Matthew Canavan (Queensland, Liberal National Party) Share this | Hansard source

We have very little time to ask questions of the government about this extraordinary piece of legislation. In the limited time I have, before the government once again gags debate on special legislation—stopping the job of the Senate to look at these types of things—I want to focus on one aspect of the bill. It's the aspect that the minister and the government have just not explained. It's the provision of the bill, in section 92E, which allows these exceptional circumstances to be designated—these exemptions from competition laws—to go all the way back to 1 April 2026.

The minister, in wrapping up the debate before, said that we need to do these things to help keep delivering fuel, fertiliser and other important commodities to our country. We support them on that. We have supported special legislation on this. But to do those things in the future does not require us to exempt people from laws in the past. Those things in the past have already been done. A lot of my colleagues and I are scratching our heads, trying to understand why the government needs to exempt conduct—potentially anticompetitive conduct; that's why the exemptions are here—from stuff that has happened, going all the way back to April Fools' Day, 1 April, this year.

If this was about the future, if this was about protecting Australians in the future, why do you need to go back to the past? What is the government hiding—that's what I'd like to know. What is the justification for this? I would particularly like to know if the ACCC has asked the government for these powers, and, if so, why? Why? As other senators in this debate have raised, we did have a lot of complaints come to us about the potential anticompetitive conduct that occurred in the early stages of this crisis. There were shortages of key commodities. That's a ripe opportunity for people with market share and market power to abuse the situation, to take market share, to kill competitors and the like, and now the government is potentially exempting all of that suspected alleged conduct from review, scrutiny and penalty, if indeed there were things done at that time.

Unfortunately, we have very limited time. I'd hope that the minister could deal with these issues briefly so that there may be some time to ask some more follow-up questions, but that is the key reason why the opposition remains sceptical of the need to rush this legislation with such great haste.