Barnaby Joyce (New England, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to say that we have been absolutely jammed in consideration of this. The first bill, which was part of the omnibus bill, arrived at 7.09 in the morning and was guillotined at 10.00. This bill arrived sometime later. It's substantially different to what was in the omnibus bill, and now we're about to be guillotined again. I might just take you to one section of it that really concerns me. It concerns me that a hate crime, as of now, would constitute an offence against provisions of a law of a state or territory. What we are now relying on—and this is very concerning—is that you will come under the remit of the Commonwealth for a hate crime in aggravated circumstances, punishable by up to 15 years in jail, premised on what a state or territory might deem to be a hate crime.

We're starting to get an awfully wide net on what was supposed to be succinctly dealing with the issue of antisemitism. If we had had a clarion focus on antisemitism—that is, the hatred and attacking of the Jewish people, which has been done in this instance by fundamental Islamic terrorism—then this would be so much cleaner, but you have broadened this in such a form that stapled to a very noble cause is a whole range of peripheral issues. That really causes great concern. When people vote against this—and they will—it has to be understood that it is because of the mischievous nature of attaching other circumstances to the bill that it has to be voted down in bulk.

This bill has not been to a committee. There's an omnibus bill that has, but this section of that omnibus bill is substantially different. It has not been to a committee. It has not had the proper transparency. A bill that has not been to a committee is nonetheless going to be guillotined. Why are you voting for something that, might I suggest, you haven't even read? What other things that you haven't even read are you now going to just vote for? You definitely haven't read the 89 pages of this. I have to admit there are not a lot of differences in this, but there certainly are in the other one. If you want to have the jurisdiction of the federal Crimes Act being administered by a territory and then the legal act of a territory determining the penalty you will have under the Commonwealth act, then this— (Time expired)

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