Mrs Bronwyn Bishop (Mackellar, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Seniors) Share this | Hansard source

I rise just briefly to support the remarks made by the leader of opposition business. He very strongly pointed out that, at 17 weeks, this is the shortest sitting pattern for the House of Representatives. The Senate is sitting for only a miserable 15 weeks.

I look at the nature of the allocation of the time, and of course it is quite obvious that they do not want to sit in the first half of the year until the Greens, their partners in their alliance, take their seats in the Senate. But then I look further, to the end of the year, and I note that, for a party that talks about working families and is concerned about people being with their families, we are sitting right up until Christmas Eve. Furthermore, I notice that if there is a further requirement the parliament would come back between the break between Christmas Day and the celebration of New Year’s Eve. I suppose, being a party which does not really have concerns about what family life is about, they think that is quite adequate. Sometimes I think that the right analogy is that the Prime Minister is as vacuous as the empty fruit bowl in her kitchen that was in the original picture taken of her which indicated to us how shallow she is.

I would simply say that the government is cynical in not wanting to be here to be subject to the scrutiny of the parliament because when they are here they are of course subject to the Independents and others wanting to have access, as they were promised in the new paradigm—to have briefings from Treasury, to have access to the Prime Minister—and perhaps they have worked out that if they are not here they may be relieved of some of that tedium.

But the reality is that the agreement that was struck for the running of this chamber—and I was taking a look at it just this afternoon—said that the government would use all of its endeavours to make this place work in a better fashion. Well, it has completely reneged on that undertaking. In fact, this whole idea of a new paradigm where people have to answer questions directly or give direct answers to the question is becoming rather meaningless. We are right back to the old tedium. Ministers can say what they like when they like. We are back in this place to having a slap-down of members of the opposition, who are either named or warned and who have been thrown out.

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