Mr RUDDOCK (Attorney-General) (5:05 PM) —I do not intend to speak at length; I simply note in relation to amendment (1) that no evidence has been adduced that over the nine years of this government any member of the AAT has felt that they have been affected in terms of their independent decision making by the length of their tenure. I would like to see the evidence adduced for that proposition. We have had nine years to test it. There is no evidence. Let me say that to simply assert it does not give it credibility.

I was very interested in the defence of the second matter that members’ public comments should be taken into account in determining whether they should sit on certain matters. I find it fascinating because, if that view were applied to, say, the High Court of Australia, I do not think Mr Justice Kirby would be sitting on many cases. If it had been applied to the Family Court of Australia, given some of the public comments that former Chief Justice Nicholson had made about the Convention on the Rights of the Child, he would not have sat on the decision that the Family Court took, which was overturned by the High Court, in relation to children in detention. I think it is a very interesting proposition and, if the opposition are serious, they may be prepared to argue that it ought to be pursued in relation to all judicial as well as administrative bodies. That is one for a Labor government to introduce, and I suspect we would never see it.

On the final matter, let me say the proposition that the opposition is pursuing is a very wide one—not in relation to a specific matter in a member’s constituency, but one that would allow a member of parliament to seek to intervene in any matter where an administrative decision has been taken. Certainly the government could not entertain that as an appropriate way forward. As I indicated earlier, I would hope the opposition would see that there has been considerable movement in relation to this matter. But this has not—as the shadow minister in her comments in a press statement has put it—been an abandonment of the government’s positions, or that we have ‘now accepted Labor’s position’, or that I have conceded that our bill ‘went too far’. None of this is the case. These were reasonable compromises to get cooperation from the opposition to obtain a bill now rather than put it off, when we would get the bill in its entirety. I think you ought to take the opportunity while it is there rather than jeopardise it.