Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Finance) Share this | Hansard source

Accurate, true! I will not blame him for this one because we have all been put in an impossible situation by the minister who has responsibility for this legislation. It is not just a matter of the gravity of this bill dealing with governance; let's also look at the complexity of what it does. Over 250 different acts of parliament are amended by this bill but we are now going to be a position of offering no effective level of scrutiny. There are over 500 pages of amendments in the bill and they deserve a lot more scrutiny than we can give in this situation.

Ministers have a responsibility not to wait for the brief to arrive. There will be times when the Public Service, in good faith, is working diligently through something and wants it to be perfect before it comes up. But if the price of a minister just taking a back seat and saying, 'I'll deal with it whenever it's ready,' is that we effectively cut the legislature—the House of Representatives and the Senate—out of effective scrutiny, then what on earth is the parliament for? And, as I said before, of all the bills to do it on, to do it on one that is about governance! The parliament should be given the opportunity to ensure these bills actually give effect to their intended purpose. There are occasions when, no matter how much work has gone into a bill, errors are found by the parliament itself. Only this week we had to deal with the fact that an amendment had to be moved to an appropriations bill because nearly $1 billion had been forgotten about in the schedule. That sort of scrutiny is what the parliament is here to provide. That sort of scrutiny is now not being offered to these bills, yet for something that is actually—except for one part of it—not particularly controversial across the parliament, that sort of scrutiny would have been a constructive thing, and in the interests, I might add, of the government. There is nothing to be gained for the government in mistakes being made in governance legislation, because when those mistakes end up being made we know who gets the blame, and it becomes no excuse to say, 'Oh, but the bill was rushed through parliament.'

There is, of course, one further issue which is a part of these bills that the opposition has a very strong view about and which the opposition wants to have extended debate about. This goes to the effect of these bills on people who are employed as cleaners. Through these bills the government is seeking to cut the pay of some of Australia's lowest paid workers. It is not the primary purpose of these bills, but it is caught up within them. There is no shortage of members of parliament who have strong views on the pay being cut to some of Australia's lowest paid workers. There is no shortage of people on this side of the House who have dedicated a good part of their professional life to defending the rights of some of Australia's lowest paid workers. No matter how many times some of those opposite want us to somehow feel that that is something to be anything but proud of, people on this side are proud of the fact that they have defended some of Australia's lowest paid workers, and they want the chance now to be a voice for them in the parliament, a voice that is being taken away by the resolution that is in front of us.

The Prime Minister at the dispatch box, last Monday week, said:

I want to make it absolutely crystal clear that no cleaner's pay is reduced.

That is now challenged by the legislation that the parliament is going to debate. It is no surprise that that gets caught up in a debate that the government seeks to gag. The Prime Minister then said:

This government has not reduced the pay of any cleaner full stop, end of story. This government has not reduced the pay of any cleaner.

Well, a pay rate under the Cleaning Services Guidelines of $22 an hour to the rate of the award of $17.49 an hour is a reduction. I am not sure what those opposite think. We have had arguments this week where they have argued that 550 is bigger than 6,000. Today, for cleaners' wages, we are getting an argument that $17.49 is bigger than $22.02. If that is the argument they want to make, I reckon let us have a long debate on that issue. It is only one of the issues within these bills; it is not the only one.

Most of this is bipartisan, but the fact that a bill is bipartisan does not mean it should be excused from scrutiny, which is the role of the parliament. That role is being ignored because of the actions, I presume, of a single minister either not pushing for the brief to be given to him and for him to work through the legislation in time for it to be presented in an orderly way to the parliament, or, in the alternative, actually not bothering to deal with it when it did arrive on the minister's desk. I do not know which of them it was, but ultimately the minister ends up responsible.

The minister has made a decision that puts every single member of parliament here at a disadvantage. It is not simply opposition members. It may be only opposition members who want to stand up for the rights of low-paid cleaners. But, on the issue of general scrutiny and general governance, it is of the interest and the responsibility of every single member of this place. The timing of this bill has precluded members of parliament from doing their job and the resolution, which has now been moved by the Leader of the House, guarantees and enforces that members of parliament are cut out of the effective legislative process. The House should not stand for it.

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