Crimes and Other Legislation Amendment (Omnibus No. 1) Bill 2026

Senator SHOEBRIDGE (New South Wales) (10:49): I hear the arguments. We hear it every time from the Attorney-General's Department: 'Oh, you know, it's all very complex. It's all very hard.

We have to write this really tortured series of impenetrable pieces of legislation.' Yet, what the INSLM said was that there was a series of protections you could literally lift and shift from other jurisdictions that already have these protections in place. Other jurisdictions in the UK and some of the state jurisdictions already have the protections in place that the INSLM is recommending happen at a Commonwealth level.

But, again, we get this statement from this government, in particular, that any kind of reform is going to take us two years, three years, four years, five years, 10 years or 12 years. If you look at the Attorney-General's department in particular, their ability to produce meaningful legislative reform seems almost zero. They spend their time producing things like the FOI reform, which nobody asked for or supported and which was countless hundreds of pages of legislation.

Then we put it in the recycling bin. When it comes to these basic reforms that the INSLM is recommending—and, as I said, you could literally go and pick up the drafting from other jurisdictions—we get told that it's going to be three years, four years, 10 years or eight years. How about this one?

The INSLM recommended that issuing authorities should be retired judges and, if you can't make them retired judges, make them current judges. That's not what I would call a major drafting exercise. That could have absolutely come with this legislation, or it could have come in a standalone piece of legislation that accompanies this legislation.

Are you really seriously saying, Minister, that it takes three years to put in a legislative provision to say that these warrants need to be issued by retired judges or current judges? Is that really going to take this department three years to write that?