or evidence from:

Committee to which bill is to be referred:

Economics Legislation Committee

Possible hearing date(s):

Possible reporting date:

23 January, 2025

(signed)

Nick McKim

Appendix 5

SELECTION OF BILLS COMMITTEE

Proposal to refer a bill to a committee

Name of bill:

Workplace Gender Equality Amendment (Setting Gender Equality Targets) Bill

Reasons for referral/principal issues for consideration:

To allow the Committee to scrutinise this legislation.

Possible submissions or evidence from:

Interested parties and stakeholders.

Committee to which bill is to be referred:

Finance and Public Administration Legislation Committee

Possible hearing date(s):

January 2025

Possible reporting date:

30 January 2025

(signed)

Wendy Askew

I move:

That the report be adopted.

Anthony Chisholm (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

At the end of the motion, add: ", and the provisions of the Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Bill 2024 be referred immediately to the Environment and Communications Legislation Committee for inquiry and report by 26 November 2024".

Nick McKim (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would like to move an amendment to the minister's amendment:

Omit "26 November 2024", substitute "3 February 2025".

Just so folks are clear, we've circulated a sheet in my name with two amendments. I'm just moving (a) at the moment, which is in respect of the Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Bill 2024. To anticipate the next matter, I believe my colleague Senator Hanson-Young would like to make a contribution on this amendment.

Sarah Hanson-Young (SA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to 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.

Sue Lines (President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Hanson-Young, please. Have you finished your remarks?

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

I have.

Jacqui Lambie (Tasmania, Jacqui Lambie Network) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would like to make a short statement, if I can, on this as well.

Sue Lines (President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You're free to speak for five minutes, Senator Lambie.

Jacqui Lambie (Tasmania, Jacqui Lambie Network) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you. I am terribly worried about this, as much as we all have good intentions. I haven't even seen a draft. How am I supposed to, over a weekend, get expert advice on this when you've given it five days?

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

It was tabled an hour ago.

Jacqui Lambie (Tasmania, Jacqui Lambie Network) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Oh, it's been tabled? Thank you. It must be so good! One could have been dropped off at my office, but they didn't even do that.

There is a real issue here. As Senator Hanson-Young said: this is going to happen before Christmas, seriously? You've had 2½ years. We've known social media has been a big problem for a long time, and you really want to move this through this quickly? I really need to have expert advice on this over the weekend and a little bit further, because, quite frankly, how do you expect people to respond in five days? This bill no doubt could be made better if we had more time to get it right.

What I don't want to do here is make you two look like this is all about helping those under 16 so we can do something about the abuse that's going on online and young kids stop taking their own lives, when the bill isn't done properly. How is this supposed to be effective in helping those kids under 16? How? You can't be serious. Honestly, I would rather take a few more months and get this right and make sure this bill is correct and actually works.

Let's be honest here: you're throwing it back on the mums and dads. What about these social media people? What about these platforms? What part are they playing in this? What are they doing? Are you a bit too scared to take them on because they'll go at you in an election? There is a lack of courage in this place once again—for the sake of our kids.

By the way, if you think one move is going to fix this, you are delusional. It's called social intelligence, and, until you start teaching it to the next generation so they learn and have the courage to say no and know what the right thing to do in life is, it's really not going to change. You want to hit one thing, but you don't want to put in other bits and pieces. How about we look at the social intelligence and running it through the curriculum for kids that are five or six years of age? How about you do that? How about you look at these boot camps? You don't even want to speak about that because—goodness me!—you might get a little bit of slap-back before an election. Once again, you don't have the courage to say, 'Your kids can go and do a boot camp for 10 days, and we'll get them off these damned screens.' That's how it works. If you think one move is going to work, you are absolutely delusional.

