David Pocock (ACT, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

At the end of the motion, add "and the provisions of Schedule 5 to the bill be referred to the Community Affairs Legislation Committee for inquiry and report by 5 March 2026".

This amendment simply provides the Senate with the opportunity to scrutinise schedule 5 of the Social Security and Other Legislation Amendment (Technical Changes No. 2) Bill, which, as we have learned over this week, has actually had no scrutiny from a Senate committee and no scrutiny from the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights. Given the very serious concerns that have been raised by eminent human rights lawyers and frontline service organisations, it would be prudent for the Senate to actually say: 'The government has made the case that this is very urgent. The Senate has now passed this bill, part of which was subject to scrutiny. Schedule 5 was not. Let's at least have a look at it now as a senate.' That does not seem unreasonable to me at all.

Again, as I said earlier, we live in a country without a human rights act, without an overarching protection of people's human rights. Last term, we saw a Labor-led parliamentary inquiry in the other place recommending a human rights act. Josh Burns, now the Special Envoy for Social Housing and Homelessness, did great work on that committee. It's also in the Labor Party's platform. Yet schedule 5 of this bill, as lawyers have warned us, actually goes against people's fundamental human rights in this country and against principles of natural justice.

The government made their case as to why this bill was urgent. Fair enough. It has now passed the Senate. At least allow some scrutiny of schedule 5. At least allow a Senate committee to look at this. Labor will say: 'Well, we are transparent. We've got nothing to hide.' Yet, when they're presented with the opportunity, they often vote against scrutiny. You've got to start walking the talk on this. You can't just turn around and attack groups like the Centre for Public Integrity. We need to see a change from this government when it comes to transparency and allowing more scrutiny. So I put this amendment to colleagues.

This is something the Senate should be looking at. We are the house of review. We've heard concerns from coalition senators. We've heard concerns from the Greens and from others on the crossbench. We have the numbers to send this to a committee, and I implore you to allow the Senate to do its work and look at schedule 5 through the committee process.