George Brandis (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Attorney-General) Share this | Hansard source

The opposition opposes the government’s amendment for reasons I outlined in my remarks on the opposition’s amendments. Briefly, this amendment is afflicted by the triple vices of circularity, redundancy and vagueness. It is circular because it defines genuineness in terms of genuineness. It is redundant because it defines genuine steps in terms of steps taken in seeking to resolve the dispute, which is the object of the bill in any event. It is vague because ultimately the only new element of meaning that is introduced by the definition is the concept of sincerity.

The rules of court are not romantic novels. Human sentiment has no part in their dry and dusty pages. If the draftsmen were seeking some notion of good faith then they could have used the term ‘good faith’, which has a received legal meaning. If the opposition’s proposal had been adopted then the term ‘reasonableness’ would necessarily have implied good faith because it is difficult to imagine that a step could be reasonable unless it were also genuine or, by the extended definition of ‘genuine’, sincere. So we think this is a poor definition. It is very sloppy and it applies the wrong test. For those reasons, we oppose it.