Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Minister for Fisheries, Forestry and Conservation) Share this | Hansard source

The government opposes the motion put forward by Senator Bartlett. What Senator Bartlett and Senator Ludwig have told the Senate would, on the face of it, make a fair degree of sense, until you realise that the selection of bills proposal that the government is supporting is the referral of six bills to various committees. When you look at those six bills, you see that two of them are from the minor parties: one from Family First and one from the Leader of the Democrats herself, the National Market Driven Energy Efficiency Target Bill 2007. The government has some questions about the policy intent of that bill, as it does with the Family First proposal, but it is more than happy for those bills to be referred to Senate committees. The bland argument that the government will not consider any dissent, that the government will not allow the reference of anything which it does not agree with, falls flat at the very first hurdle, which is: what are we actually debating? Out of the six bills being referred, two are from minor parties and the government has not indicated its support for them.

We as a government make a considered decision—and it would be good if every senator would do this—in relation to each bill that is proposed. We then look at the work, at the timing and at the particular value of each of the bills. In the case of the Same-Sex: Same Entitlements Bill 2007, we simply advise the Senate—and I dare say that this is, perhaps, where the idea of this bill came from—that the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission reported on this very matter, and its report was tabled in this place on 27 June 2007.

Are we trying to stifle consideration? No. The Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, which this government funds, received 680 submissions. That is a lot of public input and a lot of public consideration, and guess what? The government wants to consider the report. That is not unreasonable. Given that another arm has already investigated this—namely, the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, which received over 680 submissions on that particular issue—we believe it is a bit premature to have such a Senate inquiry.

The government does not support the referral of the Migration Legislation Amendment (Restoration of Rights and Procedural Fairness) Bill 2007 because most of the provisions the bill would seek to repeal—and that is what we are discussing—were enacted with the support of the then government and opposition. So this issue had a lot of public debate at the time the government and opposition agreed to it and now somebody is wanting to revisit the issues and repeal some of those sections. We are saying no, the Senate has had a fair crack at this already, has had a look at that, and, therefore, this is not a fresh and new debate—matters have already been considered.

We have taken a very principled and considered approach to all the bills put before us—the two new ones, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (Fair Bank and Credit Card Fees) Amendment Bill 2007 and the National Market Driven Energy Efficiency Target Bill 2007, things that the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission have not looked into and things that the Senate has not debated before. These new and fresh matters are worthy of a Senate inquiry and that is why we support them, but we do not support the other matters which have already been given considerable airtime. When you manage these things, you have to determine value in consideration of each measure.