Kevin Hogan (Page, National Party, Shadow Minister for Trade and Tourism) Share this | Hansard source

 On a lot of very important bills that have gone through this chamber, debate has effectively been gagged and guillotined by this government. I note that it has happened to some of the standing orders too. It is quite ironic that one of the first things this government did when coming in was to change the standing orders to basically take away some of the democratic practices in this chamber.

I do note that we have some crossbenchers here today. I can only assume that the crossbenchers in here today will be standing to support the amendments moved by the Manager of Opposition Business, because the crossbenchers especially ran on transparency and integrity. I'm sure they're going to be supporting the amendments moved by the Manager of Opposition Business, because what we're trying to do with these amendments is to bring more integrity and more transparency into the process on what we're talking about today. I don't think the Greens member will be supporting the integrity and transparency on the amendment moved by the Manager of Opposition Business this morning, because he's been involved in the secret negotiations and he will want to wave this through as well.

Let's go to the specifics of what we're talking about here today. As the Manager of Opposition Business said, this is quite involved and serious legislation. When this came through the House of Representatives the first time around, as the Manager of Opposition Business said, we were gagged and it was guillotined. It came in with 270 pages of legislation and was introduced to parliament the very next day. That is unusual for such serious legislation; there's often more time to look at it. Then, as the Manager of Opposition Business says, there were only 20 minutes of debate for each set of amendments as it went through this House. Again, this was all about gagging and a guillotine, because the government just wanted to rush this through. What have we seen because of this? We always said this would cause issues and problems. They have done the same process in the Senate. They guillotined debate, gagged debate there. So what happened? We always go, 'When you do that, problems happen,' and guess what happened? Something went through they didn't want to go through. What went through was jail penalties for bosses if they breach some of the Fair Work Commission orders. I am glad the government—and I agree with them—are looking to reverse that because that was an outrageous proposal put forward by the Greens, so I do commend the government that they are looking to reverse something that they passed through that should never have happened. But it happened because of the guillotining and the gagging and by not letting parliamentary process roll out over the time that it should. That is exactly why we are moving these amendments today.

Again, given we are talking about industrial relations and legislation, as the Manager of Opposition Business said earlier there is a reason that everyone on that side will sit very quietly on this, because this is about every single person over there's paymaster. They all have their own union paymaster. This whole legislation here is about supporting legislation supporting union power. This is all about those opposite paying back who they need to pay.

To go back, we warned those opposite. When this legislation was first introduced in the House of Representatives, we said to the Leader of the House then, 'What will happen when you gag, when you guillotine, when you rush things through the chamber and due process doesn't happen is mistakes will be made. Doing this again today means that will happen.' In the Senate, with the gagging and with the guillotine that happened, a mistake was made. We say to the government, 'You were elected on the issue of integrity. You were elected on the issue of transparency.' I have no doubt, as I said, that the crossbenchers will be supporting us on this because this has nothing to do with integrity of process. This has nothing to do with transparency. This is about rushing a bill through the House. A mistake was made in the Senate because of this. I commend the amendments moved by the Manager of Opposition Business.

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