Rearrangement

Penny Wong

I move:

That—

(a) the order of the Senate of 27 June 2024 dividing the Treasury Laws Amendment (Responsible Buy Now Pay Later and Other Measures) Bill 2024 into two bills no longer apply and the orders of the day for the consideration of the resulting bills be discharged from the Notice Paper;

(b) consideration of the Treasury Laws Amendment (Responsible Buy Now Pay Later and Other Measures) Bill 2024 resume with consideration of the bill as read a first time;

(c) the following bills may be taken together for their remaining stages:

Treasury Laws Amendment (Responsible Buy Now Pay Later and Other Measures) Bill 2024

Capital Works (Build to Rent Misuse Tax) Bill 2024;

(d) the hours of meeting today be 9 am till adjournment and the routine of business from 12.15 pm to 1.30 pm, and from the conclusion of question time, be consideration of the following bills:

(i) Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Amendment Bill 2024,

(ii) Sydney Airport Demand Management Amendment Bill 2024,

(iii) Aged Care (Consequential and Transitional Provisions) Bill 2024,

(iv) Commonwealth Entities (Payment Surcharges) Bill 2024

Commonwealth Entities (Payment Surcharges) Tax (Imposition) Bill 2024

Commonwealth Entities (Payment Surcharges) (Consequential Provisions and Other Matters) Bill 2024

(v) Treasury Laws Amendment (Responsible Buy Now Pay Later and Other Measures) Bill 2024

Capital Works (Build to Rent Misuse Tax) Bill 2024,

(vi) Crimes Amendment (Strengthening the Criminal Justice Response to Sexual Violence) Bill 2024,

(vii) Family Law Amendment Bill 2024,

(viii) Future Made in Australia (Guarantee of Origin) Bill 2024

Future Made in Australia (Guarantee of Origin Consequential Amendments and Transitional Provisions) Bill 2024

Future Made in Australia (Guarantee of Origin Charges) Bill 2024

Future Made in Australia Bill 2024

Future Made in Australia (Omnibus Amendments No. 1) Bill 2024,

(ix) Universities Accord (National Student Ombudsman) Bill 2024,

(x) Treasury Laws Amendment (Fairer for Families and Farmers and Other Measures) Bill 2024,

(xi) Superannuation (Objective) Bill 2023,

(xii) Treasury Laws Amendment (Reserve Bank Reforms) Bill 2023,

(xiii) Customs Tariff Amendment (Incorporation of Proposals and Other Measures) Bill 2024,

(xiv) Communications Legislation Amendment (Regional Broadcasting Continuity) Bill 2024,

(xv) Crown References Amendment Bill 2023,

(xvi) Customs Amendment (ASEAN-Australia-New Zealand Free Trade Area Second Protocol Implementation and Other Measures) Bill 2024,

(xvii) Midwife Professional Indemnity (Commonwealth Contribution) Scheme Amendment Bill 2024,

(xviii) Treasury Laws Amendment (2024 Tax and Other Measures No. 1) Bill 2024,

(xix) Privacy and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2024, and

(xx) Surveillance Legislation (Confirmation of Application) Bill 2024,;

(e) the question on all remaining stages of the bills listed in paragraph (d) be put at 5 pm;

(f) paragraph (e) operate as a limitation of debate under standing order 142;

(g) divisions may take place after 4.30 pm; and

(h) the Senate adjourn without debate on the motion of a minister.

I note that I did not set up the procedure such that this would be moved without amendment or debate, so there is an ability to have both a debate and amendments now.

Simon Birmingham

Here we have this government making yet another attempt, in terms of a chaotic approach, to try to ram through legislation, having been sent a pretty clear message by the crossbench this morning. Who knows what deals have been done and who knows what undertakings have been given to get the government to a position where they're now still going to ram through a record number of bills, adding to their record tally—and a remarkable tally it is too. A government that has already guillotined more bills in three years than the previous government did in nine years is just adding to that tally.

But the big question is: where is the online safety bill? Why has that not featured in the government's guillotine list? Where are the migration bills? Why have they not featured in the government's guillotine list? Is this because the Greens' tail is wagging the government dog? Is that entirely what's happening here? Are the Greens dictating the terms of what the government can or cannot legislate? It's a shocking sign of things to come if voters get it wrong at the next election and a shocking sign of what could occur if the Greens are left to drive the government's agenda in the future.

The opposition, as I said this morning, is clear about a willingness to constructively pass what would still be a significant amount of legislation today, even though we have limited time to debate it. Instead, the government has doubled down on this reckless approach—this contemptuous approach—towards the Senate and is piling through all these other bills.

I ask the government to give that clarity to the chamber. Where is the online safety bill? Where are the migration bills? What are your plans? You've sliced and diced what you tried to put through this morning to go and get something with the Greens, but we want to see important things done—things the Prime Minister said were important; things the Prime Minister said should happen this week. Where are they? Why is the government walking away from, allegedly, its own priorities to these bills, which, in many cases, are things that are a long way short of actual government priorities?