Go and see what the Scandinavian countries are doing. We are building more detention centres and putting our kids in them. They are failing miserably—the kids are becoming better criminals. It is failing! You have to start with the next generation, and you are not doing that. So what other moves are you going to make alongside this? What courage do both you major parties have to actually make a difference to the new generation of kids coming through, to make them more resilient, to make them able to have the courage to say, 'No, we're not going to be a part of this,' to say no to drugs and alcohol and screen time? This just won't work. Leaving it in the parents' hands, without taking those social media companies by the throat, is never going to work. And five days? God almighty! What a joke this is in here today! What an absolute joke!

How about we just get one thing right in here, and we do it at 110 per cent so it actually works? Why can't you do that? Oh, no; you want to have this big headline, 'We've done this for your under-16 kids.' I tell you what, Australians: it's probably not going to work, because, when they run things like this through, you can guarantee it's got gaps bigger than your front teeth. It won't work. You've got to put other things in place alongside this. So what exactly are you doing to put those things in place? And what are they? This won't work alone. It just won't.

Malcolm Roberts (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Well, isn't this a wonderful day! The Greens are normally helping the government to truncate debate, to guillotine debate. Now they're talking about adding more time for debating—and we agree with them this time, because we agree with debate. Debate is the way to truth. We agree with their amendment and we will be supporting their amendment.

This is a vital bill, an absolutely crucial bill. It has serious consequences, and not just for people under 16 years of age. It has serious consequences for the Australian family and who has responsibility for children in this country. Is it the government, or is it going to remain the parents? Parents have already had their responsibility, their authority, whittled away at state and federal level. We need to enshrine responsibility for children with parents. That's critical. It's fundamental. This bill has important social and family consequences, and we've been given one hour!

This is a stitch-up between the Labor-Liberal uniparty, yet again. Digital identity; identity verification bill; misinformation/disinformation bill; working on digital currency; children under 16 banned from the internet—these are all working together to capture everyone in this country; we've said it for the last four years. We were the first cab off the rank with regard to the Morrison government's misinformation/disinformation bill and the same with the digital identity bill. Oh, sorry; they called it the Trusted Digital Identity Bill! It's a stitch-up.

We need scrutiny, and we will be supporting the Greens on this. Let me tell you why I'm saying this. Parents must be the ones supervising their children in their own home. It is a parent's responsibility, a parent's duty, a parent's right, and you are affecting those things—parental responsibilities, duties and rights. You're undermining parents.

Age verification software and facial recognition must be used in every device, whether it be a phone or a computer. Why do we know that? Because this banning of children under 16 years of age has failed in every country, because the bureaucrats can't control it. So, as to what you've set up with your bills, one of the earliest in this parliament from the Labor Party government was identity verification software. We will need the cameras on all the time. What we should be doing, instead of sidelining parents, is making device management easier. Apple, Microsoft and Android could make parental locks easier and more powerful.

I want to acknowledge Senator Rennick's comment a couple of days ago when he said that you can already get apps—some free, some for a price—that enable parents to control the apps that are downloaded onto a child's phone. They're already there. We don't need this bill at all. We notice that opposition leader Peter Dutton has joined in supporting the need for this bill, but there's no need for it.

As I said, no country has made age limits work because bureaucrats cannot see us using the device. That's what you need and that's what this bill gives you with your preceding bills. We see Mr Littleproud speaking on Sky News in support of this and a huge backlash—devastating comments against Mr Littleproud. If the bill goes through, parents allowing children to watch cartoons on YouTube will be breaking the law. It will need facial recognition and monitoring of key strokes for content to police this. Hackers and burglars will be in paradise. They will be able to come in and watch your activities in the house through your camera 24 hours a day and find out when you are going to be out of the house. Parents watching a cooking video with their child on their lap will be locked out because the child is under 16. Children will be forced into the dark corners of the web—peer-to-peer messaging—with no protections against illegal material, hate, phishing, sextortion and hacking.

We have already seen these bills being introduced in Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia and other countries simultaneously. This goes beyond the uniparty in this country; it goes globally. We have seen in the United Kingdom police raiding journalists and commentators who have been criticising the Starmer government and jailed. That is where this is heading. We have seen the digital ID, misinformation and disinformation bill, identity verification started and introduced by the LNP—the Liberal-Nationals. Stop working as the uniparty for globalists and start working for our country. We will support the referral.

