COMMITTEES

Senator DUNIAM (Tasmania—Manager of Opposition Business in the Senate) (11:31): We will be supporting the Greens amendment regarding a reference of the bills to a committee. The minister came in here to tell us that we need to pass this legislation today because this is their true form—get it through; ram it through. As Senator Hanson-Young says, there are seven bills as part of this package.

There are 700 pages of legislation and an EM which, I understand, is 700 pages long as well. They were tabled today, incomplete, with elements still not finalised. Senator Watt tells us the business community are sending strong messages.

If you talk to the business community, they say they want time to scrutinise this as well because it's all been rushed. Let's go back over the history of what's happened here. Senator Watt tells us it's been five years since the Samuel review was tabled.

What happened for the last three years was that you had an environment minister—Tanya Plibersek, the member for Sydney and former environment minister—sacked at the end of the last term because she couldn't do her job, so much so that, now, she doesn't even represent the environment minister in the other place. You'd think the former minister would have that job over there, in the other place, to represent the environment minister in the Senate.

No—they don't even trust her with that, so badly did she handle this portfolio and squander three years of opportunity. You had a coalition that wanted to work with the government to get this legislation through, but instead the minister refused to work with us. You had a prime minister who saw sense, and he stopped the minister from doing these dodgy, dirty deals that we knew about.

We had documents released under FOI—with big, black swathes across them again, true to form for this Labor government, wanting to make sure no-one knew what was really going on—and deals done between Minister Plibersek, the Australian Greens and, of course, other crossbenchers. Who knows what the detail of those deals was? We will never know, because it was all part of this secret arrangement this government wants to keep going in this place, and we've seen that again this week.

The idea of scrutiny is abhorrent to them. Senator Cox interjecting— Senator DUNIAM: Australian Labor Party senators aren't in their seats and continue to interject, of course, because they've got a lot to say about the need to back in a minister who wants to rush this bill through the Senate, avoid scrutiny and avoid any accountability, like they do every other day of the week.

Can I tell you, we in this place have had enough of this government seeking to just run the show in accordance with its own tune and not seek any input from anyone else. We're happy to work with the government on the nature of this legislation and to get a good outcome for this country. We've laid down some key markers about what we think needs to change in this legislation, and the shadow minister, Ms Bell, has been very clear about that.

Of course, the government, doing what they do and attacking everyone else rather than actually working constructively with them, will take issue with that. We are ready to work with the government, but we're not going to just rush it through at their demand. This is a democratic institution.

Senator Gallagher: Five years! Senator DUNIAM: I'll take the interjection from the minister. Three of the five years that we've had since Samuel tabled his report were wasted by you.

You could have had this done in the last term, but you chose not to. You had your dark, smoke-filled rooms over there and you were doing deals with the business lobby, the green groups or whoever it was. We don't know, because there were all these nondisclosure agreements signed.

Again, a hallmark of this government is a lack of transparency. All of these Labor senators think it's funny to deal with the public good and the environment and providing investor certainty is just a laughing matter. Well, I'm sorry, but it's not.

That's why this Senate needs to do its job. That's why we are holding this government to account today. We will be ensuring that there is scrutiny applied to this legislation, as is required, not just bowing to the minister's demands, acquiescing, rolling over and being compliant.

I'm sorry, but it doesn't work like that. This legislation will come out the other end looking much better than it went in, and we will actually see what this government intends to do for this country, whether it's serious about wanting to do a good job for the environment and business. At this point, we don't know, because what's been tabled in the other place isn't even complete.

Lobby groups are telling us they need the time. Both environmental and business groups want to look at this legislation properly. We will support the extension for this inquiry because it's important to have this scrutiny, but we're not going to roll over.

We're sick of being told what to do by a government that doesn't know what it's doing.