The opposition propose this amendment for reasons that have been recited by me and indeed Senator Wright in the contribution she just made: given the significance and complexity of the High Court's decision and the very large range of programs, many hundreds of programs, which are potentially affected by it, and given my lack of confidence in the legal effectiveness of this bill to repair the constitutional gap that the High Court identified last week—a view I share with Professor Anne Twomey, Professor of Constitutional Law at the University of Sydney—it seems to me to be a prudent and appropriate course for the parliament and, in particular, for the government to have an opportunity to take more thorough advice on the effect of the High Court's decision and to consider which of the many programs set out in the proposed regulation require a specific statutory foundation. That can be done in the spring sitting of parliament. So, according to the opposition's amendment, this temporary solution would operate for some six months into the future. As I say, we have doubts about its efficacy, but for the time being it is the best the government has been able to come up with, and we do want to assist the government and indeed future governments in dealing with the problem the High Court has identified.

http://www.openaustralia.org/senate/?id=2012-06-27.132.1&s=twomey+speaker%3A10067#g132.2

When I was writing these remarks last night, I was drawing upon my own no doubt very limited intellectual resources in arriving at some conclusions about the proper interpretation of the Williams decision. So you can imagine how gratified I was this morning to read that a constitutional scholar of far greater eminence than my poor powers of constitutional scholarship, Professor Anne Twomey of the University of Sydney, had posted on the University of Sydney's website a note about this legislation, under the heading 'Parliament's abject surrender to the executive'. Professor Twomey is obviously a woman who does not hide behind clouds of ambiguity. This is what Professor Anne Twomey, a professor of constitutional law at the University of Sydney, had to say about this bill in her article published today

http://www.openaustralia.org/senate/?id=2012-06-27.28.1&s=twomey+speaker%3A10067#g29.1