Michaelia Cash (WA, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

With all due respect, Minister, it's one thing to say a bill is all about modernisation and expectations; it's another thing to hide those expectations from the Australian public, who deserve to know exactly what those standards are, particularly given the nature of the agencies that we are referring to. So far, we have established that the minister can issue performance standards to certain statutory office holders and that those performance standards may then form the basis for a finding of unsatisfactory performance leading to termination. It sounds very simple, but what we have also now established is that this bill deliberately excludes those performance standards from the definition of a legislative instrument. That therefore means that, if they are not legislative instruments, the parliament doesn't see them and doesn't have an opportunity to therefore disallow them. We also now know that the minister writes these performance standards, and they don't go anywhere near the two houses of parliament. There's no requirement for that. Minister, I now also ask: is it also correct that the bill contains no requirement for these standards to be published?