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

I will not hold up the debate for long. Needless to say, as I indicated in a point of order, the issue that has been put before the parliament is an appropriate issue for there to be discussion on within the parliament—absolutely—and, Member for Denison, there is no objection from Labor to the issue being raised. The impact of it being raised at that point of question time is simply that we end up with less scrutiny of the government because question time gets wiped out at such an early point of time. That is why I put forward the option for the motion to be moved at a later hour, which has not been taken up.

That being the case, I would also simply note that there have been other occasions with the crossbench when the opposition has been notified and suspensions have been moved later during question time, and we have been able to support that. I understand, from the comments that were made, that notification was given to the government. It was not given to the opposition on this occasion. That is just how that transpired. But it is the case that everybody here would agree that there is a great import to the issues that have been put before us. There is absolutely no objection from us to having a parliamentary debate on that. We do not believe a consequence of having that debate should be a reduction in scrutiny of the government and the wiping out of a day's question time.

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