Sue Lines

PRESIDENT (): The question is that the remainder of the amendment, as moved by Senator Wong, be agreed to.

Anthony Chisholm

I move:

That on Wednesday, 26 March 2025:

(a) the hours of meeting be 9 am till adjournment;

(b) at 5 pm, the questions on all remaining stages of the following bills be put immediately:

(i) Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Amendment (Reconsiderations) Bill 2025,

(ii) Supply Bill (No. 1) 2025-26 Supply Bill (No. 2) 2025-26 Supply (Parliamentary Departments) Bill 2025-26

(iii) Transport Security Amendment (Security of Australia's Transport Sector) Bill 2024,

(iv) AusCheck Amendment (Global Entry Program) Bill 2025, and

(v) Parliamentary Business Resources Legislation Amendment (Machinery of Government Change) Bill 2025;

(c) divisions may take place after 6.30 pm;

(d) paragraph (b) operate as a limitation of debate under standing order 142;

(e) the routine of business from the conclusion of consideration of the bills listed in paragraph (b), or at 6 pm, whichever is the later, be:

(i) valedictory statements, and

(ii) Budget statement and documents—party leaders and independent senators to make responses to the statement and documents for not more than 15 minutes each; and

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

Penny Wong

I move that the motion be amended in the terms circulated in the chamber, to read as follows:

That on Wednesday, 26 March 2025:

(a) the hours of meeting be 9 am till adjournment;

(aa) the routine of business after the placing of business be:

(i) general business notices of motion nos 807, 811, 812 and 817, proposing the introduction of bills, and

(ii) consideration of the following bills:

A. Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Amendment (Reconsiderations) Bill 2025,

B. Supply Bill (No. 1) 2025-26

Supply Bill (No. 2) 2025-26

Supply (Parliamentary Departments) Bill 2025-26,

C. Transport Security Amendment (Security of Australia's Transport Sector) Bill 2024,

D. AusCheck Amendment (Global Entry Program) Bill 2025, and

E. Parliamentary Business Resources Legislation Amendment (Machinery of Government Change) Bill 2025;

(ab) the business before the Senate be interrupted at 6 pm to allow senators to make valedictory statements;

(b) at 10 pm the questions on all remaining stages of the bills listed in paragraph (aa) (ii) be put immediately;

(c) divisions may take place after 6.30 pm;

(d) paragraph (b) operate as a limitation of debate under standing order 142; and

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

And I move:

That the question be now put.

Question agreed to.

Sue Lines

The question now is that the amendment as moved by Senator Wong be agreed to.

Sarah Hanson-Young

I have an amendment to the motion. I hope that that has been circulated. I'm just clarifying.

Sue Lines

Senator Hanson-Young, the Senate has just decided that the question will be put, so I'm going to put the question and then—

Sarah Hanson-Young

Could I clarify whether my amendment has been circulated.

Sue Lines

I don't believe it has, Senator Hanson-Young. The question is that the amendment as moved by Senator Wong be agreed to.

Question agreed to.

Jonathon Duniam

I wish to amend—I don't know if I need leave. No? I move to amend the motion as follows:

After paragraph (aa)(i) insert "consideration of proposals under standing order 75".

David Pocock

Given that we are governing by guillotine and on the fly here, could we maybe get an explanation from Senator Duniam as to what that does?

Sue Lines

Well, we're not in committee stage, and I believe that the amendment has been circulated. You need to seek leave, Senator Duniam.

Jonathon Duniam

I seek leave.

Leave granted.

To explain to the Senate what this is, it is basically enabling the debate of both the urgency and MPI matters that were circulated for debate today.

Sue Lines

The question is that the amendment as moved by Senator Duniam be agreed to.

Question agreed to.

Penny Wong

I move:

That the question be now put.

The

Senator Hanson-Young, as you know, the government jumped and they take precedence. Also, Senator Wong jumped first. The question is that the question be put on the amended motion.

Sue Lines

Senator McKim, I'm in a vote! I'm going to put the question again. Please resume your seat. The question is that the question be put on the amended motion.

Question agreed to.

The question now is that the motion, as amended by Senator Duniam, be agreed to.

Nick McKim

Just for clarity, are you putting the amended motion?

Sue Lines

Yes.

Nick McKim

In that case, could I please ask that the question be put separately in relation to part (aa)(ii)(A), on the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Amendment (Reconsiderations) Bill 2025.

Sue Lines

Senator McKim has asked for the motion to be split. We will deal with the split part first. The question is that paragraph (aa)(ii)(A), relating to the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Amendment (Reconsiderations) Bill 2025, be agreed to.

Sarah Hanson-Young

I seek leave to move a motion relating to the referral of a bill to a committee, as circulated.