Gerard Rennick (Queensland, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The great English-Irish philosopher Edmund Burke warned about the tyranny of the majority. We see that today with the major parties using their numbers to abuse due process. The whole point of democracy is transparency and accountability. If we run this inquiry in the next five days—throughout sitting days, I might add, when, I dare say, there will be a lot of other bills coming up—there will not be enough time to scrutinise these two very important bills.

One is to do with keeping children off the internet. As I have pointed out before, there are already apps out there in the market whereby you can actually monitor your children and the apps they are using and you can keep them off those apps if you want to block them. So why on earth are the Liberal Party, who are always talking about small government and using the free market, turning their backs on their own ideals—and not for the first time, I might add? They are very good at talking out of both sides of their mouths, the Liberal Party, when it comes to their so-called beliefs in empowering the individual. Why on earth they want to shut this down is indicative of their inability to stand up for their own values.

The second thing we need to look at is this electoral legislation amendment. Yet again, we were warned by the people that were founding fathers of democracy and enlightenment in the 17th and 18th century that the whole point of democracy was to empower the individual. Yet what we see here are the two major parties again seeking to use their numbers to shut down transparency on what they intend to do with amendments to the Electoral Act. This is not something that should be played with because democracy and making sure we have a rigorous democratic process are at the heart of trust in this country. Let me tell you, the public have never had a great deal of trust for politicians but they are fed up to the back teeth with the entire process, the entire establishment, not just politicians but the health system, the military. We get the stories of abuse within the military, and when you try and raise it through Veterans' Affairs, they just circle the wagons, protecting their own, rather than protecting those people who have been abused by their colleagues or by the government.

I support this motion. All it is doing is asking to push out the date of the closure of the inquiry from next week, which is completely unrealistic given we are in sitting week anyway, to the second week of February next year, which will give us a couple of months over the Christmas break to have a greater look at these two very important acts. I would ask that the major parties do the right thing by the people of Australia, do the right thing by democracy itself and make sure we can shine a light on this legislation.

Pauline Hanson (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want the people listening to this, including those in the gallery, to understand that it is a blow to our democracy and the use of this parliament for all of us to look at this legislation which is going to be proposed and the impact it's going to have. For us to only just have received a draft of this in the last hour—and I haven't seen it—is uncommon for this parliament. We are rushing bills through and guillotining. There's no debate. There's nothing happening. And this is a real shame.

We're talking about the youth of this nation. We're going to shut them out from any internet or activity on social media whatsoever, because you want to be the nanny state. You want to take the control parents have over their children. Okay—there are things they're watching on the internet and social media. And you talk about bullying. Until you can actually deal with bullying in classrooms, what gives you the right to control what they watch on the internet, Facebook or these other social media outlets? You can't even control the classrooms, but you want to control what they watch.

I've pushed in this place four times to have a Senate inquiry into gender dysphoria, puberty blockers and hormone treatments for our children. Parents came here crying because of what it's done to their children. I wanted a Senate inquiry into that. You all voted against it initially. There were only three of us that voted for it. Last time, the coalition woke up themselves, but the Greens, the Labor Party and some of the crossbench still oppose it. You wouldn't even have an investigation into that. If you really care about the children, why don't you have a Senate inquiry into that? You're more worried about shutting them down. Why? It's because you want to control what they see, and that is why the misinformation and disinformation bill is all about control. Digital ID is about control. You only want them to see what you want them to see. You take control out of the parents' hands. Parents should be the ones to decide.

Not only that—what about the kids who benefit from social media, which I believe is possibly the majority? You want to take away from them what they can actually access. What about all the good things that they could be watching? You want to take that away from them. This is not a nanny state. This is not communist bloody China. This is Australia. This is what you're doing. You're shutting down parents' rights over their children constantly, day in and day out, and that has to stop. We are going to support this inquiry to take it up to February next year.

