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

Senator SHOEBRIDGE (New South Wales) (18:36): This is yet again an example of this government failing to get the necessary reforms drafted and before this parliament. Some of these changes proposed by the INSLM—'ensuring that current or retired judges do it, not tribunal members'—you could literally draft in an afternoon. The changes to put in place a public interest monitor—you can look to examples in other jurisdictions that have a public interest monitor, and we could import them into the Commonwealth law.

Yet again we're told that 'no, sorry, can't do this without a reform program that has a horizon going to 2029', and it's unfortunate that the coalition is giving the Labor government whatever time they ask for for their never-ending, never-to-be-completed, no doubt active consideration of the INSLM's monitoring. This is another active consideration moment from the Labor Party.

They're going to actively consider three not incredibly complex pieces of legislative reform for another three and a bit years. I think it's really unfortunate. This is a moment where the coalition could have joined with the Greens to put some pressure on Labor to actually put in place a reform agenda that would complete within 12 months, but, instead, Labor's being given a 'get out of jail free' card by the coalition by not supporting this amendment.

I think it's unfortunate, because the job is really to put some pressure on government when they're not doing their job. The job of this place is not just to do a tick and flick of what the government presents but to actually push back and put some pressure on them and say, 'If you want to have these extreme powers that the INSLM said should be limited, we're going to give you a horizon.' This has pushed this into the next parliament.

That's what this proposal from Labor does. It pushes this whole issue into the next parliament. That's the reality of what's going to happen with this vote between the coalition and Labor, no doubt joined by their mates in One Nation.

You've said: 'Actually, this reform issue won't be dealt with by this parliament. The recommendations to improve people's rights and to put some checks and balances on covert state surveillance will not be done by this parliament.' You're going to wait until after the next election, and maybe, at some point, we'll see what happens. I think it's a failure of this chamber to give that government that 'get out of jail free' card.