Leave not granted.

Pursuant to contingent notice standing in the name of Senator Waters, I move:

That so much of the standing orders be suspended as would prevent me from moving a motion to provide for the consideration of a matter, namely a motion to give precedence to a motion relating to the referral of a bill to a committee.

We are seeking to suspend standing orders today to bring forward a motion to ensure that in this place, here in the Senate, we can get to do our job properly. There's a piece of legislation that's about to be tabled in the House of Representatives that no-one has really seen—no-one has looked at the detail—and it has not been through a proper process, yet the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition, Mr Peter Dutton, want to have it rammed through this place in under two days.

Why do they want to ram this piece of legislation through this chamber by the end of tomorrow? Because they are doing this under the cover of the federal budget, because it is a bill that guts environmental protection. It's a bill that will condemn wildlife in our country to extinction. It is a bill that will give loopholes to corporations to continue to pollute and trash our natural environment, no questions asked. It is a bill that fundamentally undermines any promises that this government has made to protect Australia's environment in this term of the parliament. It shows that this Labor government cannot be trusted to do the right thing when it comes to caring for and looking after our environment.

It shows that every time the Labor Party is under pressure from the big, foreign corporations who want to continue to trash, pollute and destroy, they go weak. They go weak because they don't have the guts to stand up to them and to stand up for the protection of our natural environment. How are they getting this done? They are entering into a stinking, rotten deal with Peter Dutton. The Liberal Party and the Labor Party are cuddling up together to do the bidding of the big, stinking, rotten corporations.

Matt O'Sullivan

Senator Hanson-Young, can I remind you to use proper titles.

Sarah Hanson-Young

Mr Dutton and Mr Albanese, the leaders of the Labor and Liberal parties, are showing they've got more care for the stinking, rotten salmon industry in this country than they do for our wildlife or for our environment.

The reason this bill needs to go to a Senate inquiry is that it is written in such a broad way. The Prime Minister will want you to believe that it is only about the rotten salmon washing up on the shores and beaches in Tasmania. He'll want to tell the people on the mainland in Australia, 'It's okay; Tasmanians can deal with the rotten salmon but we will look after you on the mainland.' But this bill has such broad, sweeping powers that it undermines environmental protection across the board. This will allow a carve-out and a loophole not just for the rotten salmon industry but also for the fossil fuel industry, for the logging industry, for the big polluters, for the small polluters and for the environmental wreckers. This bill guts environmental protection in the name of profits for the big corporations, in the name of the stinking, rotten politics that dominates the thinking of the Labor Party and the Liberal Party. On the eve of the election, under the cover of the federal budget, the Labor Party and Mr Dutton are working together in a stinking, rotten deal to cut environmental protection, to ram through legislation in the middle of the night while no-one is watching. The Senate hasn't even had the opportunity to do its job.

We oppose this piece of legislation because it's rotten. It stinks. The Senate should be able to do its job, because the ramifications of this bill for the environment, for other wildlife species, for other parts of nature, for the community and for industry are virtually unknown. This bill was put together in a hasty way so that the Prime Minister had something to sell on his next trip down to Tasmania. This is all about rank, stinking, rotten politics. It is not about policy, it is not about giving the community a voice and it certainly isn't about doing the right thing by the environment. The Prime Minister wants us to chew down on the rotten salmon, and we won't have it.

Jonathon Duniam

What we have here is a government that is trying to do something it should have done a very long time ago. While we don't support the reference of this bill to an inquiry and we don't agree with some of the points made there, one thing we can all agree on is that this government has handled the situation before us terribly with regard to the salmon industry in Tasmania, which is why we have legislation here.

The only reason there is a bill that has been brought in at the eleventh hour to remedy this terrible, sorry saga is that the Minister for the Environment and Water has not done her job. Salmon workers in the electorate of Braddon in Tasmania have been facing this situation for more than a year—nearly 18 months. For two Christmases, these salmon workers have had no certainty about their employment. Those opposite said: 'We're going to follow process. We're going to follow the laws.' That was until the minister told her party, the government, 'We aren't going to do anything about it.' So the Prime Minister has been forced to bring in legislation relating to this issue. The more bizarre thing about this is who has brought it in. I don't think it's under the minister for environment's name. I don't think it stands in her name; I think it stands in someone else's name, which I find passing strange, given it is a bill to amend the EPBC Act. It does rather speak to some very deep divides within this government.

