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

I think it's important for the House to appreciate what's happening right now and why. That's the first time in a very long time that we've heard a speech from the minister at the table on the motion that the bill be read a third time. It was very well delivered. It was a good speech, I say to the assistant minister. There's a reason why that just happened, and it's that the minister for energy, when it was time to sum up the second reading debate, gave a speech about a completely different bill. The ruling that the Speaker gave a few moments ago was about the debate that we are now in. As I explain these issues, I would say: 'By all means, if you want to take a relevance point of order, go for it.' But no-one took one on the minister, and he was completely irrelevant to the bill when he was talking.

What the minister for energy did does say something about the minister for energy, and it does say something about the entire government. It's a point that needs to be made. Because, after the minister for energy had given a speech about a different bill—and, might I add, not only was that an odd thing to do; it was a speech summing up the debate. Therefore, it meant he had a speech to sum up a debate that had not occurred. The debate hadn't occurred, and yet, fully written, there was a speech summing up the points that had been made in the debate that hadn't been. That's the way this government now treats the parliament.

Some people have rushed around saying, 'Who's to blame?' And some people have referred to who handed him the speech and things like that. Can I say: the government's to blame. It's as simple as that. There are many parliaments around the country—and, not too recently, this used to be one of them—where, when you had a piece of legislation, the relevant minister would come into the chamber and move it, would be here for some chunk of the debate and would come in at the end to give the summing up speech on their own bill. Throughout the course of the debate, they would have had members of their personal staff sitting in the adviser's gallery and taking notes on what was said. And then, when they came up to give the summing up speech, they in fact summed up a debate that did occur, not an imagined debate that was summed up by the minister for energy.

What's behind the minister for energy making an error like this? We're told that he was handed the speech. We haven't been told that he downloaded this one. This is a speech that never appeared on the City of Sydney council website. This is a speech that, in some way, was handed to him. But here's the question: why is it, on the social services legislation, that it's the minister for energy who the government sends in here? Why is it that, on legislation of fundamental importance, this government now doesn't care who is in the chamber for legislation that they are meant to have personal carriage of? If we had a full separation of powers system, like, for example, the United States, we wouldn't get the ministers in the legislature, but here we do. We have the system of responsible government. The concept of that is meant to be that the government is responsible and that the ministers are responsible for the legislation that they deal with. In so doing, the ministers are also responsible for debating that legislation.

This government has just given up on that completely. It's yet another way that the government has decided that the parliament doesn't matter. It's yet another way that a prime minister who doesn't like people disagreeing with him in public—or, I am told, in private—has found to try to make debate as irrelevant as possible, to the point where the minister for energy gave a speech completely irrelevant to the debate he was summing up. Their approach, to make sure that debate is irrelevant, is to debate in an irrelevant way. That's where they've landed. But I've got to say that—and the government should think about this—if you work on the basis that what happens at that dispatch box is simply that someone hands you a script and you read it out, that's a joke. That's not a parliament, that's just a joke. It's a joke if whoever you might employ in your office is responsible for every word you say. You don't care which minister reads it out; whatever they get handed, like a trained seal, they will read those words and no other words will come from their lips. They will sum up a debate that has not occurred, but it doesn't matter because, hey, it's only the parliament.

What happened in this debate when the parliament last sat is without precedent, extraordinary and embarrassing. It's just embarrassing to be a country where the government no longer cares not only which minister deals with the legislation but even whether they're speaking on the right legislation. So I say to those opposite and to the chamber itself: it should not have been the case that a speech summing up debate had to wait for a couple of weeks and for it to come from an assistant minister—

Mr Morton interjecting—

No, I said you delivered it well. I've never heard you that passionate before. But the minister responsible should be the one in here debating it. That should be the case for every bill. We don't just have to look at when Labor was in government; Peter Costello used to take a whole lot of pride in moving his own legislation. You accept the Treasurer won't always be here to sum up the debate. You get the call that it's time for your debate to be summed up, you would make sure to get down here and you would sum up a debate that occurred on a bill that mattered to you. You were the person who dealt with the department to get it drafted, who would take it through the cabinet process and bring it to the parliament and see it through to the final vote. That's the job of a minister. It's not the job of a staffer to just hand you words so you'll act like a trained seal.

So I remind members—we're not going to move motions but, I'll tell you what, we're going to make a point—that this government is treating the parliament as a joke. As a result, they have embarrassed themselves. If an error were to be made, if a mistake were to occur, it's a reasonable presumption that it would have been the Minister for Energy and Emissions Reduction who would have done it. That's sort of been a bit of a pattern. But on this one the truth is it could have been any of them, because it is rare now for the minister responsible to take any interest or any responsibility for their own legislation. So, those opposite, have a think again about whether you actually wanted to be members of parliament, because if your ambition were to write speeches and contribute to debate, it sounds like you'd be better off being staffers because that's how you get your words onto Hansard with this government. That's the way to make it happen. If that's the way to get power in the Morrison government, good luck to you; you can all go off and get jobs as staffers. But don't occupy seats in this chamber unless you have some intention of making the speeches, taking the responsibility and doing your job.

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