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

I will only speak to the one that has been moved. I support these for the same reason that I opposed the change to the sitting calendar, in that I have no doubt that, over this winter, we're going to be coming back. We might get lucky and we won't need to, but, with the pace at which everything's moving, I just find it really hard to believe that everything that we've done up until today will be all we need to do all the way through to August. In the last few days we've seen state after state start to lock themselves down. I don't know how much further that will go, but it is not impossible to imagine a scenario where, for the parliament to meet, we have to get here 14 days early, self-isolate, meet, go back home and then self-isolate again for another 14 days. We're not there yet; we certainly haven't had to do that today. But if the nation needs us to meet, and needs us to meet quickly, we need to have a level of flexibility in how that might happen.

A few weeks ago I would've been opposed to what is in front of us right now, and I view it very much as a break-glass option, if it is required. As the resolution puts a particular responsibility on myself and the Leader of the House when dealings with matters of manner and form, I give a guarantee to the crossbench—and, obviously, to my own side—that direct consultation on that would take place before anything was agreed to. The presumption on agreeing to anything would be this: it would be with the intention of making sure that members who were otherwise excluded could participate. The best that we can do is for us to physically meet here, like we have today, and we'll do everything we can to form a quorum with a significant number of people, the way we have done today. If circumstances mean we have to look at a different manner and form, we will deal with that in a very conservative fashion and a very careful fashion but certainly with the intention of making sure that, when the Australian people need the parliament to meet, the parliament can meet.

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