In my last post I slammed Ruddock for his response to Labor’s amendment to the Judges’ Pensions Amendment Bill 2007 (pdf). This time I’ll give Labor a serve.

Ms Roxon (Gellibrand) in moving her amendment said:

That all words after “That” be omitted with a view to substituting the following words:

““whilst not declining to give the bill a second reading the Opposition believes that the bill fails to give equal treatment to all judges by not treating judges in same-sex de facto relationships in the same way as heterosexual judges and their spouses or de facto spouses, and calls on the Government to amend the bill in order to give judges in same-sex relationships equal treatment”.

The intention of this amendment was to delete the whole text of the bill and replace it with a condemnation of the Government. Ms Roxon’s amendment would have done absolutely nothing useful. Our Liberal supporter Warren Entsch rightly called it a stunt.

It has been left to the Democrats to introduce the Same-Sex: Same Entitlements Bill 2007 (pdf) last Tuesday (p22 Hansards pdf).

Further, on browsing the Judges’ Pensions Amendment Bill I can’t see any instance of the word “that” that lends itself to Ms Roxon’s amendment.