Jacqui Lambie (Tasmania, Jacqui Lambie Network) Share this | Hansard source

Well, blow me over: if this doesn't reek of union all over it, I don't know what does. You've got to be kidding! You're doing an omnibus on IR laws! The whole time I've been up here, with these omnibuses, what did you say? These omnibuses have got to go. So what do you do with some of the most important things that need to be done over the next term of parliament? What do you do with these IR laws that need to be looked at properly? You roll them into an omnibus and try to run that bus down the bloody hill. That is what is going on here.

I will not be doing this. How am I going to speak to my businesses in Tasmania? I haven't even seen the bill. We haven't seen it. These are going to be some of the most crucial and important decisions we are going to make for the future when it comes to IR, and you're trying to shove them down our throats? Seriously? If this is the way it is going to go, goodness me, this is just not going to function well up here, I can assure you. I need time to go and have a look at that bill—for the first time. I need to go and use the small number of staff I now have left to try to dissect that bill, and if you think I can do that in a few weeks, I don't know what planet you are living on. Oh, that's right—you're living on the planet of the unions. I can tell you: it is not going to happen. It is not going to happen over this bill or any other important bill you put up in the future and you want to ram down our throats. You will not get that vote. You will not get it.

If you want this done a little bit quicker, great, give our staff back. That's fine. In the meantime, with the few staff we have left, keep wearing them down so we get a revolving door of staff, which makes it worse. But there is no way—no way!—that reporting date is happening this year. I'm sorry for those guys out there who expect pay rises and all the rest. I apologise to you. But, when it comes to the Jacqui Lambie Network, I have stipulated that we will not vote on anything in this parliament without putting it under the microscope. If you don't give us time to digest things and put them under that microscope, you will never, ever get our vote. We will just vote against you. So here is a very clear reminder of how we operate up here. This is what the Tasmanian people expect from me, and I will give them nothing less.

This needs to go to a Senate inquiry. There are going to be, I imagine, a lot of people putting in submissions to this, which we will also have to go through. The amount of time that you have given us to do that is absolutely shameful. It is shameful with regard to the people you are trying to get wages for, and it is shameful with regard to small business, who have been through two years of COVID and are struggling to keep their doors open still. You're not doing this to my small businesses down there in Tasmania, because that's who we rely on. We need their doors open. We are not rushing this legislation.