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Wednesday, 6 July 2011
Page: 4240

Senator NASH (New South Wales—Deputy Leader of The Nationals in the Senate) (17:54): I do appreciate the answer, and I take on board all that you said about stakeholder consultation and working through the guidelines as to what will be appropriate to make a determination about common practice. However, given the legislation is before us today, it certainly seems that it would be—to use Minister Ludwig's phrase—common sense to have actually gone through that process to determine the criteria and the guidelines before we got to the point of having to decide whether or not the legislation should be supported.

I take on board the advice you have just given about what the process is going to be—that all sounds fair and valid and fine. It is just unfortunate that that process is happening at entirely the wrong time. That process should be happening before the legislation comes to the Senate and we should have the regulations now to deter­mine, in conjunction with the legislation, whether this is appropriate legislation.

We have advice from the minister tonight saying, 'This is what the process is going to be to come up with the criteria and guidelines,' but it is going to happen after the legislation goes through the Senate. I assume the legislation will pass through the Senate, because I gather from indications that the Greens will support Labor—there is not a lot of surprise there these days. But we are going to have a situation where the legislation passes through the chamber with none of this information available in the community.

Minister, I appreciate the advice you have given about the process, but can you advise the Senate why that process was not undertaken before we got to the point of the legislation being brought to the Senate so that we could have a very clear view and a very clear understanding of exactly what the process is going to be.