Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Minister for Education) Share this | Hansard source

I appreciate the opportunity to speak on the address-in-reply debate in this 44th Parliament. It is an opportunity, as the member for Denison mentioned, to talk broadly about issues in your electorate, particularly across the country. I am the last speaker in the chamber to speak on this address-in-reply, and this afternoon copies of the speeches will be delivered to Her Excellency, the Governor-General. I am looking forward to making that visit to Yarralumla as I am sure the Speaker is and the committee that we appointed at the beginning of the parliament.

I should say too that, unusually, in this parliament the government allowed the entire address-in-reply debate to occur in this chamber. I made that decision as Leader of the House because I have always believed—and this is my eighth parliament—the address-in-reply is a really important part of the parliamentary process. As members would know, the Governor-General comes to the Senate chamber—and we all go to the Senate chamber to listen to the speech of the Governor-General—and outlines the new government's program, or the re-elected government's program and, therefore, people will find in that speech the priorities of the government and the values of the government. I think it helps if the members of parliament who respond during the address-in-reply debate can do so in a respectful way. The House of Representatives is the premier chamber of the parliament. I think it shows respect to the Crown and to the Governor-General himself or herself and a genuine belief in the government's program, or the opposition's counter to that program, to hold this debate in the House of Representatives, so I made the decision that we would conduct this debate here.

We are finishing this address-in-reply debate today. I am pleased to be doing so before the Governor-General retires and is replaced with a new Governor-General. We will deliver this to her this afternoon and it will, if you like, finish her period in office as Governor-General, which has been excellent. This will finish the debate we have held here in the chamber on the Governor-General's speech.

Today this is an opportunity to talk generally about the government getting on with the job. I would also like to comment a bit about some of the local issues, some of the promises I made to my electorate of Sturt before the election in 2013 and how we are progressing with that. As members would know, I was elected first in 1993 and I have been elected seven times since then, so I, along with only a handful of members, including the Speaker, have seen much come and go in those 21 years. In fact, I had my anniversary last Friday, on 13 March.

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