Allegra Spender (Wentworth, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I welcome the opportunity to speak on the Commonwealth Entities Legislation Amendment Bill 2026. This legislation, I believe, is perfectly unobjectionable. It brings the statutory office holders who lead four Commonwealth agencies into line with our other government organisations by reducing their maximum term of appointment from seven to five years and by adding grounds for suspension or termination of office holders similar to what exists for other positions.

The question I have for the government is: at a time when inflation is high, when productivity is in the doldrums, when house prices mean young people are struggling to get into the housing market and achieve the same outcomes as their parents, when social cohesion is under pressure, when trust in government is at a low ebb and when Australia's clean energy transition is happening more slowly than we would like, is this legislation really the best use of our parliamentary time? Is tweaking the employment contracts of four government appointed officials really an issue at the top of the government's precious parliamentary agenda? I would genuinely hope that this sort of bill would come in a big omnibus bill of uncontentious pieces of legislation that we could push through parliament, so we can focus on more important things, but in this case it hasn't. This is the question I ask the government in relation to this: where is the ambition and how is it reflected in the legislative agenda? Every week we have a crossbench briefing from the government on legislation for the coming weeks. They cancelled it tonight because there was only one bill to bring forward and it was a very minimal one. Again, we're going to have sat six out of nine weeks. Where is the legislative agenda that really justifies this?

There is important work to be done. For instance, the government has indicated—very rightly, I think—that there's a significant deregulation agenda that is required. Where's that legislation? They have taken steps forward on things like the 'tell us once' policy, but there is much, much more work to do. This is the sort of legislation I think people expect us to be dealing with in the parliament. What about the whistleblower protections—they're long overdue—or gambling reform, or protections for LGBTQ+ students and teachers so that they can't be fired or expelled because of who they love, because of getting divorced or because of having a child out of wedlock? What about forcing companies to allow you to opt out of social media algorithms, or dealing with the CFMEU and the impact that has had on government procurement, with $15 billion worth of expected impact in Victoria, of which probably $2 billion is federal money?

That really is the question here. I respect this piece of legislation. I have no problems with it as a piece of legislation. But the country expects us to be doing much more on issues that matter to them. The government's legislative agenda is absolutely surprisingly light, given the challenges facing our country. The question for the government is: is this the ambition that you should be approaching, given you have a supermajority in the House and you have two different and achievable pathways through the Senate? Surely there is more that the government can do with its legislative agenda than this.

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