10th Nov 2020, 12:35 PM – Senate Economic Recovery Package (Jobmaker Hiring Credit) Amendment Bill 2020 - in Committee - Include detail in bill

The majority voted against amendments introduced by South Australian Senator Rex Patrick (Independent), which means they failed.

What does the amendment do?

Senator Patrick explained that:

These amendments seek to undo what is becoming an awful trend in respect of legislation that is being brought into this chamber. As I said in my speech on the second reading yesterday, the government has put forward a bill to the parliament that basically has two substantive paragraphs. And those substantive paragraphs seek to grant a power for a minister to set up a scheme that involves the expenditure of somewhere up to $4 billion of taxpayers' money. All of the details of how that money will be spent, who will be in receipt of it and so forth will actually be contained in the rules generated by some faceless official somewhere in the government. The way this is supposed to work is we're supposed to put legislation on the table and have it be debated, contested, talked about openly and voted upon openly so that the people who we represent can hold us to account. But that is not what will happen in relation to this particular bill, because all of the details are in the rules.

The strange thing is: the rules are available. In fact, that's exactly what I've done with this amendment—I've taken the rules and put them into the bill, as should be the case.