Peter Whish-Wilson (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

That was an unusual calling for a quorum. Anyway, Senator, you managed to disrupt a few spillover estimates sessions.

I'm on my feet on behalf of the Australian Greens to support the Biosecurity Amendment (Strengthening Biosecurity) Bill 2022. I must say I nearly did a double take listening to Senator McKenzie talk about the importance of Australia's environmental assets, their trillions of dollars worth of value and how we have to do everything to protect our Australian environmental assets. Well, you won't get any disagreement from the Australian Greens on that very important point. But I do note that our biosecurity risks are directly correlated to our changing climate, and no-one in this country has done more than the National Party to ruin a decade of action on climate. I would bring the Nationals' attention back to that specific point. If they actually care about strengthening our biosecurity, they would both act on mitigating emissions, in line with at least the Paris protocol and, of course, put in place a number of adaptation measures.

I also note that the Australian Greens are very aware that Senator McKenzie said that, under her government, a billion dollars was made available for biosecurity arrangements. I asked at estimates last week roughly how much money was spent on overall biosecurity expenditure, and the department said, 'Around a couple of hundred million dollars a year, Senator.' When we drilled down into how much is actually spent on environmental risks, in other words, biosecurity risks specific to the environment—for example, to threatened species—we found that there's a fund for $800,000. The rest of that funding is pretty much targeted at industry. So there's a big imbalance there that we've got to deal with, because, yes, it's important to look after our industry—and I agree with what Senator McKenzie said about our agricultural sector and our exports—but we've also got to look after our environment. So I would draw the senator's attention to that.

We support the bill today; however, unlike the Nationals—and I heard nothing at all from their contribution—or the LNP, and presumably the Labor Party, we have some significant problems with this legislation. If I had my way, we would have been putting up substantive amendments today to deal with some issues in this legislation in committee. I'm happy to mention that we brought this up with Mr Littleproud's office, and I brought this up with my colleagues across the chamber. I refer senators to pages 49 to 55 of Scrutiny Digest 7 of 2022, which draws to the attention of the Senate the appropriateness of exempting instruments made under proposed section 196A, proposed section 196B and proposed section 393B from the usual parliamentary disallowance process and of including no-invalidity clauses at proposed section 196A and 393B.

In other words, to put it simply, through this bill, this chamber, this Commonwealth parliament, is walking away from disallowing instruments. It's actually insulting that the agriculture minister somehow feels that we can't do our job. I think all senators would agree that none of us should be supporting measures to reduce the power of the Senate to scrutinise ministers and departments. That's our job. That is why we're here. It is why we're elected. It is bread-and-butter, plain vanilla work for us. Yet, while this bill is very important and we support what's in it, it shouldn't be beyond the scrutiny of this chamber. I will give you a little bit more detail on that. The Scrutiny Digest 7 of 2022states:

In Scrutiny Digest 6 of 2022 the committee requested the minister's advice as to:

I won't go through the details, because 10 minutes is not enough time in which to do so, but the minister responded in relation to the no-invalidity clauses that that kind of power was necessary. He advised that the intended section 196A and 393B determinations would be made in a consultative manner in all but exceptional circumstances. He talked about biosecurity threats being urgent and emerging and about the need to respond immediately.

Then, in terms of exemptions from disallowance, the minister considered that exemptions from the disallowance process within the bill were appropriate and he did not propose to amend the bill to remove the exemptions—in other words, to pass them but make them disallowable in case the Senate wanted to scrutinise those. He basically said that they are decisions that are scientific and technical in nature, are critical to the effective management of biosecurity risks and may enable emergency action to manage a threat or harm from a biosecurity risk.

Since when has this chamber and our committee process not been up to scratch in terms of dealing with legislation, where we have to make decisions on legislation that is scientific and technical in nature, which we get nearly every day in this place? Really? How did you guys miss this? Why weren't you concerned about this?