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

If we are still in this situation when we return, there will be a motion on the Notice Paper that would deal with the problem we're facing with the legislation that's in front of us right now. It would simply have the House resolving that, on anything where a division is called, where there is not agreement on both sides of the House—on national security issues, for example, we usually don't have divisions; we get agreement so the House is able to do its business—the decision on how that division is resolved would be deferred until after the Court of Disputed Returns had returned its decision, following its meetings, based on the resolution that we had on 14 August.

That would be a way of avoiding what's in front of us right now with this bill. I would rather the government simply did in the House what they would do on this bill in the Senate. The minister there who has been referred to the High Court has stood aside from his ministerial role and won't participate in the vote. The same should be happening here. If that has not been resolved by the time the House returns in September, then we will have before us a question on the Notice Paper simply asking that all divisions be deferred until the High Court has resolved this matter. I accept and appreciate that there is government business that needs to be done, and I support that. But I don't believe we can be in a situation where bills are being sponsored by somebody where we don't know if he's legally allowed to even be a member of parliament, and, when they come up for resolution, he's turning up for the vote.

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