Joe Ludwig (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Manager of Opposition Business in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

I think you are right, Senator Murray: it would have been preferable to quarantine it to the Cole commission and then make it in futuro. We will support your amendments. One of the early matters we considered was limiting the ambit of the bill to the Cole commission; it was one of the options that we looked at. I think we did in fact urge the government to take that path. In the end, the government were not persuaded to adopt that path. They have the fortunate position of having the numbers in this place. If they did not have the numbers in this place then we may have perhaps been able to effect a more particular outcome.

In the end, we took note of the particular numbers in this place and were—perhaps content is not the word—at least provided with some assurance that the government would take a particular course in respect of the bill by adopting a process of limiting both the purposes and custodians of the bill to law enforcement agencies. Although not an ideal outcome, in the circumstances I think it at least narrows the stretch of the application of the bill.

Theoretically, though, we believe that what you have proposed would have been a better approach. It is an approach that originally we also urged as being one manner of addressing the issue. But, ultimately, we were faced with a very short time frame to come to a decision. We are satisfied with the government’s position but, in the spirit of still having a try, we are happy to support your amendments.