We read reports yesterday with regard to how long the Labor Party's caucus meeting to deal with this issue went on. There are people who are not happy within the government, which makes me wonder whether they are going to stick to their guns with this promise they're making, these laws that they've brought before the parliament. The Prime Minister promised these laws on 15 February—over a month ago—and on that day we wrote to the Prime Minister and said: 'We'd like to see these laws. This is urgent. We've been calling on you to fix this now for the better part of 18 months.' We didn't get a reply, so we chased up with phone calls, we sought briefings and we said we would make ourselves available at any time, anywhere, to understand the legislation they intended to bring in. We got our briefing and the copy of the bill yesterday afternoon, the day before parliament sat and the bill was introduced into the other place. I dare say it was the same for the crossbench as well. That is not good government; that is not good process.

I understand why the Australian Greens are frustrated, because this has been rushed in here in the hopes that they can fix a political issue. Rather, it highlights how desperate they're becoming, when, in order to get this thing through the Labor caucus, the Prime Minister has to commit to reintroducing legislation he promised would not come back in the form of the environment protection authority. We were told that in the state of Western Australia. The Prime Minister himself flew over there and took the entire cabinet to assure the mining industry that it was going to be okay. He said: 'There'll be no EPA under me. We will not be legislating to establish a new federal EPA. Don't worry about it.' Then, of course, we learned that secret deals were done between the crossbench and the minister for the environment. We had those big pages of black ink where the details of the deals were redacted. We still don't know what was in them, but here is the Prime Minister saying to his party room: 'Look, I know this is a bitter pill to swallow. We have to pass these laws to win the seats of Braddon and Lyons, and, as a sweetener, we're going to give you an EPA.' It is an EPA we oppose. We say it is bad for jobs and for the economy. In fact, we'll probably unpick anything that the legislation which is the subject of this motion will establish.

You have a minister for the environment who has refused to act for 18 months, even at the request of the Prime Minister—so much so that he has been forced to bring in legislation to work around his minister. How is that for good, stable government or good process? It's not in her name. It rather alarms me that this is the situation we're in. We are not even 100 per cent sure that we have a bill that does what it needs to, so we'll see whether amendments need to be made. We have a government going into an election that, if the polls are to be believed, will probably see them end up in a minority government with our good friends down here the Australian Greens. How do you think this little set-up is going to withstand a partnership arrangement? Not very well at all, I would argue. I dare say the people of Braddon and of Lyons whose livelihoods depend on this industry that we're supposed to be protecting here at the eleventh hour would not survive.

So I say to the government that we will be opposing this motion, but this government has handled this entire issue appallingly. It is clearly a political fix—not a proper one that should be afforded to the people of Tasmania.

Penny Wong

Well, it's budget day, so the non-government parties are doing their thing, which is a bit of political grandstanding to try to desperately get themselves into a media cycle.

Nick McKim

This is actually you colluding with them!

Penny Wong

I listened to her in silence. I listened to Senator Hanson-Young in silence. Thank you. We had Senator Cash trying to bring forward a private senator's bill to talk about the CFMEU, because you don't want us to talk about anything other than the cost of living and health or anything other than Medicare and the secret cuts that we know the coalition is planning. Now we have Senator Hanson-Young, who wants to have a debate that she knows she can have tomorrow, but she just wants to have two goes at it. Meanwhile, we know that on the program for the Senate to debate is the Workplace Gender Equality Amendment (Setting Gender Equality Targets) Bill 2024. I'd say to Senator Waters that you are very keen to pass this but not so keen that you would say to Senator Hanson-Young, 'Maybe we won't do the stunt today, because we've got plenty of time to have this argument after we've dealt with the women's gender equality amendment.' It's a bill that could have been passed in February, a bill which is about women's economic security and a bill which the opposition previously supported but now has backflipped on.

I would encourage the Senate to get to that legislation which this government wants passed. With that, I move:

That the motion be now put.

Matt O'Sullivan

The question is that the motion moved by Minister Wong to put the question be agreed to.

Ross Cadell

Here we have it. Here we have living proof that this is a rushed policy on offshore wind. It isn't a policy that's sustainable. It isn't a policy that does anything. It is a policy that has got it wrong, so we have to go back and fix up what is already wrong with it. We haven't even built one!

Yesterday in question time was like the episode of Seinfeld about the reservation policy. This government knows how to take the reservation, but it doesn't know how to hold it. 'This is what we're doing in policy. We know how to put out the guidelines, but we don't know how to build it.' We heard about housing yesterday: 'We know how to fund it. We don't know how to build it.' We heard about doctors: 'We know how to fund them. We don't know how to get them.'

This is where offshore wind is. They've got this great idea: 'Let's go and build something that's never been built, a floating offshore wind farm on an industrial scale off the coast of New South Wales.' Then we find out the minister doesn't know he's got powers he's meant to have. He did not know the powers he's meant to have in regulation and the way they issue these things. So they come back, and he says, 'We've got to fix it up and we've got to make it retrospective. We've got to go retrospective on what we can do and how we can give these grants, how we can give these leases, so that we don't have to go through consultation for the people that did it a different way and we don't have to go through community consultation. We don't have to go and talk to the people; we just make it retrospective.' It's like the opposite of a superpower: the ability to not know what powers you've got. And this is this minister, rushing headlong into an unsustainable way.

