Donald Rod: Government Superannuation Fund Amendment Bill (No 2) — Second Reading 
Donald Rod: Government Superannuation Fund Amendment Bill (No 2) — Second Reading 
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ROD DONALD (Co-Leader—Green) 
: 
 The Green Party is pleased to support this bill. Indeed it seems that every party in the House wants to support it. Therefore I invite the Government to seek leave at the end of the report back for the Committee stage and the third reading to take place today. I proposed that course of action at the Business Committee a couple of weeks ago given the non-controversial nature of this bill. If my recollection is correct I believe that it was ACT that actually blocked that procedure being taken. I would like to invite Mr Shirley not to oppose leave if the Government so chooses to seek it.  
As a number of speakers have pointed out the Minister in particular this bill deals with an issue of equity and it overcomes discrimination against people who choose to remarry. I guess that is a change because it is usually the other way round where discrimination takes place—people who are not married and who live in relationships analogous to marriage such as myself are the ones often discriminated against. But in this case we have a situation where those who are surviving spouses of former public servants find themselves in a situation that if they remarry they would lose their entitlements. So it is good that we are fixing that situation.  
I must say it is a pleasant change for the Green Party to support this bill. The last time a Government superannuation fund bill came to the House the Green Party was the only party to oppose it. I am very sorry that our concerns raised at the time that the Government Superannuation Bill (No 1) came to the House have been proved chillingly accurate. As we now know the Government has lost $380 million so far— 
Mr SPEAKER 
: The member will come back to the bill. 
ROD DONALD 
: I am coming back to that. The Government has so far lost $380 million in unrealised losses. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: That is out of order. The member cannot refer to that when talking about this bill. The member will please come to this bill. 
ROD DONALD 
: I would like to say to those surviving spouses—and according to the bill there are 12000 of them—that they need not worry about the concerns that I have expressed about those losses because they will not affect their pension in any way whatsoever once it has been restored to them. The losses are something that the taxpayer will have to pick up not the beneficiaries of the Government Superannuation Fund. The issue I am concerned about about those losses is not one that any beneficiary or for that matter any person who currently contributes to the Government Superannuation Fund needs to worry about. Of course we all need to worry about it as taxpayers but that is another issue to be debated at another time.  
I look forward to the speedy passage of this bill. It would be an ideal situation if we could deal with all remaining stages today. I say that as a member of a party that is very keen on proper process being conducted in this House but in this particular instance when the whole Parliament supports this bill it makes a nonsense of the parliamentary process to drag out the final three stages over 3 days.