What I'm saying here also is that it is indicative of the politicians, both Labor and the coalition, going to your meetings and outside to the public, telling the people one thing and then acting totally different on the floor of parliament. The majority of Australians don't know what happens in this place. They don't know how you vote, what you vote for and or what you stand for. Half the time, I don't even know what the hell you stand for. I don't believe it's in the best interests of this country or the Australian people.

Stop pushing legislation and everything through this parliament just because we're coming to the end of this sitting term. Don't do this to the Australian people. Give them right to have their say. The Albanese government said, 'We're going to be open, honest and accountable,' but accountability is one thing that I have never seen in this parliament. It is just ridiculous. I hope that people understand that. You're the worst government I've ever seen. Stop taking control of the people and telling them how they should run their lives. Governments were set up for three things: the economic stability of the country, the rule of law and the Constitution. Let's adhere to the Constitution. Get out of telling people how to run their lives and their businesses.

David Pocock (ACT, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Surely the house of review should be voting in support of actually reviewing legislation. Yet what we've seen from the major parties is that, when there's something in it for them when it comes to electoral reform, they're happy to ram it through. There's no need for any scrutiny. When it comes to something that they want to take to an election and say, 'We delivered this,' they don't care about whether it's actually going to work, they don't care about what the experts are actually saying about this policy. They don't want to hear about it. They're very happy to team up when it suits them. And that's no surprise because we have seen, in the past three days, a number of experts raising concerns about this electoral reform and this charade of creating a level playing field. It is really about entrenching the duopoly. It's more money for the parties come election time; it's 'a level playing field' with loophole after loophole after loophole.

In the middle of a cost-of-living crisis we have the government bringing forward electoral reform, which doesn't come into effect until 2028, ahead of things like a mandatory food and grocery code. That's disgraceful. Tell that to the millions of Australians who turn up to the checkouts at Coles and Woolworths and look at how much it's costing them. And is it any surprise that the Coles and Woolworths of Australian politics don't want to deal with that? What they want to do is ram through electoral reform that is actually about an extra $20 million for their coffers every election. They'll get an extra $30,000 per MP per year for administration costs, and yet this place is very happy to put extra reporting duties on Australians, on small businesses. I don't see a $30,000 taxpayer handout to deal with the added requirements, so why is that the case when it comes to the parties?

At the same time, truth in political advertising legislation can wait. 'We'll introduce it, but it's not a priority.' This is a total stitch-up between the major parties. The fact is these things need scrutiny. When it comes to electoral reform, for more than 400 pages JSCEM talked in broad detail about the kinds of things the government should do. It went into no detail about the level of caps, how that would work, and we're already seeing experts raise concerns.

When it comes to social media and age-gating, people are rightly concerned about the impact of social media—what it means for young peoples' health and wellbeing, what it means for their childhoods—where you have the highly addictive product of smartphones run by companies that don't seem to give a stuff about what they're doing to the mental health of young people. And so rather than dealing with this huge problem in society, we have the government cooking up a silver bullet that experts have told me this week has been tried in 10 countries and has failed in 10 countries. The government is taking a one-off approach and they say, 'Right, no-one under 16 on social media.' That has to be part of a much broader suite of reforms, of actually putting the onus on social media companies to clean up their act, to make their product less addictive, to make it safer for people, to show us what the algorithms are actually doing. And, surely, have them start paying some actual tax here in Australia. Stop these social media companies shifting their advertising revenues overseas, taking a billion dollars worth of Australian ads and saying, 'We'll shift that off to our parent company.'

Why are you willing to do this but not actually do the hard thing of looking at the broader system? And while you're at it, let's invest more in the areas that we want people to be spending time at. Community sport is underfunded in this country. We jump up and down about the Matildas, but I still haven't seen more investment in women's sport.

