Murray Watt (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Hansard source

I might respond to the issues that have been raised so far. Senator Whish-Wilson, sounds unhappy with the fact that the addendum to the explanatory memorandum has only just been tabled. I would point out that my office received the letter from the committee only about lunchtime yesterday and have moved heaven and earth to get the addendum even done at all. Sure, in an ideal world, it would have been nice to have been able to provide that to you earlier, and maybe it would have been nice to have received the committee's letter earlier, but I understand they had to work through their processes, and we've had to do the same thing. I just want to defend the people in my department and my office, who have worked very hard to provide the addendum at extremely short notice.

Before I respond to Senator Scarr's points, I will point out that this is not the first time that we have seen non-disallowable powers provided to the health minister or the agriculture minister through the Biosecurity Act. In fact, the current Biosecurity Act contains 28 provisions that enable the making of legislative instruments that are exempt from disallowance. That's because biosecurity outbreaks are extremely serious things that need to be brought under control very quickly. I recognise that there are probably many more powers in the biosecurity legislation than 28that are disallowable, but this is not an unprecedented action, and it is recognised in the Commonwealth Legislation Act that parliaments have the ability to confer non-disallowable powers on ministers for extreme situations. It's not as if there is no power to do so, but it is important that when ministers come to this chamber and seek those sorts of powers they be confined to extreme situations, which is the case here. What is also the case here is that the non-disallowable powers we're talking about, which would only be able to be used in the event of an extreme biosecurity emergency, also can only be used on the basis of scientific advice. There's not some wide power for ministers to go out and do whatever they want. They need to be able to justify and demonstrate that they've got scientific advice—from our biosecurity experts in the department, for instance—that the kinds of actions we're talking about are necessary. And they are for a very limited number of functions.

Senator Scarr, I may not be able to recall every single one of your questions, but the point you made towards the end—and we've had this discussion in the lead-up to this legislation—that if these powers were to be disallowable rather than non-disallowable they could still be exercised, and if there was a problem with them, they could then be dealt with through disallowance. The risk is not only that we are talking about a situation where there is a biosecurity emergency but that a number of the powers that are provided to the minister require action from other people, such as airport operators and ports, and in some cases would require significant investments from them to be able to do what the minister is directing them to do.

Our experience is that it can take some time to negotiate these things with airport operators, the ports and other people, and, we think the risk that those powers are going to be overturned by the Senate—particularly if you're talking about requiring people to make big investments to meet those powers—is, potentially, a deterrent to the likes of airport operators, port operators and others to do what is necessary to be done. Again, we're talking about a situation where there's a biosecurity emergency. We need all action stations. We need everyone—government, airport operators, port operators, biosecurity officers or whoever's involved—heading in the same direction very quickly to contain an episode. The risk of disallowance of these powers, we think, is a disincentive for some of the external parties that we need to cooperate with us from getting on and doing what needs to be done.