8th Dec 2020 – Senate Defence Legislation Amendment (Enhancement of Defence Force Response to Emergencies) Bill 2020 - in Committee - Parliamentary oversight

The majority voted against an amendment introduced by WA Senator Jordon Steele-John (Greens), which means it failed.

Amendment text

(1) Schedule 1, item 2, page 3 (line 12), omit "notifiable instrument", substitute "legislative instrument".

What did the amendments do?

According to Senator Steele-John:

We agree with concerns raised by the Standing Committee on the Scrutiny of Bills and the submission made by Mr Andrew Ray and Ms Charlotte Michalowski that the deployment of armed forces should be a matter of last resort and that the decisions to call them out should be subject to stringent parliamentary oversight—not a radical contention, you would have thought. This amendment seeks to ensure a layer of parliamentary scrutiny by making call-out orders subject to disallowance. While we understand that there are concerns around the timeliness and complexity of the call-out process, we do not accept that efficiency concerns cannot be addressed in other ways. We believe that efficiency concerns can be addressed in other ways, and it is not a reason to move past legitimate scrutiny by elected representatives.