Fatima Payman (WA, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It's not every day that I agree with Senator Hanson, but I must say that on this she's absolutely right. What are we doing to the generation that is so in tune and engaged with what's happening in politics? We come into this place, we take pride in ourselves through the Raise Our Voices program and we read speeches of young people in our electorates to make it seem like we care. But we've clearly seen that all the Labor and Liberal duopoly care about is a vote-buying exercise, a bandaid solution, to a more serious problem at hand. The intentions may be to protect our children, but the way we're going about it with the lack of scrutiny, the lack of consultation and the lack of proper research to allow us to really understand what is going into this bill are something that everyone—all the mums and dads out there—will scrutinise this government for.

We can see that this bill is a blunt attempt to cover up. Instead of addressing the root causes of a problem—instead of addressing the lack of mental health services out there for young people—it's a way to shut them down. Because they're not voting, why would their voices matter? They're not going to engage in our political system, so it's best to keep them in the dark! We're forgetting that this is the future generation that's going to be filling the space up—at least, we'd hope that they do, unless there's a way for the major parties duopoly to silence them as well. Where is the democracy, or is that just confetti we like to throw around when it suits us? It's outrageous that we don't get the time to scrutinise it. We don't get enough staff to read through these bills, and then we're expected to make decisions—or the government and the coalition make deals and just ram it through.

So much for transparency; so much for accountability! Then we wonder why we're not progressing. Isn't the Labor Party supposed to be a progressive party that actually gets things done and does the job? Or are you just here to say: 'At least we're not the coalition. They were in government for 10 years and didn't do anything'? Show us that you're doing something with accountability and allowing the crossbench to scrutinise what's before us, not just a short five-day-long inquiry into something that is going to have ramifications and impact the way our young people connect and the way they engage with technology. You can't blind them and keep them in a so-called safe place and not give them the tools necessary to engage with technological advancements.

Sue Lines (President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The time for this debate has expired. The question is that Senator McKim's amendment to the government's amendment, providing that, in relation to the Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Bill 2024, the committee report by 12 February 2025, be agreed to.

Sue Lines (President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The question now is that the amendment moved by the minister be agreed to.

Question agreed to.

Nick McKim (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As flagged, we have another amendment, in relation to the Electoral Legislation Amendment (Electoral Reform) Bill 2024 and associated bills. I move:

At the end of the motion, add:

"but, in respect of the Electoral Legislation Amendment (Electoral Reform) Bill 2024 and Electoral Legislation Amendment (Electoral Communications) Bill 2024, the provisions of the bills be referred immediately to the Finance and Public Administration Legislation Committee for inquiry and report by 3 February 2025".

I'm aware that my colleague Senator Waters wants to make an observation in regard to that, if that is possible.

Sue Lines (President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

She can't, the time has expired. The question is that paragraph (b) of the amendment which was circulated earlier by Senator McKim be agreed to.

David Pocock (ACT, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

DAVID POCOCK () (): I move paragraph (c) of my amendment:

At the end of the motion, add:

"(c) the Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Bill 2024, the provisions of the bill be referred immediately to the Environment and Communications Legislation Committee for inquiry and report by 28 November 2024".

I move this amendment to give us an extra couple of days to have a look at the Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Bill 2024.

Sue Lines (President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I do draw your attention to the Greens' motion which was similar and has just been defeated, but if you want it put, I will put it. The question is that paragraph (c) of the amendment moved by Senator David Pocock be agreed to.

David Pocock (ACT, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move paragraphs (a) and (b) as circulated, to try give the crossbench a bit more time on these bills:

At the end of the motion, add:

"but, in respect of

(a) the Electoral Legislation Amendment (Electoral Reform) Bill 2024, the provisions of the bill be referred immediately to the Finance and Public Administration Legislation Committee for inquiry and report by 3 March 2025; and

(b) the provisions of the Scams Prevention Framework Bill 2024, the Economics Legislation Committee report by 3 February 2025."

Andrew McLachlan (SA, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The question before the Senate is that paragraphs (a) and (b) of the amendment moved by Senator Pocock be agreed to.