There is a sustainable way to do renewables, and that's why we have renewables in our plan, but it has to be done better. Throwing everything at the wall and seeing what sticks is a plan for a farce. That's why we'll have blackouts. The superman who is doing this is 'Blackout man', not 'Renewables man'.

Sue Lines

Senators, pursuant to order, the time for consideration of this bill has expired. I will now put the question before the chair and put the questions on the remaining stages of the bill. I first deal with the second reading amendment circulated by the opposition. The question is that the opposition amendment on sheet 3332 to be agreed to.

Opposition's circulated amendment—

Omit all words after "That:, substitute "the Senate notes that:

(a) the bill is specifically designed to make electricity more expensive for Australian families;

(b) Australian families have already seen their electricity prices increase by $1,000 under the Albanese Government;

(c) Prime Minister Albanese told Australians 97 times before the election that their electricity bills would fall by $275 a year, but has instead delivered price increases; and

(d) a Labor-Greens minority government would introduce super-charged nature positive laws to make electricity even more expensive".

Sue Lines

The question is that general business notice of motion No. 795 standing in the name of Senator Hodgins-May be agreed to.

Steph Hodgins-May

I move:

That—

(a) immediately after a message from the House of Representatives is reported in relation to the Early Childhood Education and Care (Three Day Guarantee) Bill 2025, the questions on all stages of the bill be put;

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

(c) divisions may take place for the purposes of the bill notwithstanding anything contained in the standing orders; and

(d) to avoid doubt, the bill may be considered before the Education and Employment Legislation Committee presents its report on its inquiry into the provisions of the bill, and the inquiry may proceed notwithstanding the passage of the bill.

Katy Gallagher

I seek leave to move an amendment to the motion. It's been circulated. This amendment would simply add the Workplace Gender Equality Amendment (Setting Gender Equality Targets) Bill 2024 at the end of section (a). So it would be to add, at the end of the Early Childhood Education and Care (Three Day Guarantee) Bill 2025, the workplace gender equality bill as part of that.

Leave not granted.

Pursuant to contingent notice of motion, I move:

That so much of standing orders be suspended as would prevent me moving an amendment to the motion.

A division having been called and the bells being rung—

Lidia Thorpe

It's the anniversary of Captain Cook being eaten tomorrow That's something to celebrate, all those love bugs down there. Captain Cook got eaten tomorrow, on 14 February.

Sue Lines

Senator Thorpe, come to order.

Lidia Thorpe

Okay.

Sue Lines

The question is that the motion to suspend standing orders as moved by Senator Gallagher be agreed to.

Sue Lines

The question is that the amendment as moved by Senator Duniam to the motion on the Selection of Bills Committee report be agreed to.

Penny Wong

I'm hoping you can clarify, because I thought the operative provisions were the subject of the previous vote. People are entitled to vote separately on placita (i) and (ii), but the operative provisions need to be the subject of a vote. Take advice from the clerk about how that should be constructed, but it would not be appropriate to have people vote on (a), placitum (ii), plus all the operative provisions together.

James McGrath

To clarify for the chamber: the vote we're dealing with is on paragraph (a), placitum (ii). We voted on the motion as it applies to the Electricity Infrastructure Legislation Amendment Bill 2025. We are now voting on it as it applies to the Workplace Gender Equality Amendment (Setting Gender Equality Targets) Bill 2024. So is there clarity in the chamber? It's crystal clear?

Sue Lines

The question is that paragraph (a), placitum (ii) of the motion as moved by Senator Waters be agreed to.

Larissa Waters

I move the motion as circulated:

That—

(a) the questions on all remaining stages of the following bills be put at 1 pm:

(i) Electricity Infrastructure Legislation Amendment Bill 2025, and

(ii) Workplace Gender Equality Amendment (Setting Gender Equality Targets) Bill 2024;

(b) paragraph (a) operate as a limitation of debate under standing order 142; and

(c) divisions may take place between 1.30 pm and 2 pm until consideration of the bills has concluded.

Tammy Tyrrell

I ask that the question be put separately on paragraph (a)(i) and paragraph (a)(ii).

James McGrath

The motion moved by Senator Waters has been split. The question is that paragraph (a)(i), which relates to the Electricity Infrastructure Legislation Amendment Bill 2025, be agreed to.

James McGrath

The question before the chair is that the procedural motion moved by Senator Waters be agreed to.