Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Hansard source

The government will be supporting the amendment that was moved by the member for Melbourne. It does improve the motion from what was on the Notice Paper and makes sure that it's completely consistent with the Jenkins recommendations. So I appreciate that being raised.

This now gives us potentially a new way, whenever we have to use this sort of mechanism, of being able to make sure that the people who had planned and scheduled to speak on the adjournment debate are able to do so. At some point we'll make a reference to the Procedure Committee to have a look at this. I think this will be the third different way we've tried to do this, to try to work out which one works best for the House.

In closing, to respond to the issues raised by the Manager of Opposition Business: in terms of shutting down debate, the impact of what we're about to do will be to allow 30 extra members to speak on this bill. That's the impact. Shutting down debate looks different to that.

See this speech in context