Jane Hume (Victoria, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Employment and Industrial Relations) Share this | Hansard source

Pursuant to contingent notice standing in the name of the Leader of the Opposition in the Senate, I move:

That so much of the standing orders be suspended as would prevent further consideration of the bill without limitation of time.

Thank you very much. This is an extraordinary decision that we've seen today. This was a bill that was introduced only last Thursday and was rammed through the House of Representatives without any debate, without even time for anybody from the opposition to read the bill before it was rammed through. Now, the government is trying to do the same in the Senate. This is extraordinary. It's absolutely extraordinary. This is the government's idea of responding to a fuel crisis that has been going on for five weeks. We have told the government time and time again, 'Look out the window of Parliament House, and you can see that the bowsers are dry.' In fact, the petrol station closest to where the Prime Minister lives, closest to the Lodge, had run out of fuel last week.

Somehow, it wasn't a crisis. First, we heard from the government that there wasn't a crisis, then, we heard it was a crisis, but it was only caused by people buying fuel—which was un-Australian. Apparently, you're all un-Australian for doing something as basic as filling up your car when the prices are lower than you know they're going to be next week. It's just extraordinary. This is how the government has responded. Now, when they finally come to the House of Representatives with a bill to do one tiny little thing to help the trucking industry—they've asked for heaps of things; the government are doing one tiny little thing—they ram it through without any debate.

This is a pretty serious piece of legislation. It's an amendment to the Fair Work Act. The Fair Work Act is the entire framework for employee-employer relationships. It's all about making sure you have an appropriate balance of power. Adjust this without scrutiny and it can have incredibly dire unintended consequences, but, for some reason, the government does not want to have any debate on it. We took this very seriously, and have proposed some pretty basic amendments—things like, if you're going to have emergency provisions, how about you have a sunset clause? You only use your emergency provisions during an emergency. Who would've thought that that would be so controversial? But, no, the government doesn't want to consider that.

We suggested that, perhaps, if we're not going to have sunset provisions, you might like to have an independent review of the provisions after a couple of months—six months—of the bill being in place. I would have thought that that would be pretty reasonable, considering there is already a statutory review of the closing the loopholes bill, and we're changing legislation before it's reviewed. I would have thought that an additional review of this particular provision would not be unreasonable, but, no, that's not something the government wants to consider. They also don't want to consider enforcing consultation for the exercise of the powers that they are giving the Fair Work Commission. That's extraordinary, considering that was the one thing that the trucking industry asked of the government in the closing the loopholes legislation. That was what they wanted. They wanted that consultation period. But no, the government doesn't want to consider that.

They don't want to consider only using these provisions in an emergency. In fact, they'd rather like to use these provisions in times that aren't emergencies as well. They don't want to align the definition of emergency in one piece of legislation as well as another, so you can have one minister declaring an emergency and another one saying, 'Well, it's not really an emergency,' but still using the provisions. That's entirely inconsistent. There's an idea that you would use these provisions—that the minister would have these increased powers—without any checks or balances for something than other than fuel. They might want to change the terms of the contract for other reasons. They might want to change it for industrial relations purposes. That is sneaking through legislation without scrutiny. That's what's happening right now. First of all they rammed it through the House of Representatives. Now they're trying to ram it through the Senate, without answering these very basic questions.

We said we would not stand in the way of the trucking industry getting a better deal. That was why we announced a cut to the fuel excise well before the government did. That was why we pushed for that. That was why we pushed for a cut in the heavy vehicle road user charge. Now finally the government has come onboard, but this tiny little nod to the trucking industry is being pushed through without any scrutiny. The implications of that are far reaching.

We stand behind Australia's trucking industry. We want to make sure we see more trucks on the road, that they get access to the fuel they need and that they do so at a reasonable price, so that Australians don't end up paying the cost. But this government doesn't care about the cost to Australians. What they—