The amendments, which the government has criticised as inserting loopholes into the legislation, are nevertheless unlikely to see the legislation stall. The Labor Party has already indicated it will pass the Bills if they return from the lower House in its original form. However, prior to the Senate's third reading of the Bills today, Senator Kate Lundy, the Shadow Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts, lashed out at Democrats Senator Brian Greig over his criticisms of the legislation, and at the Howard government for its approach in working with other parties in amending the Bills.
"What we have is a government Bill that we have said we will support. We have done our very best to constructively amend it," she said.
The amendments included giving the Australian Communications Authority search-and-seizure powers related to enforcement activities and bringing trade unions and not-for-profit lobby groups such as Amnesty International into the category of groups exempted from the legislation.
"It's unfortunate that persistently through this debate the government has flicked passed many of these very serious amendments claiming that they're unworkable," Lundy continued. She also accused the government of "creating arguments based on their own view that how they've drafted [the legislation] is perfect, and is somehow immune to improvements and refinements".
"I think that's absurd," she added.
Conceding the "bottom line is, we need this legislation," Lundy says Labor will support the legislation, even if the amendments are rejected. The shadow Minister rejected calls from Senator Greig to alter the Bills to cover non-commercial spam as well as unsolicited commercial e-mail.
"I think that would involve a total rewrite and Labor... is not prepared to do that to this bill, it's the government's bill and we've tried to amend it constructively but it will ultimately pass through... with our support," she said.
Senator Greig today released a statement which he claimed "loopholes in the legislation are big enough to drive a truck through, and its special exemptions give spamming privileges to some groups in the community while imposing censorship on others".
Senator Greig described exemptions in the Bills, broadened by the Labor's amendments, as "tokenistic" because the Opposition has indicated it will pass the legislation when it returns from the lower house, even if the amendments are stripped out.
