Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities) Share this | Hansard source

And apparently the senators are not your coalition partners, from that interjection. We ended up in a situation where that massive expansion that was proposed was rejected by those opposite who are now interjecting, and the whole legislation took quite a few months extra to be able to get through.

It is now through, and I can advise the member for New England that I am in the final stages of being able to announce the membership of the committee. That is something I expect to be able to do in the next few days. At that point we will have a finalised committee. Because of the delays, I intend to ask the finalised committee, once it is proclaimed, to review any of the work that the interim committee has done. I am not rushing to make any decisions that are ready in the interim to make sure that the finalised committee is actually able to do its job in spite of that delay.

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