Jonathon Duniam (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Environment, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Hansard source

I'll take the interjection from the minister. Three of the five years that we've had since Samuel tabled his report were wasted by you. You could have had this done in the last term, but you chose not to. You had your dark, smoke-filled rooms over there and you were doing deals with the business lobby, the green groups or whoever it was. We don't know, because there were all these nondisclosure agreements signed. Again, a hallmark of this government is a lack of transparency. All of these Labor senators think it's funny to deal with the public good and the environment and providing investor certainty is just a laughing matter. Well, I'm sorry, but it's not.

That's why this Senate needs to do its job. That's why we are holding this government to account today. We will be ensuring that there is scrutiny applied to this legislation, as is required, not just bowing to the minister's demands, acquiescing, rolling over and being compliant. I'm sorry, but it doesn't work like that. This legislation will come out the other end looking much better than it's gone in, and we will actually see what this government intends to do for this country, whether it's serious about wanting to do a good job for the environment and business. At this point, we don't know, because what's been tabled in the other place isn't even complete. Lobby groups are telling us they need the time. Both environmental and business groups want to look at this legislation properly. So we will support the extension for this inquiry because it's important to have this scrutiny, but we're not going to roll over. We're sick of being told what to do by a government that doesn't know what it's doing.