President, this is for Senator Chisholm or Senator Farrell, in the absence of Senator Wong, to make clear: what's the go? If the chamber signs up to this, what else is the chamber going to be asked to sign up to? The crossbenchers who have been lobbied and cajoled and dealt whatever it is to get their vote in relation to this ought to know what's going to come next, having said they're going to stand against a guillotine of such proportion this morning and having said they stand against a guillotine of some of the things the coalition thinks should happen. Is the government going to be honest with those crossbenchers, or are they just going to see this motion pass, and then, lo and behold, there will be another alternate approach that gives the government all that it wants? Where's the honesty? Where's the decency? Where's the proper process? Where's the transparency? We don't know what deals have been struck. We don't know what's about to come next from the government, and, of course, it's a government continuing to break all of the promises that it made to the Australian people.

The imputation lies on the government. Make it clear for the crossbench. Be upfront and honest to them about what's coming next. Is this it, and the online safety bill is dead and gone for this year, or do you actually have plans to get the other things done? If so, what are those plans? Let us all know.

Nick McKim

I appreciate the courtesy of the chamber there. I also want to place on the record our appreciation of Senator Wong and the government for establishing this debate in such a way that senators could make contributions to it and that amendments may be moved to the government's legislation.

The Australian Greens would like to make a few points on the way through here. Firstly, I would like to foreshadow an amendment to this motion, and that will be an amendment that either just has been or shortly will be circulated in my name. That amendment is to include the Treasury Laws Amendment (Mergers and Acquisitions) Reform Bill 2024 in the tranche of bills which this motion establishes in section (d). The reason we will be doing that is that it is really critical, around the issue of the consolidation of corporate power in Australia, that the ACCC be given the powers that it has long been requesting and which the government has formulated in that bill to which I have just referred. It is critical for the reason that corporate power has been growing in Australia for decades now.

We are seeing in many sectors of our economy a situation where big corporations are consolidating their market power. That means that competition in a range of sectors in our economy is less than it should be, and the losers there, in terms of low levels of competition, are the consumers of Australia. And we see that nowhere more than in the supermarket sector, where the market dominance of Coles and Woolworths has crept ever higher over the last few decades to where we find ourselves now, where those two giant supermarket corporations, who each make a billion-plus dollars a year in annual profits, now together make up over two-thirds of the food and grocery sector in Australia. That's why the Greens moved to establish the Senate Select Committee on Supermarket Prices, and we were very pleased that, as a result of that political pressure and the power that the Greens embody in this place, that forced the government to ask the ACCC to do a similar inquiry into the power of the supermarket corporations and their pricing practices among other things.

The ACCC is moving through that process. We've had some updates from the ACCC. We've even had an interim report from the ACCC. The Australian Greens look forward—and I'm sure every Australian who ends up going through the check-out at Coles and Woolworths and getting a rude shock about their grocery bills on a regular basis also looks forward—to the final report and the final verdict of the ACCC on the pricing practices of supermarkets and, importantly, on the concentration of market power in the supermarket sector and the impacts of that concentration of market power on competition. The Australian Greens have been very clear that we believe that the supermarket sector is too concentrated and that we believe that divestiture powers should be introduced in this country to provide the ACCC with the power to go to the courts and apply for a divestiture order in the case that a corporation has misused market power and for the courts to make relevant orders that would result in an improvement in levels of competition, potentially in a particular geographic area or by other means.

We are very pleased that the coalition has announced that they do support divestiture laws in the supermarket sector, and I firmly believe that's because of the work of the select committee. I want to acknowledge my colleagues on that committee. I notice Senator Cadell is currently in the chamber, and there were others, including Senator Tyrrell, who is not currently in the chamber, and Senator Sterle. There were a range of people. But that committee worked really collaboratively to get to the bottom of a range of issues, not limited, I might add, to just consumer issues but about the way that the big supermarket corporations treat their suppliers, which are often Australian family farms. I'm sure Senator Cadell would agree with this: we heard some heart-rending testimony from farmers or from people who had formerly had a life on a farming business in the agriculture sector in our country of how the giant supermarket corporations treated them and misused their market power in terms of the way that they purchased products from farmers. This is based on evidence that we heard. It's also based on conversations that I've had with farmers in my home state of Tasmania, and I know other members of the committee had similar conversations with people on the land in their local areas. Many farmers were simply too scared of retribution to even activate complaints against the big supermarket corporations when they believed that they were being treated poorly in negotiations.

That's why we would be more than happy—in fact, that's why we will be moving—to include the Treasury Laws Amendment (Mergers and Acquisitions Reform) Bill 2024. I hasten to add that is not because it will create divestiture powers—it won't—but because it will allow the ACCC to adequately assess proposals for mergers that come before them. Even though, in the area of competition, that bill won't itself deliver everything the Australian Greens think needs to happen—we believe that we should have divestiture powers—that mergers bill will in fact assist in preventing further concentration of competition in Australia, which will be a very good thing, given that we have seen far too much consolidation of market power in Australia in recent decades.

I move:

At the end of paragraph (d), add:

(xxi) Treasury Laws Amendment (Mergers and Acquisitions Reform) Bill 2024

Malcolm Roberts

A lot of people this morning on the crossbench said we had far too many bills to consider. They said a lot of things very strongly about guillotines. The same people are now supporting a guillotine. Okay, it's not of 30 bills, but it's of 20 bills.

Matthew Canavan

Twenty-seven.

Malcolm Roberts

XX is 20, Senator Canavan.

Matthew Canavan

There are multiple bills in some of them.

Long debate text truncated.