2016-11-10
MR BARBER (Northern Metropolitan) — While Mr Rich-Phillips's amendment on the face of it seems to have some bravado about it, it is fundamentally a meaningless set of words because, if it were to pass, there would be an instruction from the house to the government to go and do some consultation over an unspecified time line with some unspecified people and then come back here with a bill that reflects the result of that consultation.
[Speech was interrupted.]
Mr BARBER — Well, that is my whole point. If we supported this amendment right now, then the government would simply go away and in the intervening week before the next sitting week they would consult some people and they would come back here and say, 'We've consulted some people, as the house instructed us to, and in light of that consultation we have redrafted it', which could be no change at all, in fact, or it could be the changing of one apostrophe. Then we would be putting the bill to a vote at the third reading all over again. So while the amendment may have had some merit if it had been moved at the second-reading stage — although it would have had the exact same effect at the second-reading stage — the fact is that the house has just resolved to retain the changes, and this would be a sort of a pause and a deep breath before the third reading inevitably passed in two weeks time.
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