Adam Bandt (Melbourne, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

This government promised transparency but it's not delivering it. This bill, the Bankruptcy Amendment (Discharge from Bankruptcy) Bill 2023, was introduced yesterday and we received our first briefing on it this morning, and now we're being asked to debate and vote on it. This bill may be an urgent bill but there has been no case made by anyone about the supposed urgency of it. It may a technical bill, but we don't have the basis or the time to consider that and seek advice from stakeholders or others. It may be that what has in fact happened is the government just didn't get its act together to draft a bill in time, to give us the usual courtesy of the ability to examine it and get advice on it. When this happened under the previous government, Labor railed against it. When the Liberals came in here and introduced legislation one day and said, 'You've got to vote on it the same day or the next', they said, 'No, we need time to consider it.' And they were right then, but it seems that transparency and the ability for this parliament to scrutinise evaporates as soon as Labor hits government.

The parliament shouldn't have to just take the executive's word for it that something is urgent. We have the right to test that. And the parliament shouldn't just have to take the executive's word for it that something is technical. We should have the right to test that. That's what inquiry processes in this parliament are for. That's what debate is for. That's why, in the ordinary course, when legislation is introduced, there is a period of time for people to go away, read it, take advice, take briefings and then come back with a considered position. But for some reason the government has decided not to do that. You've always got to watch out as you get towards the end of the year in this place, because when you get to the end of the year they all come in here and tell you: 'Something's urgent and it's got to be passed, and we've got to chuck scrutiny overboard. Just take our word for it.' It may well happen a number of other times between now and the end of the year.

If it's the case that this is so urgent, then explain why and tell us why, if it's that urgent, it took until this morning to get a briefing. If it's really that urgent, surely the government must have been drafting the legislation over a period of time. They could have come to us and said: 'Here, it's urgent. We're going to introduce this. Let us give you some information about what's happening to satisfy you.' No, they didn't do that. They just come in here and say: 'We'll tell you about it. Take our word for it that it's urgent and there are going to be no unintended consequences—absolutely none.'

Only this week we had ministers getting up in the House and speaking in favour of amendments they said improved their own legislation because those amendments were discovered during an inquiry process and they said they made the bill better; that's what debate in this place does. But instead we're being asked to accept we should have no right to debate or scrutinise legislation. The opposition may be happy with that; they may have got earlier briefings and been brought into the tent earlier on this, I don't know. Maybe they've got access to information the rest of us haven't. The penny doesn't have seemed to have dropped with Labor that the two-party system is over. There is a bigger crossbench in this parliament than there has been in any other parliament. When the Liberals and Labor sit down and do a deal, they are excluding the third of the country that have said they want third voices in here, in part to ensure integrity in this place and to ensure deals are not done that adversely affect people.

We on the crossbench have the right to consider government legislation, and if we'd had the opportunity to consider this piece of legislation we might well have agreed with the Attorney that it's technical legislation that is urgent, and we may have been in a position to support it. But, instead, Labor has deprived us of the opportunity to scrutinise their legislation, and they're just asking us to take their word for it.

It may well be that actually what is going on is revealed in the next bill, because the next bill—in the limited time that we've had to look at it—is retrospective. It retrospectively changes the laws of this country back to 2013, and the government is just asking us to take their word for it that it's all okay. That should raise huge alarm bells, and, again, I'll speak to this more in the next bill, because that may be legislation that people are prepared to support. But instead we get this Christmas Eve special from the government that there's legislation, some of which is retrospective, and that we've just got to take their word that it's technical.

I want to ask Labor this: why are the members of the crossbench being denied the usual opportunity to scrutinise this legislation and go and get stakeholder feedback? Why do we not have the capacity to go and check, understand and look at a review of the legislation or an inquiry into the legislation, seek our own advice and satisfy ourselves about what the government has said? No basis has been provided for it, so we're not in a position to support passage of this bill or the other bill today, and we reserve our position as the Greens in the Senate. I say very, very clearly to the government that the crossbench has a right to scrutinise legislation and to debate it. In the absence of a compelling case of urgency—which could have been made to us well before this week, because I'm sure the legislation wasn't drafted yesterday morning—you could have made this case to us well before this week. In the absence of a compelling case for urgency, every single member of the crossbench has as much right as any other member of this parliament to consider legislation.

If you want to know why the two-party system is in decline, I say to the government, through the Deputy Speaker, to have a look at your processes. Labor's vote went backwards at the election. They still won enough seats to just crawl into majority government, but their vote went backwards. We now have a situation in this country where less than a third of the country voted for the government, a bit more than a third of the country voted for the opposition and a third voted for someone else. Part of the reason for that is that people are sick of the public being kept in the dark and just told to accept what the government tells them and accept it at face value. If you want to start returning some integrity into politics then start with the processes of this place and give everyone in this place time to debate and consider legislation.

I repeat the point that it may well be that this legislation is non-controversial, and had the government just done what they do with every other piece of legislation—introduce it, give us time to consider it and time debate it and then bring on a vote—it may well have got the unanimous support of parliament. But I don't know, and we won't know, because the government has deprived us of an opportunity. Labor promised transparency, and they're not delivering it.

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