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

I move opposition amendment No. 1:

(1)Insert proposed amendments to standing order 1:

(2)Amend standing order 34 as follows:

34 Order of business

The order of business to be followed by the House is shown in figure 2.

Figure 2. House order of business

(3)Insert proposed standing order 104(d):

104 Answers

(d) After Question Time, and after any questions to the Speaker, the Speaker shall ask if there are any responses to Ministers’ answers. Each Member may speak for no longer than 90 seconds. The duration of the whole period for responses shall not exceed 10 minutes.

Everything that the Leader of the House just put is inaccurate for this simple reason: we changed the sitting hours last week. What the Leader of the House just implied is that what was there beforehand, in the previous parliament, is still in the standing orders. That is not true. Last week we changed the standing orders so that on Monday and Tuesday nights the dinner break begins not at 6.30, as the Leader of the House just said, but at 7.30. The Leader of the House is trying to appeal to his backbench by saying this means you can go home at 8 o'clock. Under the current rules, if you are not speaking in a debate, you can leave for the dinner break and not have to return at 7.30. It is not about what time people leave. We dealt with that last week in a change to standing orders that the Leader of the House just completely ignored when he misled us with information about what time the dinner break currently occurs. What he has just told the House is factually wrong because he moved the change the last time the parliament sat.

So why would he actually want this change? There are two things in front of us. One of them is that the adjournment question will never be put to a vote. Why do you reckon the Leader of the House might want to make sure that the adjournment question is never put to the vote?

I do not think it is to do with the good health of members opposite. I think it is to do with the health of the Leader of the House, because he has had an absolute shocker ever since he became the first Leader of the House in half a century to lose votes on the floor with a majority government. That is what he has had, and now, instead of saying to the Prime Minister, 'It won't happen again, because I can make sure our members turn up for work,' or, 'It won't happen again, because we've got some party discipline back,' he is saying: 'It won't happen again, because I'll change the rules so that nothing gets put to a vote. I'll change the rules so that the parliament shuts down.'

If a school has a problem with truancy, it does not decide to fix it by just shutting the school down. They have a problem with truancy on the other side, a huge problem which caused humiliation for those opposite, and they have decided to try to deal with it not by fixing the actual problem but instead by providing false information to the House—pretending that it is something to do with the good health of members opposite and that the changes that passed through this House unanimously in the previous sitting week never actually occurred—and putting to the House a position which is about making sure that the adjournment is never voted on and that we lose another three hours a week of parliamentary time.

This parliament does not sit very often, but this is a government whose members do not like the concept that, when the parliament sits, they hear different voices. When the parliament sits, they do not like the fact that different points of view are put. What they really do not like is that, wherever they go, they hear an attack on the government. They come into the parliament; there is an attack on the government. They go to their party room; there is an attack on the government. They go to a cabinet meeting, and the government is being attacked as well. Everywhere they go it is the exact same situation. That is why we have a government that does not want the parliament to meet. It does not want to schedule weeks for the parliament to meet, and when we are here those opposite want to make sure that they can take off out of here as soon as they possibly can. That is not a new principle. Those opposite decided to not even wait for the end of parliament when we were last here on the Thursday. But I love that the Leader of the House presents this to the House as though nothing happened—as though that Thursday afternoon is just so yesterday.

What the Leader of the House needs to acknowledge, and what he will refuse repeatedly to deal with, is that this government, as I have said before, does not have a working majority. All it has is a majority that refuses to work, and that is what those opposite are delivering to this parliament. The Leader of the House should know this: every time you change the rules, every time you use that bare majority that you have to try to crunch through a change, do not think it will not come back another way. Last night—the spectacle of it! For more than an hour at the end of the day yesterday, the Leader of the House and the Chief Government Whip came into the House and just sat here watching in case something happened. They just sat here. They did not make contributions but just watched in case there was something that they had not quite thought of that suddenly took off in the parliament so that they were here on the spot, on the site. This was the same day that the Leader of the House had already briefed government staffers to let them know to cover all eight exits of Parliament House, to be there making sure that members of parliament could not escape the building.

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