Bridget McKenzie (Victoria, National Party, Shadow Minister for Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Development) Share this | Hansard source

You'll have your chance, Senator Shoebridge. We fully support the motion to remove this bill, and urge the government not to inflict further damage by trying to revive it. We want this bill dead, buried and cremated so that our veterans and their families know that this parliament, this chamber supports their efforts in the theatre of war.

I do want to actually call out and congratulate the shadow minister Darren Chester, who has done a mountain of work with our veterans community. He's been actually working with them and working with the crossbench to seek to highlight how negative this bill has been for our veterans community, and to generate a groundswell of community support to get this bill off the Notice Paper and to make sure it doesn't see the light of day. The national campaign calling on Labor members to reject this bill received overwhelming support with nearly 3,000 Australians signing on within a single week. It's not just the opposition, the Greens or the crossbench that think this bill is bad; everyday Australians also think this bill is negative. Let veterans, ADF personnel and their families be in no doubt—if the government attempts to bring this legislation back, we will fight it every step of the way. We will be supporting the discharge of this bad bill from the Senate Notice Paper, and let's hope it stays in the bin, where it deserves to be.