Senator MURRAY (3:57 PM) —Because of our numbers I think I should put our position now for the clarification of the Senate. The Workplace Relations Amendment (Codifying Contempt Offences) Bill 2004 is, in all respects, the same as the 2003 bill of the same name. There are six, shall we call them, discrete amendments. Some of them are the subject of some controversy and others are probably not. The first issue I will deal with is the matter of the bill itself. The bill as it is does not need to go to committee, since it replicates its 2003 successor and there is no change to the bill itself apart from those amendments which have already been passed in the committee stage. So we will oppose any attempted reference of the bill to a committee inquiry.

Amendments to the schedule 1 provisions of that bill by us—that is, the first set of the six amendments—do not need to go to a committee inquiry since we will be merely replicating previous Democrat amendments that have already been through the Senate main committee stage of the 2003 bill and that we are recommitting. So we will oppose any attempted reference of those amendments to a committee inquiry. The next three amendments relate to the building and construction industry. The first amendment I would describe as the `increasing penalties' amendment. It is wrong to say that increased penalties have not been the subject of a committee inquiry—they have. Whilst the exact quantum is, in fact, lower than it was in the BCI bills, those penalties were in there. Because that matter of penalties has been considered by the BCI committee, we will oppose the reference of that amendment.

The next area of contention is the amendment referred to as the retrospective amendment, which addresses the issue of an existing penalty but closes a loophole on it. It is an arguable amendment—I do not disagree with having the argument—but it attends to an existing provision in the bill and, in our belief, it would be merely a delaying tactic to send that off to committee.

We are left with two contentious matters: the first one is the information-gathering powers amendment, which is the one I think Senator Campbell was referring to in a number of his remarks. The question of powers being granted to regulators was very much a feature of the building and construction industry inquiry, so we do not support that going to committee. The last one is what we would describe as—if I can find the right wording—the amendment which would provide processes for the election of delegates of registered organisations under union rules. A proposition has been put to us that that should go to committee. It is still under negotiation. We have not determined our position on that, so at this stage we are unable to agree that that go to committee. But, as I say, it is still a question of negotiation.