... to be fair to the committee, everybody recognised that this Bill, which the hon Selfe had proposed - and the House notes his absence as we consider this report ... [Interjections.]
Of course, the shadow minister of home affairs, the hon De Freitas, also did not support the Bill, so I don't know where the poor public think matters of principle are.
At least Cope said that we would support this Bill and proposal, and I believe that it is unfortunate that it is not debated. The only ray of hope is that everybody in the committee agreed that it was a good Bill, but we had another constraint.
I think everybody in this House knows that there is an election in April or May next year - and, by the way, we hear that it is on 15 May - and we obviously wanted to get the law in place to deal with the election. If we had dealt with hon Selfe's Private Member's Bill, we would have had to delay that. I just wanted to mention that for the record.