Claire Moore (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Women) Share this | Hansard source

I suppose we do not need this half hour. We certainly do not need until whatever time this afternoon for the debate, as we just heard the debate on the bill. We just heard what has been agreed to. I called the Manager of Government Business this morning to discuss what was happening on general notices of motion this afternoon. Naturally, I did not immediately get a call back because people are very busy. It was not until 24 minutes past 12 that I got a call back from the Manager of Government Business in the Senate not to respond to the question I put but to tell us that we were going to have 'a time managed process to look at the MRRT'.

That was seemingly not a surprise to many people who have been able to gather in the chamber today to hear about what is going to happen. It was a bit of a surprise to us, because we thought we had an established process, that we would have a discussion around how we would bring the bills on in this place and how we would work through them and come up with a parliamentary decision.

We have had many hours of debate on this bill. We know that. We think it is an important bill. The hours of debate we had a couple of weeks ago on this issue led to a range of decisions around important issues, some of which have come up today in amendments which we have just seen. These include important areas around low-income super and the schoolkids bonus. Those are issues that we debated in this place and understood. We have now seen the government response and we have to work out what has happened.

But the absolute doozy is this new proposal on superannuation for other Australian workers. We have not seen this before. This in itself constitutes an issue which demands debate in the Senate. It is definitely something that all of us care strongly about. Superannuation, as we know, is an important element for all Australian workers. Today an amendment which we have just seen has come through looking at a wage freeze for Australian workers for seven years. I have would have thought that this was a significant issue not just for this chamber but for workers and employers all across this nation. However, as we are led to believe is going to be standard practice from this government, they did not bring this out so we could look at it carefully, see the impact and look at the costings. We know that one thing about this particular amendment is that it will not be a spend; it will be a save. It will be a big save. And at whose expense will it be? It will be at the expense of people who are working in our community. To have their guaranteed superannuation frozen into the future is not really an incentive. It does not protect the real value of super and, in fact, is a wage cut.

We believe that the issues that we have before us are significant. They demand some cooperation from people in this chamber to bring forth the real arguments. But, as I have said, we have heard that the process is going to be, in effect, guillotined in the Senate. We have got through three weeks of sittings in the new parliament and already we have a guillotine that is going to affect legislation impacting on Australian workers. We need better than this. If this is going to be their methodology, I would suggest we do not even have to come into this chamber. A deal could be made. We may take up the wonderful proposition that I remember then Senator Barnaby Joyce suggesting in this chamber of email voting! We could just have information sent out and we could press a button saying yea or nay.

Bringing this into this chamber in this way today, in effect, negates the opportunity for debate and negates the opportunity for questions. As the motion now reads, we will have about 40 minutes to push through all the amendments and push through this whole bill. Then people can go out to the community and say they have saved the people of Australia. But what they have actually done, as has happened many times, is come to a deal. We have not had appropriate Senate scrutiny of a major change in policy and a major savings measure which was not put out in the budget and was never debated.

We should have known yesterday when we heard all those bells ringing over in the other place and saw all those flashing green lights that something was happening. We should have known that. But we will not even have the chance for a flashing red light in the Senate today— (Time expired)